Jean-Louis Panné is a historian and former president of the Solidarité collective with Solidarność. Jean-Yves Potel is a historian and political scientist, author of books on Solidarność, founding member of the Solidarité collective with Solidarność; former Cultural Counselor at the French Embassy in Warsaw.
A few weeks ago, Roman Laba, an American sociologist of Ukrainian origin, passed away at the age of 78.
Many of those who belong to the “Solidarność generation” in France, and even more so in Poland, remember him, a tireless discoverer of the world.
Arriving in Poland in July 1980, a few weeks before the strike at the Gdańsk shipyards, a strike that was to give birth to Solidarność, the first free trade union in the Soviet bloc, he entered a society in turmoil.
He immediately set himself the goal of documenting the history of the birth of the union as well as possible.
He accumulated many archives on the evolution of workers' consciousness since the 1970 strikes in Poland, questioning many actors in these struggles.
From this field work, he drew a
“political sociology of the democratization of the Polish working class”
, of which he made a book published in 1991:
The Roots of Solidarity
.
It was a major book that located the origin of the idea of the free trade union in the working-class experience itself, and not in the contribution of a so-called intellectual avant-garde in the Leninist way.
He did not deny the contribution of intellectuals,
“without them, he concluded, there would not have been Solidarność, but the Solidarność they joined had been built in a context established by the workers.
In other words, the roots of Solidarność lay in the working class of the Baltic coast, the contribution of intellectuals was necessary but not at the origin of the creation of the union.
His book has unfortunately not been translated into French.
We can approach it by referring to his substantial article
"Solidarity and the workers' struggles in Poland, 1970-1980"
, published in the journal
Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales
(No. 61, March 1986).
His sense of friendship has never been challenged and that is why he keeps, despite his disappearance, a host of friends in the United States and Europe.
Roman Laba
A lover of all mountains, Roman Laba was linked to the network of Polish mountaineers who played an unexpected role within the Polish democratic opposition of the 1970s, such as his friend Andrzej Mro'z to whom he dedicated his book.
After two years of research, Roman Laba was expelled by the authorities of the Polish communist regime who preferred to get rid of a researcher who was too close to the leaders of Solidarność.
He then pursued, in the United States, a teaching career in various university institutions, without ever renouncing to get as close as possible to the decisive events which marked the end of the century.
This is how he was present in Moscow in 1993 during the assault on Parliament ordered by Boris Yeltsin.
In this type of situation, he was aware that he was close to death and this happened several times for him, such as in Peru in the early sixties.
During the 1990s he looked at
"the revival of the Cossack movement in the face of the Russian state (1990-1996)"
, which brought him back to the origins of his family.
In recent months, he has been following the Russian aggression in Ukraine with great attention and apprehension, knowing full well what European and global issues it raises.
Roman Laba was a tireless storyteller.
He excelled in the art of extracting relevant analysis from significant anecdotes.
Always with humor.
He punctuated his stories with a broad smile and a big laugh.
His sense of friendship has never been challenged and that is why he keeps, despite his disappearance, a host of friends in the United States and Europe.
Everyone is aware of having lost an exceptional storyteller, curious about everything, passionate about life, the men and women he was able to meet or discover through books.
