The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB

Wałęsa is traveling from one end of the country to another, to town after town, and they honor him with tributes everywhere. Polish leaders keep their mouths shut and so does the press. Not even television is standing up to these anti-Socialist elements… Perhaps it really is necessary to introduce martial law.

Brezhnev’s assessment was, predictably, strongly supported by Andropov. It was also backed by Mikhail Gorbachev, who had joined the Politburo in the previous year. “We should speak openly and firmly with our Polish friends,” he declared. “Up to now they haven’t taken the necessary steps. They’re in a sort of defensive position, and they can’t hold it for long—they might end up being overthrown themselves.”⁷

The Politburo was concerned not merely by the situation in Poland itself but also by the contagious effect of Solidarity’s success in some parts of the Soviet Union. The PROGRESS operation reports submitted to Andropov in October included one from the illegal SOBOLEV, who has been sent on a mission to Rubtsovsk in the Altay Kray region of Russia, far from the Polish border. His report made depressing reading:

The situation in the town of Rubtsovsk is unstable. The population has many grounds to be dissatisfied with the situation in the town, antisocial elements are visibly engaged in provocative action, and there could be uncontrolled disorders… Believers [practicing Christians] are also ready to speak up, and the population approves the strikes in Poland.

…The basic cause of dissatisfaction is food supplies, especially the lack of meat in the shops, poor living conditions and disgraceful public services. The top people are supplied through special channels, and for this there are special stores of foodstuffs and consumer goods. Theft is rampant, and the biggest thieves are officials of the Party city committee and the Soviet executive committee. There is drunkenness everywhere, and many people suffer from alcoholism.

The Polish events have a negative influence and effect on the local population, suggesting that it is possible to improve living and economic conditions on the Polish model.⁸

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.⁹ Nine 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: