The Sword and the Shield

^THIRTY THE POLISH CRISIS AND THE CRUMBLING OF THE SOVIET BLOC

In the view of both the KGB and the Soviet Politburo, the Gdańsk Agreement represented the greatest potential threat to the “Socialist Commonwealth” (the official designation of the Soviet Bloc) since the Prague Spring of 1968. On September 3, 1980 the Politburo agreed a series of “theses for discussion with representatives of the Polish leadership”—a euphemism for demands that the Poles recover the ground lost to Solidarity:

The principal scapegoat for the success of Solidarity was Edward Gierek, the Polish first secretary, bitterly criticized by the Soviet ambassador, Aristov, among others, for the loss of Party control.² The strikers at the Lenin shipyard had greeted Gierek’s television appearances with derisive catcalls. Ordinary Poles summed up their feelings in one of the political jokes with which they privately mocked their Communist leaders:

On September 5 Gierek was succeeded by Stanisław Kania, the tough, heavily built and heavy-drinking Party secretary responsible for national security. The KGB in Warsaw reported a satirical comment on the changeover doing the rounds in Poland—“Better Kania than Vanya!” (better, in other words, to put up with an unpopular Polish Communist than have to face a Soviet invasion).⁴ It also reported that on September 6 Admiral L. Janczyszyn, the commander-in-chief of the Polish navy, had warned two Soviet admirals that military intervention would end not in “normalization,” as in Prague in 1968, but in catastrophe. “If outside troops are brought into Poland,” he told them, “there would be a river of blood. You must understand that you’re dealing with Poles—not Czechs!”⁵

On September 18 Pavlov, the head of the KGB mission in Warsaw, complained to the Centre that the Kania regime was already repeating the mistakes of its predecessors—looking for compromise with the opposition rather than taking a firm stand against them. The Party rank and file remained demoralized.⁶ “The counter-revolution in Poland is in full flood!” Brezhnev dramatically announced to the Politburo on October 29:

Brezhnev’s assessment was, predictably, strongly supported by Andropov. It was also backed by Mikhail Gorbachev, who had joined the Politburo in the previous year. “We should speak openly and firmly with our Polish friends,” he declared. “Up to now they haven’t taken the necessary steps. They’re in a sort of defensive position, and they can’t hold it for long—they might end up being overthrown themselves.”⁷

The Politburo was concerned not merely by the situation in Poland itself but also by the contagious effect of Solidarity’s success in some parts of the Soviet Union. The PROGRESS operation reports submitted to Andropov in October included one from the illegal SOBOLEV, who has been sent on a mission to Rubtsovsk in the Altay Kray region of Russia, far from the Polish border. His report made depressing reading:

Among the most successful illegals selected for PROGRESS operations in Poland itself was FILOSOV, still posing as a French writer and poet. According to his KGB file, he made “numerous contacts within Solidarity.” Perhaps his most important contact was Tadeusz Mazowiecki, editor-in-chief of the Solidarity weekly, Tygodnik Solidarnóśc, to whom he was introduced in November by Father Andrzej Bardecki.⁹ Nine years later Mazowiecki was to become prime minister of the first Solidarity-led government.

Early in November, Andropov summoned the new, hardline Polish interior minister, General Mirosław Milewski, for talks in Moscow. Milewski reported that lists had been prepared of more than 1,200 of the “most counter-revolutionary individuals,” who would be arrested immediately if martial law were declared. Andropov then launched into an alarmist monologue designed to persuade Milewski that martial law could not be avoided:

When Andropov had finished his tirade, Milewski asked him, “You have convinced me, but how am I to convince our comrades back in Warsaw?” Andropov’s reply is not recorded.¹⁰

On December 5 an extraordinary meeting of Warsaw Pact leaders assembled in Moscow to discuss the Polish crisis. Kania heard one speaker after another castigate the weakness of his policies and demand an immediate crackdown on Solidarity and the Church. Otherwise, he was told, Warsaw Pact forces would intervene. Eighteen divisions were already on the Polish borders and Kania was shown plans for the occupation of Polish cities and towns. The meeting was followed by a private discussion between Kania and Brezhnev. Military intervention, Kania insisted, would be a disaster for the Soviet Union as well as for Poland. “OK, we don’t march into Poland now,” Brezhnev replied, “but if the situation gets any worse we will come.”¹¹

Brezhnev’s threat was probably a bluff. With Soviet forces already at war in Afghanistan and the probability that military intervention in Poland would result in a bloodbath, Western economic sanctions and a global public relations disaster, the Kremlin’s strategy was to pressure the Poles into using martial law to end Solidarity’s challenge to the Communist one-party state. Ultimately the most effective way of exercising pressure was to threaten invasion by the Red Army. Memories of Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1979 meant that very few in either Poland or the West failed to take the threat seriously in 1980.

It took over a year of almost continuous pressure, however, before the Polish Politburo, after a series of personnel changes, finally agreed to declare martial law. The KGB mission in Warsaw reported in December 1980 that, although Milewski was ready to go ahead with the “repression of hostile people,” most of the Politburo was not:

The KGB was also deeply concerned at what it believed was the growing Western intelligence presence in Poland. According to data supplied by the SB, of the 1,300 foreign journalists in Poland at the beginning of 1981 about 150 were members or agents of intelligence agencies. NATO intelligence agencies, it was claimed, “were acquiring firm agent positions within Solidarity.”¹³

For much of 1981 the PUWP continued to lose ground to Solidarity. On January 15 Wałęsa was received by John Paul II in the Vatican. “The son,” he announced reverently to the world’s television cameras, “has come to see the father.” Increasingly, the Pope and Wałęsa now appeared as the real leaders of the Polish nation.¹⁴ In his conversations with the KGB, Milewski seemed to despair of defeating the challenge from Solidarity without Soviet military intervention. As the news came in of Wałęsa’s meeting with the Pope, Milewski told Aristov, “I am beginning to think that order will come only when Poland has a reliable security guarantee in the form of allied troops…”¹⁵ Kania admitted to the Soviet ambassador that the PUWP had lost touch with the Polish people: “This is not a Solidarity slogan but a statement of fact, of the bitter truth.” The only forces on which he could rely were the army and the SB.¹⁶

WITH MARTIAL LAW as the only solution favored by the Kremlin to deal with the Solidarity crisis, the role of the Polish army became of crucial importance. On February 9, probably as a result of Soviet pressure, the minister of defense, General Wojciech Jaruzelski became Polish prime minister. Slim, erect, habitually wearing dark glasses and an inscrutable expression, Jaruzelski was an enigmatic figure for most Poles. But he had a relatively favorable public image due both to the fact that he had refused to use troops against the workers in 1970 and to the reputation of the armed forces as the most trusted state institution. In KGB reports to Brezhnev, however, Jaruzelski had long been described as “a sincere friend of the Soviet Union.”¹⁷ On his instructions, the chief of military intelligence, General Czesław Kiszczak (later interior minister in charge of the SB), had for some time been meeting the KGB mission in Warsaw every two or three days to provide the latest intelligence reports on the crisis from military sources.¹⁸ As Prime Minister, Jaruzelski retained the defense portfolio.

