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New Evidence on the Polish Crisis 1980-1981

Introduction

3

By Malcolm Byrne

I

n November 1997, an extraordinary multinational gathering took place of personalities who figured in the tumultuous 1980-81 Solidarity crisis. For twoand-a-half days two dozen Poles, Americans, and Russians, one-time allies and adversaries alike, met in the village of Jachranka just outside Warsaw, to revisit the events of that crucial period.

On the Polish Communist Party and government side, former Party leaders Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski and Stanisław Kania, former Prime Minister Mieczysław Rakowski, and several of their colleagues sat across from ex-Solidarity figures Tadeusz Mazowiecki (later the country's first post-Communist prime minister), Karol Modzelewski, Zbigniew Bujak, and others. Filling out the spaces at the large, square meeting table were representatives of the two superpowers whose involvement in the crisis (albeit in very different forms) ensured its global impact. From the American side: Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter's National Security Adviser; Richard Pipes, a senior member of President Reagan's National Security Council (NSC) staff; Gen. William Odom, NSC military aide in 1980 and head of U.S. Army Intelligence in 1981-82; Jan Nowak, formerly of Radio Free Europe and a consultant on Poland to the Carter and Reagan administrations; and Carter NSC staff aide, Stephen Larrabee, were present. From the former Soviet side: Marshal Viktor Kulikov, Commander-inChief of Warsaw Pact forces; Gen. Anatolii Gribkov, Warsaw Pact chief of staff; Central Committee expert Georgi Shakhnazarov; and Valerii Moussatov of the Foreign Ministry.

The conference, “Poland 1980-1982: Internal Crisis, International Dimensions," was one of a series of meetings organized by the National Security Archive in partnership with scholars and institutions in Russia and Eastern Europe-and in close cooperation with the Cold War International History Project-aimed at expanding the historical record and informing the public debate over key crises in the Cold War.' Shouldering most of the responsibility for the Jachranka event were Andrzej Paczkowski, Ryszard Zelichowski, Pawel Machcewicz, Darius Stola, Krzysztof Persak, Ewa Balcerek and their colleagues at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

Highlights of the conference were numerous, and have been written about elsewhere. The discussions brought out new facts and perspectives on the internal dynamics of the crisis, the roles of Kania and Jaruzelski, the question of whether the Soviets intended to invade,

and the impact of American efforts to forestall such an outcome. One issue that came under intense scrutiny was whether Jaruzelski was a hero or a traitor: did he declare martial law on 13 December 1981, as a patriotic act to prevent the slaughter of tens of thousands of Poles that would surely have followed from a Soviet/Warsaw Pact invasion? Or was he simply doing Moscow's bidding, using the threat (spurious in this view) of an invasion as a pretext and/or justification for martial law, and thus sparing the Soviets the multiple costs of intervention?

As with all Archive/CWIHP conferences, documents played a crucial part. For several years before the Jachranka gathering, directed research had been underway in the archives of the former Soviet bloc and the United States specifically geared toward preparation of a "briefing book" for each of the participants. Over 100 top-level documents were selected, ranging from Soviet and Polish politburo minutes and Warsaw Pact meeting transcripts, to Solidarity National Coordination Commission materials, to U.S. National Security Council records and Defense Intelligence Agency reports. The goal was not only to bolster the public record but also to help jog the memories of participants and keep the discussions as closely anchored to the facts as possible. As often happens, additional materials emerged during the course of the conference itself.4

Several new documents dealt with the central, and related, questions of Soviet intentions and Jaruzelski's motivations. They seemed to seriously undermine the former Polish leader's published rationales. For example, a telegram from Col. Ryszard Kuklinski, the CIA's longtime source inside the Polish general staff, reported in early December 1980 that Jaruzelski had ordered his Defense Ministry to approve Kremlin-sponsored plans to allow 18 divisions of Soviet, Czechoslovak and East German troops to enter the country, a revelation that left every Pole privy to the decision "very depressed and crestfallen," Kuklinski reported. A Czechoslovak military document around the same date appeared to confirm this report.

Apparently even more damning to Jaruzelski was a series of handwritten notebook pages prepared in the early 1980s by Soviet Lt. Gen. Viktor Anoshkin, for years an adjutant to Marshal Kulikov and his principal notetaker throughout the Polish crisis. During the planning stages of the conference, the organizers had asked every prospective participant to dig through their own files for documents to bring to the table. Kulikov agreed to ask Anoshkin to bring along his notes. Immediately after the Marshal

referred to those notes during the conference to back up his claim that the Soviets never intended to intervene military in Poland, he and Anoshkin were approached (accosted?) by various participants. Anoshkin eventually agreed to let several pages be copied, which, as Mark Kramer's piece below suggests, appear to show that contrary to Jaruzelski's assertion that he tried to keep Soviet troops out of the country, he actually counted on them to back up Polish forces in case martial law failed.

