Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

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? 19The 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:

We have to tell them that martial law means a curfew, limited movement in the city streets, strengthening state security [the SB] in Party institutions, factories, etc. The pressure from the leaders of Solidarity has left Jaruzelski in terribly bad shape, while lately Kania has begun to drink more and more. This is a very sad phenomenon. I want to point out that Polish events are having an influence on the western areas of our country too… Here, too, we’ll have to take tough internal measures.

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. 21On 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:

Solidarity has been transformed into an organized political force, which has the capacity to paralyze the activity of the Party and state organs and take de facto power into its own hands. If the opposition has not yet done this, that is primarily because of its fear that Soviet troops would be introduced and because of its hopes that it can achieve its aims without bloodshed and by means of a creeping counter-revolution.

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. 24If 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. 26Kulikov 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:

Kania and Jaruzelski are no longer capable of leading Party and government effectively. They cannot organize the defeat of the opposition, and have been compromised by cooperating for many years with Gierek. There is no doubt that they do not even have the fighting qualities which are essential for political leaders capable of taking decisive measures.

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.” 28On May 30 Aristov and Pavlov sent a joint telegram to Brezhnev and the Politburo, accusing Kania and Jaruzelski of consistent capitulation to “revisionist elements”:

The present situation requires urgent consideration of the necessity of dismissing [Kania] from his post as first secretary of the central committee and replacing him with a comrade capable of ensuring the survival of the Party’s Marxist-Leninist nature and of the Socialist character of the Polish state… An analysis of the mood of Party activists shows that the most suitable candidate for post of first secretary of the PUWP central committee is Comrade T. Grabski. 29

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:

At this very moment your people [the KGB] are saying that it is necessary to speak up at the Plenum [of the PUWP central committee] against Kania and Jaruzelski… You do not have, and you never have had, more trustworthy friends than me and Jaruzelski… I am amazed at the method you have chosen for dealing with me. I do not deserve this… There is no need to mobilize the members of the Central Committee against me. It is clear that I shall be on the side of the CPSU… It is very bitter sensation for me to realize that I have lost your trust. I feel hurt that you have chosen such a roundabout way to mobilize opinion for an attack on me at the Plenum. I therefore find it difficult to speak to Comrade Brezhnev. What can I say to him? 30