The period up to December 1981 was to be characterized by recurrent Soviet complaints of Polish inaction and Polish attempts to placate the Soviet leadership. During that period the Kremlin was assailed by recurrent doubts as to whether Jaruzelski really possessed the resolve required to enforce martial law. In the end it concluded that no better candidate was available. Soviet doubts about Kania, however, were to prove much more serious.

On March 4 Kania and Jaruzelski were summoned to the Kremlin to be dressed down by Brezhnev and other members of the Politburo. When, the Soviet leaders demanded, would the Polish comrades impose martial law? And how was it that, alone among the Socialist countries, Poland found it so difficult to control the Church?¹⁹ The dressing-down had little effect. A member of the Polish Politburo, Mieczysław Moczar, informed the KGB that Kania had told him, shortly after his return to Warsaw, “In spite of the pressure from Moscow, I don’t want to use force against the opposition. I don’t want to go down in history as the butcher of the Polish people.” According to another of the KGB’s Polish informants, Kania said that neither the Party nor the government was ready for a confrontation with Solidarity—“and I’ll never ask the Russians for military assistance.”²⁰

“We have huge worries about the outcome of events in Poland,” Brezhnev told the Politburo on April 2. “Worst of all is that our friends listen and agree with our recommendations, but in practice they don’t do anything. And a counter-revolution is taking the offensive on all fronts!” Ustinov, the defense minister, declared that if Socialism was to survive in Poland, “bloodshed is unavoidable.” “Solidarity,” reported Andropov, “is now starting to grab one position after the other.” The only solution was renewed pressure on the Poles to declare martial law:

Next day Kania and Jaruzelski were summoned to meet Andropov and Ustinov in the Soviet equivalent of a Pullman railway coach at the border city of Brest-Litovsk. After caviar and a sumptuous buffet, they were seated at a green-baize-covered table and subjected to six hours of recriminations, demands for the declaration of martial law and threats of Soviet military intervention. Kania and Jaruzelski responded by pleading for more time.²¹ On April 7, four days after the meeting at Brest-Litovsk, Mieczysław Moczar had another conversation with Kania which he reported to the KGB. Kania clearly believed that the threat of military intervention was in deadly earnest. “There would be a tragedy on a huge scale if Soviet forces intervene,” he told Moczar. “It would take two generations of Poles to remedy the consequences.”²²

The Soviet Politburo believed that such a threat of military intervention was the main restraining influence on Polish “anti-Socialist forces.” On April 23 it approved a report on Poland which concluded:

The Politburo agreed, “as a deterrent to counter-revolution,” to “exploit to the utmost the fears of internal reactionaries and international imperialism that the Soviet Union might send its troops into Poland.” It also decided to maintain “support for Comrades Kania and Jaruzelski, who, despite their well-known waffling, are in favor of defending Socialism.” They must, however, be put under “constant pressure to pursue more significant and decisive actions to overcome the crisis and preserve Poland as a Socialist country friendly to the Soviet Union.”²³

On May 13 John Paul II gave his usual Wednesday general audience in St. Peter’s Square. As he was waving to the crowds from his open-topped “Popemobile,” he was shot from a distance of twenty feet by a Turkish would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca. The bullet passed a few millimeters from the Pope’s central aorta; had it hit his aorta, the Pope would have died instantly. John Paul II believed that his life had been saved by a miracle performed by the Virgin of Fatima in Portugal, whose feast day it was. On the first anniversary of the assassination attempt, he made a pilgrimage to Fatima to place Agca’s bullet on her altar.²⁴ If the Pope had died, the KGB would doubtless have been overjoyed. But there is no evidence in any of the files examined by Mitrokhin that it was involved in the attempt on his life.²⁵

In the weeks after the assassination attempt, the strongest pressure on Kania and Jaruzelski to declare martial law came from Marshal Viktor Kulikov, the short-tempered commander-in-chief of Warsaw Pact forces. Kulikov accused Jaruzelski of cowardice. “You yourself, Comrade Jaruzelski,” he told him, “are afraid of taking decisive action.” Though insisting that the time was not ripe for martial law, Jaruzelski accepted Kulikov’s insults—according to a KGB report to the Politburo—with remarkable meekness and even offered to resign as prime minister.²⁶ Kulikov remained deeply suspicious of the motives of both Kania and Jaruzelski, reporting to the Politburo, “It looks as though the leadership of the PUWP and the government is conducting a dishonest political game and is facilitating the accession to power of those backing Solidarity.”²⁷

The Centre informed the Warsaw KGB mission that the time had come to find both a new first secretary and a new prime minister:

The Centre’s preferred candidates on the Polish Politburo to succeed Kania and Jaruzelski were the hardliners Tadeusz Grabski and Stefan Olszowski. Both, it reported, “are imbued with a firm Marxist-Leninist outlook, and are prepared to act decisively and consistently in defense of Socialist interests and of friendship with the Soviet Union.”²⁸ On May 30 Aristov and Pavlov sent a joint telegram to Brezhnev and the Politburo, accusing Kania and Jaruzelski of consistent capitulation to “revisionist elements”:

Having discovered that the KGB was plotting against him, Kania lapsed into a tone of almost whimpering self-pity. When Pavlov phoned him on June 7 to ask if he proposed to ring Comrade Brezhnev to reply to another letter from Moscow demanding tough action against Solidarity, Kania replied, “There is probably now no point in my telephoning as everything has already been decided without me [being consulted].” Later that night Kania rang Pavlov back at home in order to appeal for sympathy:

When Kulikov asked Jaruzelski for his reaction to the latest philippic from Moscow, he replied, “They are hammering me into the ground. I’m a fool for accepting this post [of prime minister].”³¹

During June a group of nine Polish generals approached the KGB with a plan to remove Jaruzelski because of his unwillingness to order martial law and replace him with a new defense minister (presumably one of the plotters), who would arrest the rest of the government, take control of strategic points and seize up to 3,000 counter-revolutionaries who would be deported to elsewhere in the Soviet Bloc. An action group led by the defense minister, containing no members of either the previous government or the Politburo, would then appeal to the rest of the Soviet Bloc for “military assistance to protect Socialism in the Polish People’s Republic.”³² Moscow’s response to the plan for a military coup is not recorded in the files noted by Mitrokhin. Given its desire to avoid “military assistance” and preserve a semblance of legality, however, it cannot have been attracted by it.