Revelations of this sort prompted some of the most dramatic interactions of the conference, such as when Jaruzelski confronted Kulikov during a break following the Marshal's denial that Moscow contemplated an invasion. In front of several witnesses, an emotional Jaruzelski said, in Russian: "You know what you said to me then. How could you let them do this to me-in front of the Americans!"

Questions about the crisis persist, of course, even about Jaruzelski. But the truly multinational, cooperative effort by scholars, archivists and others involved in this project has helped to advance our understanding of key aspects of the 1980-81 crisis. The essays that follow below both add to the growing databank and represent some of the first attempts to come to grips with the new evidence. As documentary and oral history work continues, these interpretations will no doubt themselves become grist for further debate.

Malcolm Byrne is the Deputy Director of the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute and repository based at George Washington University.

' Under the rubric of the "Openness in Russia and Eastern Europe Project," the Archive, along with CWIHP and its other partners, have run conferences on the Prague Spring and the subsequent Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia (Prague, April 1994), the Hungarian revolution (Budapest, September 1996), and the 1953 uprising in East Germany (Potsdam, November 1996). The Archive's principal partners include: the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences; the Institute of Contemporary History and the recently-formed Center for Advanced Studies of the Anti-totalitarian Resistance of the Czech Academy of Sciences; the Institute for the History of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution; the Civic Academy Foundation (Bucharest); the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences; and "Memorial" (Moscow). Generous support over the years has come mainly from the Open Society Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States-in addition to local sponsors for each event.

2 For a summary, CWIHP Bulletin readers can refer to Raymond Garthoff's report in Issue 10, pp. 229-232. Other accounts appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and International Herald Tribune.

3 Malcolm Byrne, Pawel Machcewicz, Christian Ostermann, eds., Poland 1980-1982 Internal Crisis, International Dimensions. A Compendium of Declassified Documents and Chronology of Events (Washington, DC: National Security

Archive, 1997).

4 Many scholars and archivists throughout Eastern Europe, in Russia and the United States contributed materials (and translations), all of which are available as part of the Archive/ CWIHP's Russian and East European Archival Documents Database (READD) in the National Security Archive's reading room in the Gelman Library, Suite 701, 2130 H Str., NW., Washington, DC 20037. The 1980-81 collection includes hundreds of other documents obtained by the Archive through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act and other sources. An early exchange of source materials on the 1980-81 crisis took place at a workshop organized by the Archive/CWIHP and Institute of Political Studies (Warsaw) in the Polish capital in August 1995.

5 Mark Kramer, director of the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies, contributed (and translated) this and two other Kuklinski telegrams, among other materials, for the briefing book.

"In addition to Gen. Anoshkin, other former officials who generously contributed documents were Zbigniew Brzezinski, Valerii Moussatov, and Gen. Jaruzelski.

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NEW EVIDENCE ON THE POLISH CRISIS 1980-1981 5

Jaruzelski, the Soviet Union, and the Imposition of Martial Law in Poland: New Light on the Mystery of December 1981

By Mark Kramer

T

he behavior of General Wojciech Jaruzelski
during the Polish crisis of 1980-81 remains a
source of great controversy.

On the one hand, newly declassified documentation leaves no doubt that the Soviet Union was exerting relentless pressure on Polish leaders in 1980-81.' The Soviet authorities deployed many divisions of combatready troops around Poland's borders and in the western USSR, conducted a long series of conspicuous Warsaw Pact and bilateral military exercises, informed Polish officials that elaborate plans had been drawn up for a Soviet-led invasion, and made repeated, vehement exhortations through bilateral and multilateral channels. These various actions may have caused Jaruzelski to fear that the Soviet Army would invade Poland unless he imposed martial law. Whether Soviet leaders actually intended to invade is a very different matter. All the latest evidence suggests that by mid- to late 1981, Soviet officials were extremely reluctant to consider sending troops into Poland. Nevertheless, it is important to bear in mind that this new evidence, persuasive though it seems in retrospect, was unavailable at the time. In 1980-81, Polish leaders were not privy to the internal deliberations of the Soviet Politburo and could never be fully certain about Soviet intentions. Hence, they may have genuinely believed that an invasion would occur if a solution "from within" Poland (i.e., martial law) did not materialize. Indeed, Soviet leaders themselves may have wanted to create that impression-even if they did not intend to follow up on it because they believed it would induce the Polish authorities to take action.2 In that respect, the declassified materials are compatible with Jaruzelski's claim that he introduced martial law because he viewed it as a "tragic necessity" and the "lesser of two evils."3

