WARSAW: Ten years ago this month the first partially free elections in any Communist country were held in Poland: a crucial step on the road that began with the rise of Solidarity in 1980 and ended with the fall of the Wall in Berlin and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet system.

Those Polish elections were the result of a compromise hammered out during weeks of "Round Table" negotiations between the leaders of the Communist party and representatives of the Solidarity trade union. Paradoxically, however, the elections that ultimately ushered in the first non-communist government were not originally favored by the Solidarity negotiating team.

Later, the negotiations became an object of heated debate among politicians and commentators in Poland. Two myths came to the fore. The first concerned the benevolence of the Communist leaders who had supposedly ceded their power to the opposition at the moment democracy became possible. The second was about a conspiracy between the Reds and "Pinkos"-- the Communist leaders and the "soft" leftists who represented Solidarity at the Round Table talks -- that supposedly saved the Communists from total disgrace and allowed them to stage a comeback as a new party of the Left.

Both myths are just that: myths. A compromise - and this is, of course, what the Round Table was - is usually a result of some weakness on both sides. In 1989, the Communists had managed to make illegal and contain, but not to stamp out, Solidarity. A wave of strikes in May and August of 1988 brought home to Poland's politburo that the strategy of repression they had pursued since the introduction of martial law in 1981 was a failure. Solidarity, though weakened, proved to be a permanent fixture in Polish politics. To achieve social peace, the Communists had to talk to Solidarity.

But Solidarity was weak too. True, it had tremendous trumps in its hand: its great international visibility, widespread public support, and a Polish pope. Solidarity could count on the logic of Gorbachev's recent reforms in the neighboring Soviet Union, the perennial inefficiency of the communist economic system, and the unwillingness of the government, under General Jaruzelski, to go back to the martial law regime.

Despite all of this, Solidarity was weak and we were pretending to be much stronger than we knew we were. Of the millions who joined in 1980, only some 10-20 thousand were active throughout the country. Solidarity urgently needed to become legal again, to substitute a lasting institutional reality for its still enduring existence as a national myth.

The Communists at first hoped to coopt some Solidarity activists, without legalizing the movement. They offered to talk about a political compromise that would bring some new people into the Parliament, provided real "radicals," like Jacek Kuron or myself, were kept out. But for us the legalization of Solidarity and its right to choose its own representatives were nonnegotiable demands - and Lech Walesa held firm on this until the Communists relented.

After heated debates, we were prepared to pay what we saw as a very high price for the legalization of Solidarity as a movement. We saw participation in parliamentary elections not as a victory, but as a legitimation of the regime. The Communists wanted a political system that would allow them to continue in power, with us as a fig leaf, and we were willing to give them some of that for the chance of having Solidarity legal again and of beginning a new process of legal change.

What nobody anticipated was that the crushing defeat of the Communists at the polls for all but one of the seats we were allowed to contest made it impossible for the Communists to form a new government, even if the numerical majorities were still on their side. The elections we originally saw as a concession turned out to be an integral instrument of our victory.

I remember well the inaugural session of the Round Table talks. Bronislaw Geremek browbeat me into putting on a suit and a tie. Embarrassed and furious - my attire made me a butt of Walesa's mocking remarks - I walked up the stairs of the palace where the talks were to be held. At the top of the steps stood General Kiszczak, the same man who, as Minister of Internal Affairs, held me in jail only a little more than two years earlier, and against whom I had written a series of articles, smuggled from jail and published in the West, in which I did not mince words to express what I thought about him.

I tried to hide behind others and dodge greeting him in front of TV cameras and the press. But he stood there until the last person had passed and personally welcomed every guest. I thus had to publicly shake hands with the head of the political police. He behaved with great class and easily dismissed all the insults I had heaped on him only a short time before.

Still, I had a keen appreciation of the strangeness of my position. Next to me stood my friends and long time comrades in jail and Solidarity underground: Jacek Kuron, Zbigniew Bujak, Wladyslaw Frasyniuk... I was conscious of a historical transition, which I could not quite define. But I understood one thing: the democratic opposition was stepping over the threshold of legality. I could see that the historical chance for my country was beginning in an act of compromise.