Jaruzelski’s main concern seems to have been less his own personal position than to prevent the disaster of Soviet military intervention. On June 22 he held a meeting with the minister of the interior, General Milewski, whom he knew was trusted by the Kremlin. How, asked Jaruzelski, could he “regain the trust of our Soviet comrades?” Milewski replied that, though Soviet confidence in the Polish leadership had been severely damaged, it had not been entirely destroyed: “If there had been none at all, they would have stopped talking to us.” Jaruzelski complained that, so far as he was concerned, they had indeed stopped talking. Previously, Kulikov had phoned him almost every day and had frequently come to see him. Recently he had broken all contact. Soviet representatives in Warsaw were instructed to tell Jaruzelski that their confidence in him had indeed been shaken and that it would disappear altogether unless he mended his ways.³³

Centre files record that in the weeks before the opening of the Ninth PUWP Congress on July 14, the Soviet embassy, the KGB mission and Soviet military representatives “worked among the delegates to identify Party members who followed the Marxist-Leninist line, to establish personal contact with them, and through them to influence the course of the Congress.”³⁴ The Suslov Commission, set up by the Politburo a year earlier to monitor the Polish crisis, gave instructions that the threat of military intervention by the other members of the Warsaw Pact must be “a constant factor in the minds of all Polish political forces.”³⁵ On the eve of the congress, the Centre instructed Pavlov, the head of the KGB mission in Warsaw, to have “a straightforward conversation with S. Kania and Jaruzelski on their weak Party and government work, and remind them of their earlier statements of readiness to cede their Party and government jobs if necessary in the interest of saving the Socialist system in Poland and the unity of Socialist cooperation in Europe.” The choice of Kania’s successor, in the Centre’s view, lay among three leading hardliners: Tadeusz Grabski, Stefan Olszowski and Andrzej Zabínski. All other representatives of “healthy forces” in the PUWP lacked the necessary authority to become first secretary. The KGB also drew up a list of those suitable for election to the Politburo and a hit list of moderates to be removed from the government and Party posts. Top of the hit list was the deputy prime minister, Mieczysław Rakowski, who had threatened to inform the leaders of the Italian and French Communist Parties about Soviet interference in the internal affairs of the PUWP. The Centre concluded that, in view of Jaruzelski’s continuing “authority in the country and especially in the army,” it would be unwise simply to dismiss him. Rather, it was hoped to kick him upstairs to the less powerful post of president and harness his personal prestige in support of a hardline government.³⁶

So far as Moscow was concerned, however, the Ninth PUWP Congress failed to go according to plan. Faced with a blatant Soviet attempt to unseat Kania, the congress rallied round him. But, taking seriously the threat of Soviet invasion, the congress also retained among the leadership some of the chief supporters of the Soviet campaign of intimidation. And though it gave loud applause to Rakowski’s speech, it dared not antagonize the Kremlin by electing him to the Politburo. The main consequence of the contradictory outcome of the congress was a near paralysis of government. Women and children marched through Polish cities banging empty pans to protest against food shortages. Encouraged by Solidarity, industrial workers elected factory councils which claimed the right to choose their managers.³⁷

The worsening crisis of central government seems to have convinced Jaruzelski that martial law would soon become inevitable. Detailed plans were agreed with Kulikov early in August. At a meeting with Jaruzelski and senior Polish generals on August 12, Kulikov demanded “firmness and still more firmness.”³⁸ On August 21 the new hardline interior minister, General Czeslaw Kiszczak, formerly head of military intelligence, visited Moscow to report personally to Andropov on secret preparations by the SB and police for the introduction of martial law. Hitherto, he acknowledged, “The Polish leadership has handled Solidarity as if it were an egg which it was afraid to break. We must put a stop to this.”³⁹

Kiszczak and the SB no longer saw Wałęsa as the main problem. During the previous six months Wałęsa’s leadership had become somewhat lackluster as he struggled to recover a clear sense of direction. Solidarity ultimately had to choose between two strategic options: either it had to become a truly revolutionary body capable of overthrowing the Communist one-party state, or it had to accommodate itself to the system and be content with winning a few concessions. Wałęsa found himself unable to opt clearly for either option. He had backed away from a general strike in March when most other leading figures in Solidarity believed the time had come for a showdown. Zbigniew Bujak, chairman of Solidarity in the Warsaw region, concluded that Wałęsa had made a fatal mistake:

Kiszczak told Andropov that, though Wałęsa might use aggressive language to appeal to Solidarity “extremists,” his thinking was relatively moderate. The main danger now came from Bujak, who was both “anti-Socialist and anti-Soviet:” “He is cleverer than Wałęsa and is closely linked with [the KOR leaders] Kurón and Michnik. The task of the [SB] agencies is to discredit him.”

“AT THE PRESENT time,” Kiszczak told Andropov, “the Roman Catholic Church does not represent a threat to the PUWP.” Milewski had devoted “immense efforts” to the agent penetration of the Church, and the SB was now well-informed about its mood and intentions: “Out of seventy bishops, good contacts are maintained with fifty. This makes it possible to bring influence to bear on the Catholic Church and to prevent undesirable moves.”⁴¹ The recent death of the 80-year-old Primate, Cardinal Wyszýnski, a friend of Solidarity and for over a generation a courageous defender of religious freedom, had come as an immense relief to the SB (and doubtless to the KGB):

Two problems, however, remained in Church-state relations. The first was the Pope, who—according to Kiszczak—was cleverly exploiting the situation in Poland to advance his anti-Communist policies in eastern Europe. The second problem was the moral authority of the Polish Church. The people looked on the Church, not the Party, as the “standard-bearer of morality.” “In the immediate future,” Kiszczak admitted, “the Party will not be able to change the attitude towards the Catholic Church.”

Andropov seems to have hectored Kiszczak rather less than most other Polish leaders he had met over the previous few years. But he ended their meeting in somber mood:

Solidarity’s first national congress (held in two sessions from September 5 to 10 and from September 26 to October 7) provided further evidence of “creeping counter-revolution.” Its appeal on September 8 “to the working people of eastern Europe… who have entered the difficult road to struggle for a free trade union movement” was denounced by the SB as “a brazen attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of Socialist countries.”⁴³

Pavlov now seemed satisfied that Jaruzelski was prepared for “decisive measures” to end “the threat from Solidarity.” On September 29 he reported to the Centre that he had “advised” Jaruzelski on the line to follow at the plenary meeting of the Central Committee on October 18.⁴⁴ The first priority was to get rid of Kania, who, Pavlov reported, continued to pursue “a policy of conciliation” towards Solidarity. Having failed to secure Kania’s dismissal at the July Party congress, Moscow was determined to succeed at the October Central Committee plenum. The Centre must have been particularly outraged by Pavlov’s account of a secret briefing on Kania’s policy given by his supporter, Deputy Prime Minister Kazimierz Barcikowski, on October 2, 1981. According to Barcikowski, Kania was “disenchanted with the Soviet model of Socialism”:

The imposition of the Soviet model of socialism had, Kania believed, “bureaucratized the PUWP” and distorted Leninist principles:

Even Dubček during the Prague Spring had never made such a devastating indictment of the Soviet system.

Pavlov’s detailed reports on Kania indicate either that his home had been bugged or that there was an informer in his immediate family. He informed the Centre that on October 5, “Kania came home in a very agitated state and told a narrow circle of his family that the Russian comrades are again plotting to remove him from the post of First Secretary.” Kania claimed not to understand why his Soviet “friends” did not tell him frankly that he must resign. If they did so, he would go “without causing a fuss.” According to the KGB, Kania’s wife was deeply disturbed by his state of mind and anxious for him to resign so that he could recover his health and cease to be “a persecuted politician.” But Pavlov did not believe that Kania really intended to go quietly. He reported on October 7 that Kania had instructed Kiszczak to take action against a number of Party members who, he believed (no doubt correctly), were plotting against him.⁴⁶ Kiszczak, however, sided with Jaruzelski and the plotters.

