Warsaw By John Darnton Because I moved the New York Times bureau from Belgrade to Warsaw in 1979, people used to ask me if the paper or I myself had an inkling of the political convulsions that would begin at the Lenin shipyard and sweep through every nook and cranny of the country. I have to be honest and admit that no, of course not, we didn't know anything. Nor, to my knowledge, did any Western diplomat, aside from one perspicacious Spanish embassy official who said he felt there was a level of social anger building up that would require an outlet. I once encountered that anger directly, when I covered a mining disaster in the south in early 1980 and was taken aback at how freely and bitterly miners criticized the government. They clearly loathed it. But I put that down to the heat of the moment, when fellow miners were trapped hundreds of feet underground, and did not see it as the sign of impending revolt. When the price of meat was raised July 1, precipitating wildcat strikes that were never admitted but seemed to spread like underground brush fires, I began to sense the rising tide of universal rage. And I was impressed by how closely involved was KOR. But still, on the day that Walesa vaulted the wall into the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, I was an ocean away in America. I quickly board a plane and jumped on the story that didn't stop moving for a year and a half.

Memories, big and little, come crowding back. Joining the strikers at their headquarters, with the announcement over the public address system - "the New York Times has joined our strike!" - loudly applauded. Poor Deputy PM Mieczyslaw Jagielski signing the Aug. 31 agreement, sweating under the camera lights like a novice actor and being one-upped by Walesa who pulled out a foot-long pen with a picture of Pope John Paul on it. Endless discussions, strike votes, a glut of democracy, speeches that went on long past deadline. At one meeting, in Ursus, Adam Michnik, hinting at the dangers of Soviet invasion, shouting: "We don't live on the moon." At another danger point, Walesa walking down the aisle, asking both me and the man from Pravda whether the union should strike (We both said no.) Then martial law coming down like a door shutting. Arrests, curfews, roadblocks, no phones or telexes, smuggling stories out of the country. An elderly Polish writer, opening his door only a peep, explaining that we could no longer be friends, it was too dangerous. Other friends, twenty of them, bucking their fears and coming to our house for a New Year's Eve party in which people clinked glasses and said: "Happy New York." Our daughter, removing a Solidarnosz button from an outdoor Christmas wreath, being upbraided by a handyman who said: "Just because it's not allowed, you don't like it anymore." And finally, leaving Poland, with my daughter wiping away tears and the Polish customs official so moved by the sight that she picked her up and hugged her tightly.