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

Centre files record that in the weeks before the opening of the Ninth PUWP Congress on July 14, the Soviet embassy, the KGB mission and Soviet military representatives “worked among the delegates to identify Party members who followed the Marxist-Leninist line, to establish personal contact with them, and through them to influence the course of the Congress.”³⁴ The Suslov Commission, set up by the Politburo a year earlier to monitor the Polish crisis, gave instructions that the threat of military intervention by the other members of the Warsaw Pact must be “a constant factor in the minds of all Polish political forces.”³⁵ On the eve of the congress, the Centre instructed Pavlov, the head of the KGB mission in Warsaw, to have “a straightforward conversation with S. Kania and Jaruzelski on their weak Party and government work, and remind them of their earlier statements of readiness to cede their Party and government jobs if necessary in the interest of saving the Socialist system in Poland and the unity of Socialist cooperation in Europe.” The choice of Kania’s successor, in the Centre’s view, lay among three leading hardliners: Tadeusz Grabski, Stefan Olszowski and Andrzej Zabínski. All other representatives of “healthy forces” in the PUWP lacked the necessary authority to become first secretary. The KGB also drew up a list of those suitable for election to the Politburo and a hit list of moderates to be removed from the government and Party posts. Top of the hit list was the deputy prime minister, Mieczysław Rakowski, who had threatened to inform the leaders of the Italian and French Communist Parties about Soviet interference in the internal affairs of the PUWP. The Centre concluded that, in view of Jaruzelski’s continuing “authority in the country and especially in the army,” it would be unwise simply to dismiss him. Rather, it was hoped to kick him upstairs to the less powerful post of president and harness his personal prestige in support of a hardline government.³⁶

So far as Moscow was concerned, however, the Ninth PUWP Congress failed to go according to plan. Faced with a blatant Soviet attempt to unseat Kania, the congress rallied round him. But, taking seriously the threat of Soviet invasion, the congress also retained among the leadership some of the chief supporters of the Soviet campaign of intimidation. And though it gave loud applause to Rakowski’s speech, it dared not antagonize the Kremlin by electing him to the Politburo. The main consequence of the contradictory outcome of the congress was a near paralysis of government. Women and children marched through Polish cities banging empty pans to protest against food shortages. Encouraged by Solidarity, industrial workers elected factory councils which claimed the right to choose their managers.³⁷

The worsening crisis of central government seems to have convinced Jaruzelski that martial law would soon become inevitable. Detailed plans were agreed with Kulikov early in August. At a meeting with Jaruzelski and senior Polish generals on August 12, Kulikov demanded “firmness and still more firmness.”³⁸ On August 21 the new hardline interior minister, General Czeslaw Kiszczak, formerly head of military intelligence, visited Moscow to report personally to Andropov on secret preparations by the SB and police for the introduction of martial law. Hitherto, he acknowledged, “The Polish leadership has handled Solidarity as if it were an egg which it was afraid to break. We must put a stop to this.”³⁹

Kiszczak and the SB no longer saw Wałęsa as the main problem. During the previous six months Wałęsa’s leadership had become somewhat lackluster as he struggled to recover a clear sense of direction. Solidarity ultimately had to choose between two strategic options: either it had to become a truly revolutionary body capable of overthrowing the Communist one-party state, or it had to accommodate itself to the system and be content with winning a few concessions. Wałęsa found himself unable to opt clearly for either option. He had backed away from a general strike in March when most other leading figures in Solidarity believed the time had come for a showdown. Zbigniew Bujak, chairman of Solidarity in the Warsaw region, concluded that Wałęsa had made a fatal mistake: