Christopher Andrew - The Sword and the Shield

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:

I ask those who suffer to be particularly close to me. I ask this in the words of Christ: “I was sick, and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me.” I myself cannot visit all those in prison [ gasps from the crowd ], all those who are suffering. But I ask them to be close to me in spirit to help me, just as they always do. 114

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!” 117Though 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. 118At 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:

LECH WAŁĘSA: You know all in all it is over a million dollars… Somebody has to draw it all and put it somewhere. It can’t be brought into the country, though.

STANISŁAW WAŁĘSA: No, no, no!

LECH WAŁĘSA: So I thought about it and they came here and this priest had an idea that they would open an account in that bank, the papal one. They give 15 percent there… Somebody has to arrange it all, open accounts in the Vatican. I can’t touch it though or I’d get smashed in the mug. So you could…

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. 122Though now terminally ill, Andropov could barely contain his fury. From his sickbed he despatched a furious letter to Jaruzelski:

The Church is reawakening the cult of Wałęsa, giving him inspiration and encouraging him in his actions. This means that the Church is creating a new kind of confrontation with the Party. In this situation, the most important thing is not to make concessions…

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:

Concerning the attitude of the Polish Church, [Jaruzelski] described the Church as an ally, without whom progress is impossible. He did not say a word about a determined struggle against the intrigues of the Church.

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 absence of a legal opposition leads to the fact that only Yes men are successful. Views which are contrary to those of the leadership are not discussed, but suppressed and eliminated.

The whole of the ruling stratum is engaged in a hidden struggle, individually and in groups, for an even higher post, a prestigious appointment and other advantages. Thus, the Party bureaucracy is not in a position to lead the country while taking a comprehensive account of all its problems and needs.