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

This was a genuine conversation on an equal footing between the leaders of the two Parties and countries, not a monologue as was the case earlier with Brezhnev. In a conversation lasting three hours, Andropov said that all Socialist countries must take account of the specific conditions of Poland. The Polish problems were not the concern of one country alone; it was a world problem.

Andropov did, however, express concern about the continued presence of Rakowski and his fellow moderate, Barcikowski, in the Polish leadership. Jaruzelski asked Andropov to trust his judgment on how long to keep them in office. The fact that Andropov appeared so well informed about the Polish situation, Jaruzelski believed, was due chiefly to reports from the KGB mission in Warsaw.¹⁰³

The KGB mission remained deeply suspicious of revisionist tendencies in the Polish leadership. It telegraphed the Centre at the end of 1982:

Rakowski continues to influence Jaruzelski. They meet constantly to exchange views, not only at work, but also at home, and Rakowski was the first person Jaruzelski met immediately after his return from Moscow.¹⁰⁴

KGB distrust of Jaruzelski continued to grow during 1983. The Warsaw mission reported that he had given a dangerously defeatist address to the PUWP central committee on January 12:

Gierek’s slogans about the moral and ideological unity of the Poles, the development of Socialism—all this is a fantasy and dreamworld. We have a multiparty system. There is an uneven rate of development of capitalism, but there is also such a thing as the uneven rate of development of Socialism… In [the current] situation tactics must prevail over strategy.

Even Lenin, at various moments of his career, had engaged in tactical retreats. Poland, Jaruzelski claimed, must do the same.¹⁰⁵ Pavlov believed that Jaruzelski intended to retreat much too far. The danger that he would do so was greatly increased by the Polish regime’s capitulation to Church pressure for a second visit by John Paul II in June. According to Pavlov:

The episcopate, and right-wing forces within the PUWP and the country at large, seek to influence Jaruzelski and intimidate him with the might of the Church. There are many signs that the right wing and the Church are succeeding in this.¹⁰⁶

Among other worrying signs of Jaruzelski’s susceptibility to right-wing pressure was his willingness to allow family farms and the private ownership of land to be enshrined in the Polish constitution.¹⁰⁷ The Soviet embassy condemned a report presented to the PUWP Politburo on February 1 on “The Causes and Consequences of Social Crises in the History of the Polish People’s Republic” as the product of “bourgeois methodology”:

[The report] reduces the essence of the class struggle in the Polish People’s Republic to conflicts between the authorities and society, thereby deliberately excluding the possibility of analyzing the actions of anti-Socialist forces, and their connections with the West’s ideological sabotage centers. There is not a word about the USSR’s help in restoring and developing Poland’s economy.