Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

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. 9Nine 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:

Even if you left Wyszýnski [the Polish primate] and Wałęsa in peace, Wyszýnski and Wałęsa would not leave you in peace until either they had achieved their aim, or they had been actively crushed by the Party and the responsible part of the workers. If you wait passively… the situation slips out of your control. I saw how this happened in Hungary [in 1956]. There, the old leadership waited for everything to normalize itself, and when, at last, it was decided to act, it turned out that no one could be relied upon. There is every reason to fear that the same may happen in Poland also, if the most active and decisive measures are not now taken.

This is a struggle for power. If Wałęsa and his fascist confederates came to power, they would start to put Communists in prison, to shoot them and subject them to every kind of persecution. In such an event, Party activists, Chekists [the SB] and military leaders would be most under threat.

You say that some of your comrades cannot take on the responsibility of taking any aggressive measures against the counter-revolutionaries. But why are they not afraid of doing nothing, since this could lead to the victory of reaction? One must show the Communists, and in the first place the Party activists, the Chekists [the SB] and the military comrades that it is not just a question of defending socialist achievements in Poland, but a question of protecting their own lives, that of their families, who would be subjected to terror by the reaction, if, God forbid, this came to pass.

Sometimes our Polish comrade say that they cannot rely on the Party. I cannot believe this. Out of three million Party members, one can find 100,000 who would be ready to sacrifice themselves. Wyszýnski and Wałęsa have roped in the free trade unions and are securing more and more new positions in various spheres in Poland. There are already the first signs that the counter-revolutionary infection is affecting the army.

Comrade Brezhnev says that we must be ready for struggle both by peaceful means and by non-peaceful means.

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:

Our friends consider Kania an honest Communist loyal to the Soviet Union and CPSU, but none the less one cannot exclude the possibility of a substantial difference between his point of view and ours, especially on the question of taking decisive measures… Lately Comrade Kania has tended not to adopt immediately recommendations by Soviet representatives, displaying doubts and not sharing all of our assessments of the situation in the People’s Republic of Poland. 12

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. 14In 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…” 15Kania 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.” 17On 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. 18As 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.