Kania’s fate was sealed at a stormy confrontation with Jaruzelski, Kiszczak, Milewski (now secretary of the PUWP central committee) and two other Polish generals. Jaruzelski told him that, unless he agreed to preparations for martial law, they would go ahead behind his back—and “decisive” (but unspecified) action would be taken against him personally.⁴⁷ On the morning of October 18, just before the opening of the plenary meeting of the central committee, Aristov informed Kania that it was the “unanimous view” in Moscow that he should be replaced as first secretary by Jaruzelski.⁴⁸ The central committee duly did Moscow’s bidding, and Kania gave way without a struggle. According to KGB reports, Kania said after his dismissal that he was still haunted by memories of the shooting of strikers in 1970. If he had remained first secretary, he would never have been able to give the order to open fire again.⁴⁹

Next day, October 19, Brezhnev telephoned Jaruzelski to congratulate him on his appointment as first secretary, while keeping his existing posts as prime minister and defense minister. “Hello, Wojciech,” Brezhnev began. “Hello, my dear, deeply esteemed Leonid Ilyich!” Jaruzelski replied. He maintained the same sycophantic tone throughout the conversation:

Jaruzelski added that, later in the day, he would be meeting Aristov to discuss the situation in detail and would “be asking for your suggestions on some questions which he, no doubt, will convey to you.” Lying effortlessly, Brezhnev told Jaruzelski that the CPSU Politburo had realized long ago that he was the right man for the job.⁵⁰ Predictably, he made no mention of the fact that in the course of the summer the KGB had recommended sacking Jaruzelski as well as Kania. In the end, however, the Politburo had reluctantly concluded that only Jaruzelski possessed the authority to declare martial law.⁵¹

Soviet doubts about Jaruzelski, however, continued. On November 4 Jaruzelski began talks with Wałęsa and Archbishop Glemp at which he proposed their participation in a Front of National Accord which, while it would have no decision-making powers, would keep open dialogue between the state, Church and unions.⁵² Though Pavlov and Aristov were in favor of tactics designed to damp down any suspicion by Wałęsa and Glemp that martial law was imminent, they feared that Jaruzelski would end by making real concessions. On November 13 they sent a joint telegram to the Politburo condemning Jaruzelski’s indecisiveness and his attempt to conciliate Wałęsa, and urging that he be pressed yet again to declare martial law without further delay.⁵³ On november 21 the Politburo approved the text of a personal message from Brezhnev to Jaruzelski, berating him for his inaction:

Jaruzelski seems finally to have given way to Soviet pressure at the beginning of December. He told a meeting of the PUWP Politburo on December 5 that, after thirty-six years of the “people’s power” in Poland, there sadly seemed no alternative to using “police methods” against the working class. The Politburo unanimously accepted the need to declare martial law.⁵⁵ The main details of its implementation were worked out under the supervision of Kiszczak,⁵⁶ who briefed Pavlov on December 7. One hundred and fifty-seven SB and other interior ministry personnel had been sent around the provinces in groups of up to five to ensure that preparations had been made to isolate and arrest Solidarity leaders and other “extremists.” Pavlov reported to the Centre that the SB had agents “at all levels of Solidarity,” and intended that, where possible, these agents should step into the shoes of the arrested activists. Their main task after the declaration of martial law would be to prevent workers from going on strike or taking to the streets.⁵⁷ Suspect members of the government and Party leadership were placed under close SB surveillance. Kania’s former supporter, Barcikowski, told his friends that the SB followed him wherever he went and recorded all his telephone calls.⁵⁸

On the night of December 8-9 Jaruzelski briefed Marshal Kulikov on the timetable for martial law. Approximately 80,000 personnel had been selected to arrest 6,000 Solidarity activists on the night of either December 11-12 or 12-13. Troops would begin moving from their barracks at 6 a.m. on the morning after the arrests. Though the plans appeared resolute, however, Jaruzelski did not. “During our discussions,” Kulikov reported, “W. Jaruzelski’s indecisiveness and wavering and his apprehension about the successful implementation of the plan to impose martial law were palpable.” The PUWP, Jaruzelski complained, had little authority left. Six to seven hundred thousand of its members were associated with Solidarity, and it was compromised by numerous instances of theft, bribery and other abuses of the people’s trust. For martial law to succeed, it might be necessary for him to appeal for assistance from Warsaw Pact forces—though he asked for East German troops not to be used. “I can assure you that you have no need for concern on that score,” Kulikov told him. “The question of assisting you in the event that your own resources become exhausted is being addressed at General Staff level.”⁵⁹

On December 9 Milewski brought Pavlov further evidence of Jaruzelski’s anxious state of mind. Jaruzelski had still not set a date for the introduction of martial law. If the Church opposed martial law, Jaruzelski had told him, Glemp would turn into “a second Khomeini.”⁶⁰ Next day the CPSU Politburo met in emergency session to discuss the Polish crisis. It began by hearing a report from Nikolai Baibakov of Gosplan, just returned from a visit to Warsaw to discuss Poland’s appeal for economic assistance. Jaruzelski, Baibakov reported, had become an “extremely neurotic” wreck, terrified that Glemp would declare a holy war. Though all the Politburo members who spoke after Baibakov made scathing criticisms of Jaruzelski, none suggested trying to replace him. It was plainly too late for that. There was general agreement, too, that Soviet forces must not intervene. Andropov declared bluntly:

Jaruzelski complained to Milewski and others that, by refusing to allow Warsaw Pact military intervention if Polish security forces proved unable to cope, the Soviet Politburo had let him down:

Jaruzelski was gloomy about the prospects for martial law without Soviet military support. “We’re about to go on the offensive,” he told Milewski, “but I’m afraid that later on we’ll be branded as conspirators and hanged.” Milewski rang Andropov to report what Jaruzelski had said.⁶²

Until the very last moment Moscow continued to fear that Jaruzelski’s nerve would crack. On December 11 Aristov, Kulikov and Pavlov jointly reported to the Politburo that all the preparations for “operation X” (the enforcement of martial law) had been completed. But:

On Saturday December 12 Jaruzelski telephoned Brezhnev and Suslov, asked for and received their approval for operation X to begin that evening.⁶⁴ The KGB mission in Warsaw, however, was still not convinced that Jaruzelski would go ahead. He continued to agonize over whether the loss of life which might be necessary to prevent Solidarity turning Poland into “a bourgeois state” could possibly be justified. And if martial law failed, he was convinced that all those responsible for declaring it would be “physically eliminated.” “If we fail,” said Jaruzelski, “there will be nothing left for me to do but to put a bullet in my head.”⁶⁵ Pavlov also reported that if Jaruzelski’s nerve failed, Olszowski was prepared to stage a coup—provided he had the backing of Moscow. Olszowski’s plan of action included the immediate arrest of Solidarity leaders; the prohibition of strikes and protests; the confiscation of food supplies in the countryside; close “economic cooperation” with the Soviet Union; the enforcement of martial law throughout the country; and the sealing of Polish borders.⁶⁶

To Pavlov’s relief, Kiszczak, who was in charge of implementing operation X, appeared much more resolute than Jaruzelski. In the course of Saturday December 12 he provided the KGB with the detailed timetable of the operation. At 11:30 p.m., telephone communications throughout the country would be shut down; all embassies would lose their landline connections; communications abroad would cease; and the borders would be closed. Foreign reporters without permanent accreditation would be expelled. The arrests would begin at midnight. Four thousand two hundred would be detained overnight and another 4,500 placed in “protective custody” on Sunday December 13. Wałęsa would be asked to enter talks with the government and arrested if he refused. In a broadcast at 6 a.m. Jaruzelski would declare martial law and announce the creation of a “Military Council for National Salvation.” In order to keep people at home and off the streets on Sunday, church services would—unusually—be televised. If necessary, Monday December 14 would be declared a public holiday. The security forces had orders to open fire if they encountered serious resistance. But, Kiszczak warned, there was no guarantee of success:

In the event, the enforcement of martial law went more smoothly than Jaruzelski had dared to hope. Kryuchkov, who had arrived from Moscow to observe operation X at first hand, must also have been pleasantly surprised. Solidarity was caught off-guard, with most of its leading activists asleep in bed when the security forces arrived to arrest them. Zbigniew Bujak, the most senior Solidarity leader to escape arrest and go underground, said later, “The authorities were clearly planning a sizeable operation against the union. But we never thought it would be as serious as this.” There had been so much talk about the growing powerlessness of the Polish government that Solidarity had begun to believe its own rhetoric. Poles awoke on Sunday morning to find an army checkpoint at every crossroads and declarations of martial law posted to every street corner. Jaruzelski’s 6 a.m. broadcast was repeated throughout the day, interspersed with Chopin polonaises and patriotic music. Television viewers saw Jaruzelski, dressed in army uniform, sitting at a desk in front of a large Polish flag. “Citizens and lady citizens of the Polish People’s Republic!” he began. “I speak to you as a soldier and head of government! Our motherland is on the verge of an abyss!”⁶⁸ Many interpreted his speech as a warning that only martial law could save Poland from a Soviet invasion.

In the early hours of the morning Wałęsa had been taken by military escort, accompanied by the minister of labor, Stanisław Ciosek, to a villa on the outskirts of Warsaw. Wałęsa later recalled that he was addressed as “Mr. Chairman,” there were apologies for the inconvenience to which he was being put and the razor was removed from the villa’s marble bathroom in case he was tempted to commit suicide.⁶⁹ Later in the day Ciosek reported to the PUWP Politburo that Wałęsa was in a state of shock, had said that his role as chairman of Solidarity was at an end and that the union would have to be reorganized. He was also alleged to be willing to cooperate with the government. Kiszczak passed on the good news to the KGB mission.⁷⁰ Milewski exultantly told Pavlov and Kryuchkov, “Wałęsa cannot hide his terror!”⁷¹ In reality, though stunned by the suddenness of the declaration of martial law, Wałęsa is unlikely to have panicked. He had been arrested over a dozen times before and his wife Danuta was accustomed to the routine of packing a holdall for him to take to prison.⁷²

While Wałęsa was being installed in the government villa, Glemp was being visited by Kazimierz Barcikowski, secretary of the Polish Central Committee and president of the Joint Commission for the State and the Episcopate, and Jerzy Kuberski, Minister of Religious Affairs, to be informed of the impending declaration of martial law. Since no telephones were operating, they had arrived unannounced at 3 a.m. at the archbishop’s palace, where a patrolman rang the doorbell repeatedly until at last a light went on inside, Glemp was woken and a nun came to let them in. “The whole thing,” said Barcikowski, “was a bit theatrical.”⁷³ Contrary to Jaruzelski’s alarmist forecasts, Glemp showed no inclination to declare a holy war and no desire to become “a Polish Khomeini.” Milewski informed Kryuchkov and Pavlov that Glemp had reacted calmly, with “a certain degree of understanding.” Though the declaration of martial law did not surprise him, he had not expected it to occur until after the Christmas holidays.⁷⁴

The immediate concern of the authorities had been the homily that Glemp was due to give on Sunday afternoon at the Jesuit church of Mary Mother of God in Warsaw’s Old City.⁷⁵ They need not have worried. The keynote of Glemp’s sermon was caution. “Opposition to the decisions of the authorities under martial law,” he warned, “could cause violent reprisals, including bloodshed, because the authorities have the armed forces at their disposal… There is nothing of greater value than human life.” “The Primate’s words,” writes historian Timothy Garton Ash, “were bitterly resented by many Christian Poles who were, at that moment, preparing to risk their own lives for what they considered greater values.” Jaruzelski, by contrast, felt an enormous sense of relief. Glemp’s homily was broadcast repeatedly on television, printed in the Party newspaper and put up on the walls of army barracks.⁷⁶

On the first day of martial law, Brezhnev rang Jaruzelski to congratulate him on the beginning of operation X.⁷⁷ Kryuchkov, Pavlov and Kulikov jointly telegraphed from Warsaw that the first stages of the operation had been successfully completed. “But the most dangerous days,” they believed, “will be Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the coming week [December 14-16] when Solidarity activists who are still at large will try to spread disorder among workers and students.”⁷⁸ “During the next two weeks,” Jaruzelski told Kryuchkov, “a great deal will depend on the market situation.” The best antidote to Solidarity would be well-stocked shelves in Polish shops for Christmas. He appealed to Moscow to send shoes, children’s toys and other consumer goods as quickly as possible: “Any material aid now will cost much less than the expenditure required by the Polish situation if the unthinkable began to happen here.”⁷⁹

The worst violence after the declaration of martial law took place at a coal mine near Katowice, where more than 2,000 miners began a sit-in. On Tuesday December 15 helicopters dropped tear gas into the mines, while ZOMO paramilitary police from the ministry of the interior, supported by forty tanks, began firing rubber bullets at the miners. The security forces then attacked the doctors and ambulance drivers who came to tend the wounded.⁸⁰ Seven miners were killed and thirty-nine injured; forty-one ZOMO policemen were also injured, though none were killed. Overall, however, casualties were much lower than the SB and KGB had expected. The mere threat of Soviet intervention had proved as effective in crushing opposition as the actual Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia thirteen years earlier. By the year’s end organized opposition to martial law had virtually disappeared. Graffiti on the walls of Polish cities proclaimed optimistically, “Winter Is Yours. Spring Will be Ours!” But Spring did not truly return until 1989 with the formation of a Solidarity-led government and the disintegration of the Communist one-party state.

