Michael Dobbs - Down with Big Brother

There was no way a country burdened by such regulations could compete in the modern world. The restrictions were relaxed gradually, but Jaruzelski found that he had to rely on the support of Communist Party reactionaries to stay in power. That meant abandoning all hope of economic reform and condemning Poland to another decade of stagnation.

That was not all. For the Communist Party to be rescued by its own army was a humiliating admission of failure. During the period immediately after World War II, Polish Communists had felt a kind of revolutionary élan. Their success in rebuilding a war-ravaged country and incorporating the “western territories” acquired from Germany had won them popular support. By December 1981 it was clear that communism could maintain itself in Poland only with the aid of machine guns and internment camps. In order to save the system, Jaruzelski had to wage war against the working class. He replaced trade union leaders with military commissars and ordered tanks to smash their way into factories.

Paradoxically martial law may have been a blessing in disguise for Solidarity. After sixteen months of bruising struggles with the government, the movement was displaying the symptoms of a split personality. Some Solidarity leaders wanted the union to champion the cause of national independence; others wanted to put the emphasis on social matters. Some Solidarity activists saw themselves as spokesmen for workers in the huge industrial plants that were threatened by the free market; others regarded economic reform as a first step toward the junking of communism. Had history been allowed to take its normal course, these divisions would have led to an open split. The military crackdown had the effect of uniting the warring factions and preserving the Solidarity myth intact.

Packed off to internment camps by Jaruzelski, Solidarity leaders regarded themselves as the modern-day equivalents of the Polish officers murdered by the Soviets at Katyn in World War II or the antitsarist insurrectionaries of 1830 and 1863. Like their forefathers, they felt they were suffering for a just cause, Poland’s national independence. They were determined to live up to Piłsudski’s motto: “To be conquered and not to surrender—that is victory.” The battery of Polish national feeling, which had run down in the sixties and seventies, was once again fully charged.

In the end martial law was a Pyrrhic victory for Jaruzelski. Even in the darkest days of December 1981, when the nation was completely demoralized, it was clear that the wheel of Polish history would turn again. The people had been conquered, but they had not surrendered. There were limits to the restoration of the old order. Poles had changed as a result of the Solidarity experience, and Communist ideology had lost its power to motivate. The system of central planning had proved hopelessly inefficient and would have to be dismantled if Poland were to have any chance of escaping from the seemingly never-ending cycle of economic crises and political explosions. Jaruzelski and his advisers understood the need for sweeping changes, but were afraid to relax political controls because it would undermine the very basis of Communist Party power. The dilemma was irresolvable.

The crackdown in Poland was also a Pyrrhic victory for the Soviets. Once again, as in 1956 and 1968, they managed to stuff the genie of freedom back into the bottle. Eastern Europe had been made safe for “socialist democracy.” Soviet tanks would continue to have the run of the vast strategic plain between Russia and Germany. On the other hand, Soviet leaders now bore the burden of helping Poland survive an economic blockade imposed by Western countries. They could not afford to be saddled with another international basket case, at a time of growing economic problems at home. Brezhnev complained to his Politburo colleagues that “we are stretched to the limit in our capacity to help the Poles, and they are making still more requests.” He suggested that economic assistance be confined to prestige projects, “which should not impose great strains on our economy.” 171

Soviet economic planners had great difficulty persuading Brezhnev to make hard economic choices. Surrounded by sycophants and completely dependent on his doctors and bodyguards, the general secretary had lost touch with political reality. His political program consisted of trying to please everybody and accepting artificial tributes as his rightful due. Trapped in grandiose illusions, he imagined himself both infallible and irreplaceable. 172

But he too was mortal.

ON NOVEMBER 7 LEONID BREZHNEV presided over the annual Revolution Day parade in Red Square, an obligatory annual ritual for Soviet leaders. He stood for several hours on top of the Lenin Mausoleum in bitterly cold weather, waving feebly as T-72 battle tanks and nuclear missiles trundled across the ancient cobblestones. Immediately after the parade he was driven to his hunting lodge at Zavidovo for the holiday. On November 9 he returned to his dacha at Zareche. His personal barber got blind drunk and was unable to give him his regular afternoon shave, but Brezhnev was too sick to care very much.

“What a useless fellow,” he murmured indulgently. “He’s smashed again.” 173

As the general secretary fell into his dotage, he had become increasingly estranged from his unruly family and dependent on the KGB guards who looked after his every physical need. They were like wet nurses to him. They helped the seventy-five-year-old leader out of bed in the morning, changed his clothes, fed him his meals, played dominoes with him, put up with his moods, and worried about his health. It was like dealing with a small child.

On the evening of November 9 Brezhnev retired to bed early. He usually stayed up to watch the 9:00 p.m. television news program Vremya , but he was tired by the hundred-mile drive from Zavidovo. He complained that his throat was hurting him. The following morning his bodyguards waited for his wife, Viktoria Petrovna, to emerge from his bedroom before going in to wake him up. It was a few minutes before nine o’clock. Brezhnev was lying on his side, apparently asleep.

“Leonid Ilyich, it’s time to get up,” said Vladimir Medvedev, the head of the night shift, as he gently shook the gensek .

There was no reaction. Medvedev began shaking Brezhnev more vigorously, but his eyes did not open. His body seemed cold. The bodyguards did what they were trained to do in such a situation: They pumped the old man’s heart and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. They also called the chief Kremlin doctor, Yevgeny Chazov, who arrived on the scene twelve minutes later. Soon afterward an emergency medical team rushed into the room and started full-scale resuscitation procedures. It was clear to Chazov that all this frenetic activity was just for show. Brezhnev had been dead for several hours. 174

The first Politburo member on the scene was the former KGB chief Yuri Andropov, the heir apparent. He gave an involuntary gasp as he looked at the lifeless corpse of the man who had led the Soviet Union for the past eighteen years. He stared intently at the dead leader’s puffed-up face, which had turned a pale blue. Suddenly the reverie was over. Andropov said his good-byes and left.

THE SOVIET PEOPLE HEARD the news twenty-six hours later. The man chosen to make the death announcement on behalf of the grieving Politburo was Igor Kirillov, senior news reader for central television, who had served as the voice and face of Big Brother for almost two decades. A master of intonation and inflection, Kirillov had a knack for conveying Kremlin propaganda to the masses. His voice would drip with treacly pride as he announced the fulfillment of five-year plans. He read Politburo communiqués as if they were self-evident truths with which no honest person could possibly argue. Turning to news from capitalist countries—unemployment and crime were favorite topics—Kirillov switched instantly to moral indignation. For Brezhnev’s death, he adopted a tone of voice that was both somber and reassuring.