On the other hand, much of the new documentary evidence raises serious doubts about Jaruzelski's veracity on this matter, and specifically about his position in December 1981 during the lead-up to martial law. Firsthand accounts and newly released documents suggest that, by December 1981 (and perhaps earlier), Jaruzelski was reluctant to impose martial law without external (i.e., Soviet) military assistance or at least a solid guarantee that Soviet troops would move in if the martial law operation failed. The documents also suggest that Soviet leaders by then were unwilling to provide direct military support to Jaruzelski, telling him that it would be "impossible" to bring Soviet troops into Poland and that he must instead proceed with martial law on his own. Jaruzelski's failure to obtain Soviet military assistance, as revealed in the latest evidence, nearly caused him to postpone the whole

operation in the hope that he would then be given a concrete external assurance.

The notion that Jaruzelski was asking for Soviet military support in December 1981 was first propounded in September 1992 by a retired Soviet officer, ArmyGeneral Anatolii Gribkov. Gribkov had served for many years as Chief of Staff and First Deputy Commander-inChief of the Warsaw Pact. In that capacity, he played a key role vis-a-vis Poland in 1980-81. Looking back on the Polish crisis in 1992, Gribkov denied that Jaruzelski imposed martial law to forestall a Soviet invasion. The Soviet general claimed that, rather than trying to stave off Soviet military intervention, Jaruzelski did just the opposite in December 1981 by repeatedly seeking a "guarantee of military assistance [from the USSR] if the situation in Poland becomes critical."4 The Soviet Politburo, according to Gribkov, promptly turned down the Polish leader's requests, informing him that "Soviet troops will not be sent to Poland." Gribkov noted that even after this decision was conveyed, Jaruzelski pleaded with Soviet officials to reconsider and warned them that "if military assistance is not offered, Poland will be lost to the Warsaw Pact." Gribkov surmised that Jaruzelski's last-minute pleas for a Soviet military guarantee must have reflected “the nervousness and diffidence that the top Polish leaders were feeling about their ability to carry out the plans for martial law."

5

Gribkov's account appeared at the very time when Jaruzelski had been gaining a favorable reputation in Poland, both among the public and even among some of his former opponents such as Adam Michnik. Most Poles were willing to accept Jaruzelski's claim that he reluctantly chose the "lesser of two evils" in December 1981. Confronted by Gribkov's revelations, Jaruzelski strenuously denied that he had ever requested a Soviet military guarantee and argued that Gribkov himself had been an advocate of Soviet military pressure and intervention in 1981.7 An acrimonious standoff between the two men ensued.

Since that time, however, crucial evidence has emerged that seems to bear out Gribkov's article and undercut Jaruzelski's denials. This evidence includes Soviet Politburo transcripts, numerous first-hand accounts, and secret records of meetings and conversations. Until recently, the new evidence was very strong-strong enough to raise serious doubts about Jaruzelski's self-exculpatory claims-but it was not yet conclusive. That changed in November 1997, when I obtained a document that provides much clearer evidence about Jaruzelski's behavior in the lead-up to martial law.

Combined with all the previous disclosures, this document (which I have translated and annotated below) offers powerful confirmation of Gribkov's article.

9

Before turning to this new document, it is worth reviewing the other evidence that corroborates Gribkov's account. Some of the evidence has come from unexpected sources, including Mikhail Gorbachev, who was a full member of the Politburo of the Soviet Communist Party (CPSU) during the Polish crisis. Gorbachev was and is an admirer and close friend of Jaruzelski and has described him as "a true hero" who in 1981 "had no choice" and "acted correctly." In an interview in late 1992, Gorbachev affirmed that he "always had complete trust in Jaruzelski" and had "talked to him more openly and honestly than I did with some members of the CPSU Politburo." Gorbachev also has insisted that Jaruzelski's reputation will be secure as "a Polish patriot and a man of great honor" who "saved his country." 10 Hence, Gorbachev has no reason to say anything that would impugn Jaruzelski's honesty. Nor does Gorbachev have any reason to defend the reputation of those on the Soviet Politburo in 1981 who may have wanted to dispatch Soviet military forces to Poland unless Jaruzelski imposed martial law. If anything, Gorbachev might have been expected to go out of his way to substantiate Jaruzelski's claims about what happened in December 1981.