Jaruzelski gave the main credit for the success of operation X to the SB, ZOMO and other interior ministry personnel. At a meeting in the ministry on December 31 he praised the SB’s dedication to Socialism and the high moral and political qualities of its operational officers. “You were the defenders of Socialism in Poland,” Jaruzelski told them. “The Polish army contributed to the success, but the main work was done by the Interior Ministry.” The SB’s principal role now was deep penetration of the opposition movement to provide the intelligence necessary “to neutralize the adversary by the swiftest possible means.” In answer to a question about the “mildness” of the sentences passed on the strike organizers at Katowice and elsewhere, Jaruzelski said that, though he was personally in favor of more severe punishment, public opinion had to be taken into account: “If we were to impose excessively severe sentences, say ten to twelve years’ imprisonment, people would say that we were taking our revenge on Solidarity. So we have to be content with moderate sentences.” As usual, an account of the meeting was forwarded to the Centre by the KGB mission in Warsaw.⁸¹

According to self-congratulatory SB statistics supplied to the KGB, during the year after the declaration of martial law, 701 underground opposition groups were identified, 430 of them associated with the now-illegal Solidarity; 10,131 individuals were interned; over 400 demonstrations dispersed; 370 illegal printing presses and 1,200 items of printing equipment confiscated; the distribution of over 1.2 million leaflets prevented; and 12 underground Solidarity radio stations closed down. A total of 250,000 members of the security forces were allegedly deployed on these operations, among them 90,000 members of police reserve units, over 30,000 soldiers and 10,000 members of the volunteer police reserve.⁸² The figures for the deployment of security forces, however, are suspiciously high and may well have been substantially inflated in order to impress Moscow. Jaruzelski commended all those who had taken part in the enforcement of martial law as intrepid defenders of Polish Socialism.

The SB’s biggest problem was Wałęsa, whose worldwide celebrity made it impossible either to subject him to a show trial or to treat him with the casual brutality meted out to less well-known Solidarity activists. (Even Wałęsa’s wife Danuta and their small daughters were subjected to humiliating strip searches.) As the initial shock of internment wore off, however, Wałęsa’s old combative spirit returned and he refused to negotiate with the authorities. The SB’s first tactic was to try to persuade Wałęsa to follow the more accommodating policy of Cardinal Glemp by giving the Primate’s spokesman, Father Alojsy Orszulik, regular access to him.⁸³ Orszulik was initially accompanied by an interior ministry official later identified as Colonel Adam Pietruszka, deputy head of the SB church department, who three years later was to be implicated in the murder of the Solidarity priest Father Jerzy Popiełuszko. Wałęsa did not take to Orszulik. When urged to give up his resistance to negotiating with the Military Council for National Salvation, Wałęsa shouted, “They’ll come to me on their knees!” Polish Catholics did not normally shout at their priests and Orszulik seems to have been shocked. According to Wałęsa, he “disapproved of my lack of Christian humility, and it too us some time to get used to each other.”⁸⁴

Wałęsa’s clashes with Orszulik had the advantage, so far as the SB was concerned, of alienating Glemp. In January 1982 Kiszczak reported to the KGB, with evident satisfaction and possibly some exaggeration, that Glemp was “completely disenchanted with Wałęsa,” and believed that the leaders of Solidarity “have learned nothing from events and refuse to budge from their previous positions.”⁸⁵ The SB also informed the KGB that Orszulik’s visits eventually had a “favorable effect” on Wałęsa.⁸⁶ As Wałęsa later acknowledged, he dropped one by one all his conditions for negotiating with the authorities, “finally aligning himself with the church’s position.”⁸⁷

The SB also tried less subtle methods of influencing and discrediting Wałęsa. While working as a shipyard electrician in the early 1970s, Wałęsa had been in contact with the SB. Among the SB files discovered in the early 1990s after the collapse of the Communist regime was one codenamed BOLEK, whose full contents have yet to be revealed and whose authenticity remains to be established, but which is known to contain alleged details of Wałęsa’s role as an SB informer. According to some reports, after seeing a copy of the file in 1992, Wałęsa, by then President of the Polish Republic, began to draft a public statement in which he acknowledged that he had put his signature to “three or four” SB interrogation protocols, but asked for understanding of the difficult position of those pressured by the SB to act as informers in the 1970s. In the end, it is claimed, Wałęsa had second thoughts and scrapped the statement.⁸⁸

The KGB files noted by Mitrokhin do not disclose the exact extent of Wałęsa’s cooperation with the SB in the 1970s. But they do reveal that the SB sought to intimidate Wałęsa after his internment by “reminding him that they had paid him money and received information from him.” If Wałęsa did indeed act at one stage of his career as a paid informant of the SB, it is easy to imagine the pressure exerted on him to do so, as on the millions of other informers to Soviet Bloc security services. Kiszczak told the KGB that Wałęsa had been confronted by one of his alleged former SB case officers and a conversation between them tape-recorded.⁸⁹

Since the SB did not wish to advertise its vast network of willing and unwilling informers, it made only limited use of Wałęsa’s past contact with it in active measures intended to discredit him. Instead, it resorted to a series of fabrications designed to portray Wałęsa as a greedy, foul-mouthed embezzler.⁹⁰ To add authentic detail to its forgeries, it stole a tape-recording made by his brother Stanisław during Wałęsa’s birthday celebrations on September 29.⁹¹ On November 11, the anniversary of Polish independence, Wałęsa was freed from internment. Moscow was outraged that the news was broadcast in Poland at the same time as the announcement of Brezhnev’s death the previous day.⁹² Kiszczak sought to reassure Pavlov that, despite Wałęsa’s release, active measures were still in hand to compromise Wałęsa.⁹³ Jaruzelski told Aristov that the material being assembled to discredit Wałęsa included pornographic photographs (presumably of Wałęsa with a mistress) and would expose him as “a scheming, grubby individual with gigantic ambitions.” Wałęsa, Jaruzelski claimed, had already lost half the popular authority he had possessed before his internment. Though he remained a potential threat, he no longer had his Solidarity base and would be unable to rebuild his previous alliance with the church.⁹⁴

Moscow was far from reassured. Since the unexpectedly successful introduction of martial law, many of its previous doubts about Jaruzelski had resurfaced. A KGB agent in Jaruzelski’s entourage described him as “the offspring of rich Polish landowners” with little sympathy for working people: “His tendency is pro-Western and he surrounds himself with generals who are descendants of Polish landowners and are anti-Soviet in inclination.” The agent (presumably something of an anti-Semite) also reported that Jaruzelski was in contact with “a representative of Polish Zionism”: “One should examine whether he himself is not a Zionist.” By contrast, Jaruzelski “virtually ignored” the advice of the Soviet ambassador.⁹⁵

The reports of both the KGB mission and the Soviet embassy during 1982 repeatedly condemned Jaruzelski’s tolerance of men with revisionist tendencies in the Polish leadership, chief among them Mieczysław Rakowski, whose allegedly defeatist attitude to anti-Socialist forces aroused deep suspicion in Moscow. Rakowski was reported to have told the Council of Ministers in June, “The PUWP is sick. Martial law made it possible to overcome the peak of the opposition, but there is no noticeable change for the better in the attitude of broad layers of the population.” The strength of the Catholic Church meant that a policy of confrontation would be mere “adventurism.”⁹⁶ A report by Rakowski on June 22 concluded that there were “100,000 hostile teachers” in Polish schools, but that it was impossible to sack them all.⁹⁷ Jaruzelski was alleged to have told Milewski, “I know that Rakowski is a swine, but I still need him.” In a telegram to Brezhnev on June 29, however, Aristov argued that keeping Rakowski and other like-minded individuals in the Polish leadership was “not simply a tactical move, but a strategic line for Jaruzelski, who shares their position on a number of problems”: “It is therefore very important at the present stage to continue to exert influence on Comrade W. Jaruzelski.”⁹⁸

