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

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.²⁴ If 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.²⁶ Kulikov 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.”²⁸ On May 30 Aristov and Pavlov sent a joint telegram to Brezhnev and the Politburo, accusing Kania and Jaruzelski of consistent capitulation to “revisionist elements”: