Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

Despite its jaundiced view of the political leadership, the KGB liaison office in Prague was fully satisfied with the willingness of Obzina and the StB to do its bidding. Obzina, it reported, kept it “objectively informed” both about what took place in the CPCz Presidium and about the activities of each of its members, Husák included. 39Sinitsyn reported in 1977 that there were “operational contacts” between KGB and StB residencies in twenty-six countries. 40In 1975 the StB had agreed to a Soviet request to open a residency in Albania, a country which the KGB found hard to penetrate. 41In 1976, when the StB discovered that Jozef Grohman, editor-in-chief of the state technical literature publishing house and the Czechoslovak representative at UNESCO, was working for West German intelligence, Obzina invited the Centre to send KGB officers to Prague to help in the investigation of the Grohman case at what he deferentially termed “a higher professional level.” 42Sinitsyn concluded his annual report from Prague in 1977:

Our friends hand over to us all their cipher traffic with the residencies, whether it is of an information nature or operational; they also hand over telegrams from ambassadors. Our friends keep practically no secrets from us. 43

The crushing of the Prague Spring and the “normalization” which followed marked a turning point in the KGB’s policy towards eastern Europe. The PROGRESS operations by illegals pioneered in Czechoslovakia were extended to the rest of eastern Europe to monitor the state of public opinion, penetrate subversive groups and watch for signs of “ideological sabotage” by Western intelligence agencies. From 1969 onwards the KGB was also allowed to recruit agents and confidential contacts throughout the Soviet Bloc. In addition to the KGB liaison offices in the countries of the Warsaw Pact, the Centre now established, as in Czechoslovakia, secret residencies operating under diplomatic cover in Soviet embassies. 44

In March 1968, partly as a result of the Prague Spring, there had been several weeks of confrontation between Warsaw students and the police, during which the aging Polish leader Władisław Gomułka had seemed in danger of losing control. Gomułka survived in the short term only because of his steadfast backing for intervention in Czechoslovakia and the Kremlin’s desire to avoid simultaneous upheavals in another part of the Soviet Bloc. His position, however, was already under threat from his eventual successor, Eduard Gierek. According to reports from the KGB liaison office in Warsaw, the hardline, anti-Semitic minister of the interior, Mieczysław Moczar, who was responsible for the SB (the Polish KGB), feared that his own position would also be threatened under Gierek and began plotting to prevent his succession. Compromising material on Gierek was passed, on Moczar’s instructions, to Radio Free Europe via an SB agent. Moczar also ordered the bugging of a series of leading figures in the PUWP, the Polish Communist Party. 45

Late in 1970 Gomulka’s position was fatally undermined by a new round of public protest. On December 14 workers at the Baltic shipyards of Gdańsk, Gdynia and Szczecin struck in protest at a sudden rise in food prices. Clashes next day with security forces left 300 strikers and demonstrators dead. 46According to KGB reports from Warsaw, the order to open fire on the shipyard workers was given by Zenon Kliszko, Gomułka’s closest supporter on the Politburo, and General Grzegorz Korczyński, deputy defense minister and a supporter of Gierek. 47The KGB also forwarded to Moscow the minutes of the Polish Politburo meeting held to discuss the crisis on December 19. With Gomułka in a Party clinic suffering from nervous exhaustion, the meeting was chaired by the prime minister, Józef Cyrankiewicz, who asked the Minister of Defense, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, to report on the situation.

Jaruzelski’s assessment sealed Gomułka’s fate. He reported that 350 tanks and 600 troop carriers had been deployed in Gdańsk and Gdynia alone. If unrest on a similar scale occurred in Warsaw, he could not guarantee the security of the capital, though special measures would be taken to protect Party and government buildings. Army morale was seriously affected. On the Baltic coast it was being met with shouts of “Gestapo!” and “Murderers!” Jaruzelski was followed by Moczar, who summarized SB and other reports reaching the interior ministry. The Party, he said, has never found itself so helpless in the face of a crisis. Hitherto, even when times were hardest, Party members had felt they were fighting for “a righteous cause”—but no longer. In Party meetings, when the Politburo letter justifying the price increases was read out, some Communists were reduced to tears and left the room. The rise in family allowances from 15 to 25 zlotys caused derision among rank and file members, stunned by the leadership’s incomprehension of ordinary living conditions. After an agitated debate it was agreed that Gomułka should be replaced as first secretary by Gierek. There was then an acrimonious discussion about who should tell Gomułka to submit his resignation, before it was finally decided to send Cyrankiewicz and the hitherto faithful Kliszko. 48

Gomułka’s downfall marked the first occasion anywhere in Europe since the Second World War when spontaneous working-class protest had brought about a change of political leadership. 49The Centre was predictably alarmed at the extent and success of the popular revolt and immediately embarked on a PROGRESS operation to assess how far it had been contained. A group of illegals, posing once again as Western visitors, were instructed to investigate the role of the Catholic Church in organizing protest, its attitude towards the Gierek regime and the general mood of the population. 50Among the illegals was the experienced Gennadi Blyablin (BOGUN), disguised as a West German press photographer, who was given a list of five individuals to cultivate and told to persuade two or three of them to “co-operate under false flag,” in the belief that they were supplying information not to the KGB but to West German wellwishers. Probably the most important name on the list was that of Father Andrzej Bardecki, personal assistant to Cardinal Archbishop Karol Wojtyła of Kraków, whom the Centre considered the leading ideological influence on the Polish Church. The KGB doubtless did not foresee that less than eight years later Wojtyła would become the first Polish pope, but it showed some foresight in identifying him as a potential threat to the Communist regime. 51

DURING 1971, IN addition to the illegals sent on PROGRESS operations to Czechoslovakia and Poland, thirteen were deployed in Romania, nine in Yugoslavia, seven in East Germany, four in Hungary and three in Bulgaria. 52Though all had broadly similar objectives, there were also specific causes of KGB concern in each country. 53The priority given to Romania in 1971 reflected growing Soviet displeasure at the foreign policy of its leader, Nicolae Ceauşescu, who combined a nepotistic version of neo-Stalinism at home with increasing independence from the Warsaw Pact abroad. After condemning the invasion of Czechoslovakia, Ceauşescu was rewarded in the following year by a state visit from Richard Nixon, the first by an American president to Communist eastern Europe. In 1970 Ceauşescu paid the first of three visits to the United States. Moscow showed its displeasure at his visit to Beijing in 1971 by staging Warsaw Pact maneuvers on the Romanian borders. 54

KGB reports on Romania were written in a tone which combined indignation with deep suspicion:

Exploiting the anti-Soviet line of the Chinese Communist Party and of the Chinese government, the Romanian leadership has set out on the path of so-called autonomy and independence from the Soviet Union… Nationalism is flourishing in Romania. Its authors and advocates are the very same Party and government leaders.