35. REVOLUTION IN EASTERN EUROPE
Eastern Europe had always troubled the Soviet leadership, and Poland
was a constant complication. On 6 February 1989 the Polish commu-
nist leadership and Solidarity gathered at a ‘round table’. Although
Jaruzelski did this by choice, he also had encouragement from
Moscow. He wanted to ensure industrial peace at a time of economic
emergency and hoped to co-opt Lech Wałęsa into the governing circle.
Hardened by his spells in prison and buoyed by his Catholic faith,
Wałęsa was not minded to yield unduly. Jaruzelski was going to make
no headway unless he made ample concessions in politics. Weeks of
strenuous negotiations ensued.
A bleak memo arrived on Yakovlev’s desk from the Party Inter-
national Department which sounded an alarm about the USSR’s
neglect of the region. Things were getting dire, and a ‘new type’ of
relationship had yet to be created with the Soviet Union. Poland, Hun-
gary and Czechoslovakia were suffering from internal trouble which
their communist administrations were failing to contain. The Bulgar-
ian communist leadership’s commitment to reform was mere pretence
and all Bulgarians knew this. The German Democratic Republic had
secretly incurred a huge external debt. Romania was conducting harsh
repression to impose a regime of austerity so as to pay off the loans
from Western banks – a policy that could soon end in an eruption of
popular discontent. The only constructive aspect of the situation, from
the Soviet viewpoint, was the fact that Moscow’s economy was at last
running a surplus in its balance of trade with Eastern Europe. There
was little prospect of deepening the industrial and commercial inte-
gration with the East European states, which were seeking ties only
with Western Europe. The International Department advised that the
USSR had no option but to encourage this tendency in the hope that
the Soviet Union might piggyback on any progress that the East Euro-
peans succeeded in making.^1
As the outlook for communism in the region worsened, Ligachëv