Pavlov and Aristov continued to press for more arrests and trials of counter-revolutionaries. At a meeting with Kiszczak on July 7, Pavlov denounced the policy of the interior ministry and the SB as “weak and indecisive.” Kiszczak replied that there were 40,000 Solidarity activists, and it was impossible to prosecute them all.⁹⁹ Four days later Aristov brought Jaruzelski a personal message from Brezhnev and repeated the Soviet demand for more prosecutions. Jaruzelski argued that to try Wałęsa would be impossible because of the international as well as Polish outcry it would produce, and that a trial of leading opposition figures which excluded Wałęsa would lack credibility.¹⁰⁰ The Polish decision in December to suspend (though not yet formally end) martial law caused predictable dismay in Moscow. When pressed by Aristov to keep it in force, however, Jaruzelski delivered something of a lecture, which was duly reported to Moscow:

Jaruzelski’s attitude to Moscow had become visibly less deferential since operation X a year earlier. The KGB mission reported that he had declared on one occasion, “The Soviet comrades are mistaken if they think that the Polish section of the CPSU Central Committee will make Polish policy as in the days of Gierek. This will not happen. [Those] days are over.”¹⁰² Jaruzelski was, initially, favorably impressed by the signs of a new, less hectoring style in the Soviet leadership after Brezhnev’s death. He told Kiszczak after a meeting in Moscow with Andropov, Brezhnev’s successor, in December 1982:

Andropov did, however, express concern about the continued presence of Rakowski and his fellow moderate, Barcikowski, in the Polish leadership. Jaruzelski asked Andropov to trust his judgment on how long to keep them in office. The fact that Andropov appeared so well informed about the Polish situation, Jaruzelski believed, was due chiefly to reports from the KGB mission in Warsaw.¹⁰³

The KGB mission remained deeply suspicious of revisionist tendencies in the Polish leadership. It telegraphed the Centre at the end of 1982:

KGB distrust of Jaruzelski continued to grow during 1983. The Warsaw mission reported that he had given a dangerously defeatist address to the PUWP central committee on January 12:

Even Lenin, at various moments of his career, had engaged in tactical retreats. Poland, Jaruzelski claimed, must do the same.¹⁰⁵ Pavlov believed that Jaruzelski intended to retreat much too far. The danger that he would do so was greatly increased by the Polish regime’s capitulation to Church pressure for a second visit by John Paul II in June. According to Pavlov:

Among other worrying signs of Jaruzelski’s susceptibility to right-wing pressure was his willingness to allow family farms and the private ownership of land to be enshrined in the Polish constitution.¹⁰⁷ The Soviet embassy condemned a report presented to the PUWP Politburo on February 1 on “The Causes and Consequences of Social Crises in the History of the Polish People’s Republic” as the product of “bourgeois methodology”:

After extensive lobbying by the Soviet embassy, which had received an advance copy, the report was rejected and it was agreed that a revised version should be prepared, emphasizing Poland’s supposed achievements in Socialist construction under the leadership of the PUWP.¹⁰⁸ Aristov continued, however, to complain that “ideological work remains a most neglected sector of the PUWP’s activity,” and that the PUWP leadership was failing to master “the revisionist right-wing opportunist bias in the Party.” The press was deeply tainted by revisionism and Eurocommunism, while Polish translations of Soviet textbooks were openly disparaged:

As the time for John Paul II’s return to Poland approached, the official mood in both Warsaw and Moscow became increasingly nervous. On April 5, 1983 Pavlov forwarded to Viktor Chebrikov, the KGB chairman, a request from Kiszczak for “material and technical assistance in connection with the Pope’s visit”: 150 rifles of the kind used for firing rubber bullets, 20 armed personnel carriers, 300 cars for transporting plain clothes personnel and surveillance equipment, 200 army tents and various medical supplies.¹¹⁰ According to Pavlov, Kiszczak was close to panic, declaring that he could no longer “rely on anyone.” SB sources in the Vatican reported that, though statements drafted for John Paul II were usually moderate, he tended to depart from prepared texts, improvise and get carried away. Kiszczak feared that he would do the same in Poland.

The SB’s only ground for optimism was the decline in the Pope’s health since the assassination attempt in the previous year. “At the present time,” said Kiszczak, “we can only dream of the possibility that God will recall him to his bosom as soon as possible.” Kiszczak seized eagerly on any evidence which suggested that the Pope’s days were numbered. According to one improbable SB report, which he passed on to the KGB, John Paul II was suffering from leukemia but used cosmetics to conceal his condition.¹¹¹ Two years earlier the KGB had received an equally inaccurate report from the Hungarian AVH which claimed that the Pope was suffering from cancer of the spinal column.¹¹² About a fortnight after Kiszczak’s appeal for help from the KGB, Aristov reported further evidence that the Polish authorities were wilting under papal pressure. Having at first refused to allow large open-air masses at Kraków and Katowice, they had given way and agreed to both—thus running the unacceptable risk “of inflaming religious fanaticism among the working class.”¹¹³

On the eve of the Pope’s arrival on June 16, 1983, the underground Warsaw weekly Tygodnik Mazowsze expressed the hope that his visit would “enable people to break through the barrier of despair, just as his 1979 visit broke through the barrier of fear.” In his first words after his emotional homecoming at Warsaw airport, John Paul II reached out to those imprisoned and persecuted by the regime:

At every stage during the next nine days, as during John Paul II’s first visit four years earlier, the gulf between his immense moral authority and the discredited one-party state was plain for all to see. Even Jaruzelski sensed it during his first meeting with the Pope in the ornate surroundings of Belweder presidential palace. Though a nonbeliever, Jaruzelski later admitted that, “My legs were trembling and my knees were knocking together… The Pope, this figure in white, it all affected me emotionally. Beyond all reason…”¹¹⁵

For millions of Poles, the visit was equally unforgettable. Many walked across Poland to see John Paul II, often sleeping by the roadside during their journeys. Wherever the Pope stopped, there were rarely less than half a million people waiting for him.¹¹⁶ “We have to deal with the most famous Pole in the world,” grumbled Kiszczak, “and, unfortunately, we have to do it here in Poland!”¹¹⁷ Though the Pope could not meet the leaders of the illegal Solidarity underground during his visit, he had sent an emissary, Father Adam Boniecki, to see them before he arrived and convey his gratitude and admiration to them.¹¹⁸ At first the authorities refused to allow Wałęsa to meet the Pope; then, on the final day of his visit, they gave way and Wałęsa was flown to a meeting in the Tatra mountains. An underground cartoon of the time showed SB agents disguised as sheep and goats clutching boom microphones as they tried to listen in to the conversation.¹¹⁹

