Within about three months of the August 1980 agreement, the membership of Solidarity exploded from zero to ten million members, comprising roughly 50 percent of all Polish workers, including farmers. It was a massive grassroots, social movement that became precisely what the USSR most feared—a massive political movement as well.
Lech Walesa was suddenly more confident than ever. Moreover, his confidence had been buoyed by the results of the November election in the United States. On December 7, 1980, a fearless Walesa stood on a snowy, windswept plain on the outskirts of Gdansk and spoke openly about politics and the U.S. election. “It was intuition, perhaps,” he said, “but one year ago I envisioned what would happen. Reagan was the only good candidate in your presidential campaign, and I knew he would win.” Walesa spoke presciently that December day: “Someday the West will wake up and you may find it too late, as Solzhenitsyn has written. Reagan will do it better. He will settle things in a more efficient way. He will make the U.S. strong and make it stand up.”31
JUNE 1981
A few months later, the new president returned Walesa’s optimism. In a June 1981 press conference, UPI’s Dean Reynolds reminded Reagan that at Notre Dame he had claimed that Communism was a “sad, bizarre chapter” in human history whose last pages were in the process of being written. Reynolds followed: “In that context, sir, do the events of the last ten months in Poland constitute the beginning of the end of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe?” Reagan answered:
Well, what I meant then in my remarks at Notre Dame and what I believe now about what we’re seeing tie together. I just think it is impossible—and history reveals this—for any form of government to completely deny freedom to people and have that go on interminably. There eventually comes an end to it. And I think the things we’re seeing, not only in Poland but the reports that are coming out of Russia itself about the younger generation and its resistance to long-time government controls, is an indication that communism is an aberration. It’s not a normal way of living for human beings, and I think we are seeing the first, beginning cracks, the beginning of the end.32
A few minutes later in the press conference, Reagan estimated: “The Poland situation is going to be very tense for quite some time now. The Soviet Union is faced with a problem of this crack in their once Iron Curtain and what happens if they let it go.”
SEPTEMBER 1981: FEARS OF SOVIET FORCE IN POLAND
As 1981 moved on, the crack crept to the surface, as Walesa and his union brothers chipped away at the Communist facade. While not a bastion of laissez-faire capitalism, Solidarity was also not Marxist. It was anti-Communist, independent of the USSR, rejected the nomenklatura, and represented the majority of Polish workers. More, it was devoutly pro-Catholic; no other institution had so consistently opposed Bolshevism as had the Roman Catholic Church.33 Furthermore, Solidarity was not only pro-West but favored concepts like free speech, a free press, and free elections—all verboten to Communism.
All of this threatened Soviet Communism’s stranglehold on Poland, and in early September 1981, Pravda made that clear. Appealing to infallible authority, it noted that the immortal Lenin had insisted on Communist Party control of all trade unions. Indeed, as Arthur R. Rachwald explained: “The idea of an independent labor organization functioning freely is totally incompatible with the Soviet system.”34 Thus, when the Polish Communist government officially recognized Solidarity, it had committed heresy in the Church of Lenin; it had signed away its oxymoronic Communist soul.35 The supremacy of the Community Party, directed from Moscow, was in jeopardy.
Reagan relished the irony that Solidarity was a disgruntled workers’ group “in a so-called workers’ state,” in an alleged workers’ heaven. It was, said Reagan, “a genuine labor movement suppressed by a government of generals who claim to represent the working class.”36 As the former head of SAG, he felt personally connected to Solidarity not just through its anti-Communism but also its unionism. In a speech to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, he said, “Those of us who know what it is to belong to a union have a special bond with the workers of Poland.”37 Reagan also understood Solidarity’s uniqueness at a precarious time for the USSR, noting that nothing like Solidarity had ever existed in the Eastern European bloc. The workers’ union “was contrary to anything the Soviets would want or the Communists would want.”38
By summer 1981, the Kremlin had become extremely worried and wanted Solidarity destroyed. Thus, there was considerable unease in the Reagan administration over the prospect of a Soviet invasion of Poland. These concerns were amplified by a secret source: Washington had a mole in Poland, a brave figure named Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, a highly respected, high-ranking figure in the Polish Defense Ministry. A liaison between Warsaw and Moscow, Kuklinski was tasked with the grave duty of helping to make preparations for a “hot war” with the West. Kuklinski’s real enemy, however, was Soviet Communism and its hold on the colonel’s beloved homeland. He secretly supplied a massive volume of material to the CIA, including an explosive disclosure in December 1980: on two sheets of paper inside a smuggled package, Kuklinski carefully outlined Moscow’s plans to cross the border into Poland with eighteen Soviet, East German, and Czech divisions by December 8, 1980.39 The Carter White House had been aware that Soviet troops were massing along the border, but Kuklinski’s missive relayed sincerity rather than a bluff.40 According to authors Jerrold and Leona Schecter, thanks to Kuklinski, the Carter administration knew in advance that the Soviet Union was actually preparing to invade Poland in 1980 in order to crush Solidarity, under the guise of a “peaceful exercise.”41
The Carter administration had made clear its concerns over Poland, stating that military intervention by Moscow would seriously jeopardize the U.S.–USSR relationship. NATO was placed on a higher level of readiness. Amid continuing fear of a Soviet invasion to “save Poland,” Pope John Paul II sent a letter to Chairman Brezhnev in which he boldly made an implicit parallel between a Soviet invasion and the Nazi incursion of September 1939, grimly outlining the moral contours in which he viewed the USSR.42
Inheriting the work of Kuklinski, the Reagan administration picked up these fears, and also began receiving new disturbing information. Since the first weeks of the Reagan administration, a colonel from the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency had paid regular visits to the National Security Council bearing satellite photos of Warsaw Pact troop movements along the Polish border. Richard Pipes studied these pictures, and was especially concerned about the Warsaw Pact exercises that took place on Polish territory under the code name “Soiuz-81.” These maneuvers could be easily directed into an offensive. By April 1981, after once vacillating over whether an invasion was likely, Pipes thought an invasion was imminent.43
Judging from newly released information, Pipes’ fears were justified: Over a roughly one-year period up through September 1981, the Soviet leadership carefully considered an invasion, aided by Eastern bloc allies like Czechoslovakia and East Germany. The plan called for a contingent of 14 to 15 divisions to help Polish authorities enforce martial law.44 However, because General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland’s prime minister, believed such a scenario would produce mass bloodshed, he persuaded Moscow to allow him to take care of business internally. He saw much greater instability if Soviet soldiers were used rather than the Polish military. Moscow, desiring deniability for any role, went with his advice.45