Yet in several interviews with Polish journalists in October and November 1992, Gorbachev averred that the CPSU Politburo made no threat of military intervention in December 1981, contrary to the assertions in Jaruzelski's memoirs. Gorbachev also recalled that shortly before martial law was introduced, a top Polish official (who Gorbachev deduced was Jaruzelski) had placed an urgent phone call to Mikhail Suslov, a senior member of the CPSU Politburo and CPSU Secretariat who chaired the Politburo's special commission on the Polish crisis. Gorbachev maintained that Suslov had informed the Polish leader that Soviet troops would continue to protect Poland against external threats, but would not be used against internal dangers." According to Gorbachev, Suslov's refusal to provide a military guarantee came as a shock to the Polish leader, who tried in vain to persuade Suslov to change his mind.

On all key points, Gorbachev's testimony closely parallels and reinforces Gribkov's account, even though the two men obviously did not consult with one another and were unaware of each other's comments until at least several weeks afterwards, when a controversy ensued in Poland. The accounts overlap both in their broad themes and in many of the details they contain (e.g., about Suslov's role). Because Gorbachev and Gribkov were both in a position to know first-hand about the events they described, the inadvertent similarity of their remarks enhances their credibility.

The accounts provided by Gorbachev and Gribkov were endorsed by a retired general of the Soviet State Security Committee (KGB), Vitalii Pavlov, who was the

KGB station chief in Warsaw from 1973 to 1984. In a series of interviews with the Polish press in early 1993, and in his memoirs (published in Poland in 1994 and in Moscow in 1998), Pavlov argued that Jaruzelski desperately wanted an assurance of military intervention in December 1981, but that Suslov and other Soviet leaders refused to comply.12 Pavlov claimed that Suslov had spoken with Jaruzelski by phone on 12 December and had told the Polish leader that "direct military assistance" from the Soviet Union was "out of the question," adding that “we will help you materially, financially, and politically, but not with armed force."13 Pavlov recalled that Yurii Andropov, a CPSU Politburo member and chairman of the KGB, sent the same message to General Czeslaw Kiszczak, the Polish Minister of Internal Affairs.

The main elements of Pavlov's account were substantiated by Kiszczak himself, who is a close friend of Jaruzelski. In an interview in 1993, Kiszczak confirmed that Pavlov is one of the very few people who can speak authoritatively about the KGB's operations and Soviet policy during the Polish crisis.14 Elsewhere, Kiszczak acknowledged that Jaruzelski placed an urgent phone call to Moscow on 12 December to inquire about military "help from the allies." Because Brezhnev declined to take the phone, Jaruzelski ended up speaking with Suslov. 15 Kiszczak recalled, as Pavlov did, that Suslov admonished Jaruzelski not to expect Soviet military support "under any circumstances." Although Kiszczak's recollections differ on some points from Pavlov's, the similarities between the two are striking.

These various first-hand accounts have been supplemented over the past five to six years by the release of crucial documentation in Russia, Poland, and other former Warsaw Pact countries. Although many Soviet and Polish documents have not yet been declassified, the items that have emerged lend credence to Gribkov's account of what happened in December 1981. Selected transcripts from some of the CPSU Politburo meetings in 1980-81 were released in late 1992, August 1993, and early 1994.16 A few of these transcripts, including one from 10 December 1981, bear directly on the question of Jaruzelski's stance in December 1981. Documents from some of the East European countries, notably Hungary and East Germany, also shed valuable light on the matter."7

17

One of the consistent themes in these documents is the lack of confidence that Jaruzelski and his close aides had about their ability to sustain martial law without external military aid. Even after mid-September 1981, when Poland's Homeland Defense Committee (Komitet obrony kraju, or KOK) reached a final decision at Jaruzelski's behest to proceed with martial law (leaving only the precise date to be determined), Polish leaders remained doubtful that they could handle it on their own.18 Although the Polish authorities had repeatedly assured the Soviet Union over the previous twelve months that they would "resolve the crisis with our own means," they had said this in the hope of somehow finding a political

solution that would not require the opposition to be wiped out (at least not all at once). The imposition of martial law, aimed at crushing the opposition, was an entirely different matter.

