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

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

When Kulikov asked Jaruzelski for his reaction to the latest philippic from Moscow, he replied, “They are hammering me into the ground. I’m a fool for accepting this post [of prime minister].”³¹

During June a group of nine Polish generals approached the KGB with a plan to remove Jaruzelski because of his unwillingness to order martial law and replace him with a new defense minister (presumably one of the plotters), who would arrest the rest of the government, take control of strategic points and seize up to 3,000 counter-revolutionaries who would be deported to elsewhere in the Soviet Bloc. An action group led by the defense minister, containing no members of either the previous government or the Politburo, would then appeal to the rest of the Soviet Bloc for “military assistance to protect Socialism in the Polish People’s Republic.”³² Moscow’s response to the plan for a military coup is not recorded in the files noted by Mitrokhin. Given its desire to avoid “military assistance” and preserve a semblance of legality, however, it cannot have been attracted by it.

Jaruzelski’s main concern seems to have been less his own personal position than to prevent the disaster of Soviet military intervention. On June 22 he held a meeting with the minister of the interior, General Milewski, whom he knew was trusted by the Kremlin. How, asked Jaruzelski, could he “regain the trust of our Soviet comrades?” Milewski replied that, though Soviet confidence in the Polish leadership had been severely damaged, it had not been entirely destroyed: “If there had been none at all, they would have stopped talking to us.” Jaruzelski complained that, so far as he was concerned, they had indeed stopped talking. Previously, Kulikov had phoned him almost every day and had frequently come to see him. Recently he had broken all contact. Soviet representatives in Warsaw were instructed to tell Jaruzelski that their confidence in him had indeed been shaken and that it would disappear altogether unless he mended his ways.³³