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

For millions of Poles, the visit was equally unforgettable. Many walked across Poland to see John Paul II, often sleeping by the roadside during their journeys. Wherever the Pope stopped, there were rarely less than half a million people waiting for him.¹¹⁶ “We have to deal with the most famous Pole in the world,” grumbled Kiszczak, “and, unfortunately, we have to do it here in Poland!”¹¹⁷ Though the Pope could not meet the leaders of the illegal Solidarity underground during his visit, he had sent an emissary, Father Adam Boniecki, to see them before he arrived and convey his gratitude and admiration to them.¹¹⁸ At first the authorities refused to allow Wałęsa to meet the Pope; then, on the final day of his visit, they gave way and Wałęsa was flown to a meeting in the Tatra mountains. An underground cartoon of the time showed SB agents disguised as sheep and goats clutching boom microphones as they tried to listen in to the conversation.¹¹⁹

The formal ending of martial law a month after the Pope’s visit did little to mend the regime’s tattered reputation. Nor did Rakowski’s visit to address Gdańsk shipyard workers on the third anniversary of the August 1980 accords. Having arrived to proclaim Solidarity dead and Wałęsa a has-been, he found himself upstaged by Solidarity hecklers. Wałęsa, in an admittedly stumbling statement, had the workers on his side when he accused Rakowski and his colleagues of using the 1980 strikes to lever Gierek out of power and advance their own careers. It was probably this débácle at Gdańsk which finally persuaded the regime to broadcast the libelous video of Wałęsa concocted by the SB at the end of the previous year. Film footage taken by a hidden SB camera of Wałęsa eating a birthday meal with his brother Stanisław was used as the basis of a bogus “documentary” entitled Money, which purported to expose Wałęsa’s greed and corruption. The dialogue was constructed by splicing together some of Wałęsa’s public statements, misleading extracts from the stolen tape-recording of his birthday celebrations and words spoken by a Warsaw actor imitating Wałęsa’s voice.¹²⁰

The Polish files seen by Mitrokhin end just too early to clarify who exactly was involved in the decision to go ahead with an active measure begun over a year earlier. Kiszczak later tried to put the blame on his SB subordinate, Adam Pietruszka, but he must certainly have been among those who authorized the use of the video. The film dialogue included a fabricated exchange about Wałęsa’s supposed fortune in the West:

LECH WAŁĘSA: You know all in all it is over a million dollars… Somebody has to draw it all and put it somewhere. It can’t be brought into the country, though.

STANISŁAW WAŁĘSA: No, no, no!

LECH WAŁĘSA: So I thought about it and they came here and this priest had an idea that they would open an account in that bank, the papal one. They give 15 percent there… Somebody has to arrange it all, open accounts in the Vatican. I can’t touch it though or I’d get smashed in the mug. So you could…

Part of the purpose of the SB active measure was to sabotage Wałęsa’s prospect of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. The actor impersonating Wałęsa explains that the prize is worth a lot of money, then complains, “I’d get it if it weren’t for the Church! But the Church is starting to interfere.” “Yeah,” says his brother, “because they’ve put up the Pope again.”¹²¹

On October 5, however, came the news that Wałęsa had indeed been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. To counter the SB’s attempt to portray him as a corrupt fortunehunter, Wałęsa announced that he was giving his prize money to a Church scheme to help private farmers modernize and mechanize the countryside.¹²² Though now terminally ill, Andropov could barely contain his fury. From his sickbed he despatched a furious letter to Jaruzelski:

The Church is reawakening the cult of Wałęsa, giving him inspiration and encouraging him in his actions. This means that the Church is creating a new kind of confrontation with the Party. In this situation, the most important thing is not to make concessions…