Newly released documents indicate that a few days after the KOK's watershed meeting in September 1981, "the Polish Communist leaders assessed their forces [and] found that their resources would be insufficient for this sort of action [i.e., martial law] and that the support of allied forces would therefore be needed."19 Because Jaruzelski and Stanislaw Kania, the head of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) from September 1980 to mid-October 1981 (when he was replaced by Jaruzelski), both realized that "direct intervention by [troops from] other socialist countries" would "set back the development of socialism by decades" and "would be exploited by the imperialist forces," they were extremely diffident as they prepared to implement the KOK's decision. Although Kania claimed that he would not "exclude the possibility of steps that would unavoidably require the intervention of [Poland's] allies," he was still hoping that some alternative to martial law could be found.20 Kania's continued hesitancy sparked a stern public letter from the Soviet leadership on 17 September, which urged that decisive measures be taken immediately to "prevent the imminent loss of socialism in Poland."2 Soon thereafter, on 18 October, Kania was replaced as PUWP First Secretary by Jaruzelski, under Soviet auspices. (By that point, Soviet leaders had correctly surmised that Kania was doing his best to avoid imposing martial law.)

Once Jaruzelski assumed the top party post and began making all the final preparations for martial law, his demeanor seems to have changed a good deal compared to the previous thirteen months, when he had been working with Kania. The evidence suggests that Jaruzelski increasingly sought a concrete military guarantee from the Soviet Union, a request that Soviet leaders declined to fulfill. His position on this matter was discussed at a Soviet Politburo meeting on 29 October 1981 by Andropov and the Soviet defense minister, Marshal Dmitrii Ustinov:

ANDROPOV: The Polish leaders are talking about military assistance from the fraternal countries. However, we need to adhere firmly to our line-that our troops will not be sent to Poland.

USTINOV: In general one might say that it would be impossible to send our troops to Poland. They, the Poles, are not ready to receive our troops.22

To be sure, this passage can lend itself to different interpretations. Andropov's and Ustinov's perceptions of Jaruzelski's position may not have been fully accurate. Moreover, it is unclear precisely what Ustinov meant when he said that "the Poles are not ready to receive our troops." Most likely, he was arguing that if Soviet military units entered Poland to support Jaruzelski, they would

encounter vigorous armed resistance.23

Even if some ambiguity about this passage remains, Andropov's and Ustinov's comments tend to bear out the view that Jaruzelski was requesting Soviet military intervention or at least the assurance of military support if the martial law operation collapsed. Their remarks also imply that Soviet leaders had no intention of sending troops to Poland (either in support of or against Jaruzelski) unless some unforeseeable circumstance arose. In both respects the transcript bears out a key episode recorded by Gribkov, who recalled that just after a Soviet Politburo session in late October 1981, he and the Commander-inChief of the Warsaw Pact, Marshal Viktor Kulikov, were ordered by Ustinov to inform Jaruzelski that the Poles "had better rely more on their own forces to restore order in the country and not hope that some big brother will step in and take care of everything for them."24 Gribkov's recollection of this matter is especially credible because his account of it was published well before he could have seen the transcript of the Politburo meeting, which was not declassified until more than a year later.

Further evidence that Jaruzelski was hoping to receive Soviet military backing in late 1981 comes from two highly classified documents prepared by the Polish General Staff and the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs at the end of November 1981, which reviewed the ongoing preparations for martial law. One of the documents, compiled by the Polish General Staff on 23 November, indicated that "additional arrangements have been implemented to ensure that the transport of our own troops and allied troops [wojsk wlasnych i sojuszniczych] can be carried out fully and properly."25 This phrasing does not necessarily indicate that the "allied troops" would be intervening in support of the martial law operation-after all, the Soviet Politburo had consistently emphasized that lines of communication between the USSR's Northern Group of Forces and the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany must be protected—but it certainly is compatible with the notion that Polish leaders would seek external military assistance. That notion is borne out even more strongly by another document, prepared two days later by the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs, which noted that "assistance from Warsaw Pact forces would not be ruled out" if the martial law operation produced widespread violent turmoil.26 This position was in line with the views expressed earlier in the year by senior ministry officials, who argued that martial law would be infeasible unless the Polish authorities received external military support.27

Another indication that Jaruzelski was hoping to gain. outside backing for the martial law operation came a week later, in early December 1981, when he sought an explicit Warsaw Pact statement “condemning the actions of the counterrevolution [in Poland] and the interference by NATO in [Poland's] internal affairs."28 Jaruzelski was unable to travel to Moscow for a meeting of the Pact's Committee of Defense Ministers on 2-4 December, but in his place he sent his closest aide, the chief of the Polish

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