The formal ending of martial law a month after the Pope’s visit did little to mend the regime’s tattered reputation. Nor did Rakowski’s visit to address Gdańsk shipyard workers on the third anniversary of the August 1980 accords. Having arrived to proclaim Solidarity dead and Wałęsa a has-been, he found himself upstaged by Solidarity hecklers. Wałęsa, in an admittedly stumbling statement, had the workers on his side when he accused Rakowski and his colleagues of using the 1980 strikes to lever Gierek out of power and advance their own careers. It was probably this débácle at Gdańsk which finally persuaded the regime to broadcast the libelous video of Wałęsa concocted by the SB at the end of the previous year. Film footage taken by a hidden SB camera of Wałęsa eating a birthday meal with his brother Stanisław was used as the basis of a bogus “documentary” entitled Money, which purported to expose Wałęsa’s greed and corruption. The dialogue was constructed by splicing together some of Wałęsa’s public statements, misleading extracts from the stolen tape-recording of his birthday celebrations and words spoken by a Warsaw actor imitating Wałęsa’s voice.¹²⁰

The Polish files seen by Mitrokhin end just too early to clarify who exactly was involved in the decision to go ahead with an active measure begun over a year earlier. Kiszczak later tried to put the blame on his SB subordinate, Adam Pietruszka, but he must certainly have been among those who authorized the use of the video. The film dialogue included a fabricated exchange about Wałęsa’s supposed fortune in the West:

Part of the purpose of the SB active measure was to sabotage Wałęsa’s prospect of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The actor impersonating Wałęsa explains that the prize is worth a lot of money, then complains, “I’d get it if it weren’t for the Church! But the Church is starting to interfere.” “Yeah,” says his brother, “because they’ve put up the Pope again.”¹²¹

On October 5, however, came the news that Wałęsa had indeed been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. To counter the SB’s attempt to portray him as a corrupt fortunehunter, Wałęsa announced that he was giving his prize money to a Church scheme to help private farmers modernize and mechanize the countryside.¹²² Though now terminally ill, Andropov could barely contain his fury. From his sickbed he despatched a furious letter to Jaruzelski:

Jaruzelski appeared unmoved. A month later he wrote a remarkable letter to John Paul II saying that he still often thought of their conversations during his visit to Poland because, “regardless of understandable differences in assessment, they were full of heartfelt concern for the fate of our motherland and the well-being of man.”¹²³

In April 1984, two months after Andropov’s death, Jaruzelski was summoned to explain himself at another secret meeting in a railway coach at the border city of Brest-Litovsk, this time with foreign minister Gromyko and defense minister Ustinov. Gromyko gave a grim account of the meeting to the Politburo on April 26:

Andropov’s successor, Konstantin Chernenko, declared that the Church was leading a counter-revolutionary offensive in Poland, “inspiring and uniting the enemies of Communism and those dissatisfied by the present system.” The comments of Mikhail Gorbachev, who was to succeed Chernenko eleven months later, were curiously prophetic. “It seems to me,” he said, “that we don’t yet understand the true intentions of Jaruzelski. Perhaps he wishes to have a pluralistic system of government in Poland.”¹²⁴

As in Czechoslovakia during and after the Prague Spring, every stage of the Polish crisis was monitored by illegals on PROGRESS operations. In Poland, as in Czechoslovakia, there are indications that at least a few of the illegals became sympathetic to the reformers. The evidence is clearest in the case of Valentin Viktorovich Barannik (codenamed ORLOV) and his wife, Svetlana Mikhaylovna (codenamed ORLOVA), who, from 1978 onwards, were sent on a series of assignments in Poland using false West German passports. In the summer of 1982, ORLOV despatched to the center a devastating critique of the nature of the Polish one-party state:

The files noted by Mitrokhin do not record the Centre’s doubtless outraged response. There is little doubt, however, that there were other illegals who agreed privately with what ORLOV dared to say openly.

AS EARLY AS 1980 the Soviet Politburo had been forced into the reluctant recognition that the only effective defense against a Polish counter-revolution was the fear of Soviet military intervention. That fear, however, was a dwindling asset based on memories of Budapest in 1956, Prague in 1968 and Kabul in 1979. Once the Politburo secretly turned against the idea of invading Warsaw in 1980, its policy was based on a bluff which could not be sustained indefinitely.

Gorbachev’s rise to power in 1985 hastened the moment when the bluff would be called. In some of his first meetings as general secretary with east European leaders, he warned that they could no longer expect the Red Army to come to their rescue if they fell out with their fellow citizens. Gorbachev conveyed the same message more formally at a meeting of Comecon leaders in Moscow in November 1986.¹²⁶ Though the east European regimes were, predictably, unwilling to share the secret with their subjects, it was only a matter of time before they discovered it. It did not occur to Gorbachev, however, that he might be opening the way to the end of the Communist era in eastern Europe. He expected the hardliners, when they could hold out no longer, to be succeeded by a generation of little Gorbachevs anxious to emulate the reforms being introduced in Moscow. Few peacetime miscalculations have had such momentous consequences. Once a new crisis arose within the Soviet Bloc and it became clear that the Red Army would stay in its barracks, the “Socialist Commonwealth” was doomed.

The end game began in Poland. By the beginning of 1989, with the economy in dire straits and the return of labor unrest, the Polish Politburo was discussing new austerity measures which threatened to produce an explosion of discontent reminiscent of that in 1980. Jaruzelski refused to consider a return to martial law, convinced that it would lead to much greater loss of life than in 1981. The only option, he believed, was to hold discussions with the still-illegal Solidarity in return for its help in preserving the peace. Though Jaruzelski had the support of Czesław Kiszczak, interior minister in charge of the SB and one of the leading hardliners of 1981, he was able to push his proposal through the Politburo only by threatening to resign. Two months of tortuous negotiations led to Solidarity’s relegalization and to general elections in June under rules which, though calculated to produce a large Communist majority, would give Solidarity a place in parliament. To the stupefaction of both itself and its opponents, however, Solidarity won a sweeping victory. A few months earlier the government spokesman, Jerzy Urban, had dismissed Solidarity as a “non-existent organization” and Wałęsa as a “private citizen” of no political significance. After the Communist defeat he told the outgoing government, “This is not just a lost election, gentlemen. It’s the end of an age.”¹²⁷

The end came more quickly than anyone thought possible. Any remaining doubts about Moscow’s willingness to tolerate the removal of the Communist old guard disappeared during Gorbachev’s visit to East Berlin in September to attend the fortieth birthday celebrations of the now-doomed “German Democratic Republic.” He told Honecker in a phrase quickly made public by the Soviet delegation, “In politics life punishes severely those who fall behind.” Honecker himself fell from power six weeks later. Even when it became clear that the whole Communist order, and not merely the old guard, was at risk in eastern Europe, Gorbachev did not draw back. He sent his close adviser Aleksandr Yakovlev to the capitals of the disintegrating Socialist Commonwealth “to make the point over and over again: We are not going to interfere.” Yakovlev said later:

After delirious East German crowds surged through the Berlin Wall on November 9 it took only the last seven weeks of the year for the remaining one-party states to topple like a house of cards.

The Centre accepted the collapse of the Soviet Bloc with far less equanimity than Gorbachev. Though the KGB devised active measures in a desperate attempt to stave off the downfall of the Communist regimes, it was refused permission to implement them. According to the head of the FCD, Leonid Shebarshin, the leaders of eastern Europe were told to fend for themselves. “But,” he complains, “they were educated only to be friends of the Soviet Union; they were never prepared to stand on their own feet. They were just thrown to the wolves.”¹²⁹