REVOLUTION IN EASTERN EUROPE 405affair.’ Yakovlev sought assurances that Poland would remain inside
the Warsaw Pact. On receiving them, he declared that the choice of a
new government was a matter for the Poles alone.^24 General Secretary
Rakowski made a last effort at stopping Solidarity’s Tadeusz Mazow-
iecki from becoming Prime Minister. Gorbachëv would have none of
this, and in late August 1989 phoned Rakowski and urged him to be
more conciliatory.^25 The Kremlin expected the Polish comrades to
accept defeat. On vacation outside Gagra in the mountains by the
Abkhazian coast, Shevardnadze confided: ‘One thing is certain: we’re
not going to get sucked into Polish affairs.’^26 It was for the Poles to
settle the crisis in Poland. The Soviet leadership had plenty of diffi-
culties of its own to resolve.
Ceauşescu called from Bucharest for a meeting of the Warsaw
Pact’s Political Consultative Committee. The Pact’s ‘last Stalinist’, as
Shevardnadze called him, could see that the Polish example might
become contagious in Eastern Europe. Ceauşescu had opposed the
invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Now he worried about his own
administration’s survival and told the Soviet leadership that drastic
action was needed to conserve communist rule in Poland.^27 On 19
August 1989 he wrote to all the Warsaw Pact countries calling
expressly for military action to prevent Solidarity from forming a gov-
ernment. Belatedly adopting the Brezhnev Doctrine as his credo, he
professed that Poland’s politics could not be an exclusively Polish
matter.^28 Even Honecker could see that Ceauşescu’s proposal, if acted
upon, had the potential to play into Solidarity’s hands.^29 Ceauşescu in
fact had unwisely copied the Polish Party General Secretary, Rakow-
ski, into the correspondence. His comradely courtesy came back to
bite him. Rakowski had by then resolved that he had to seek an
accommodation with Solidarity, and he divulged Ceauşescu’s message
to the press.^30 The Soviet leadership rebuked the Romanian leader;^31
and KGB Chairman Kryuchkov flew to Warsaw to wish the new Polish
cabinet well.^32
Solidarity’s confidence strengthened as it gained support from the
small parties that were allied to the communists, who suddenly found
themselves in a minority in the Sejm. On 24 August, after Kiszczak
resigned as Prime Minister, Jaruzelski felt compelled to offer the post
to Solidarity’s Tadeusz Mazowiecki.^33 Solidarity played a deft game and
accepted Kiszczak’s reappointment as Minister of Internal Affairs;
and Polish armed forces stayed inside the Warsaw Pact. It was obvi-
ously going to be an unstable symbiosis, and Mazowiecki remorselessly