6. CRACKS IN THE ICE:
EASTERN EUROPE
While the global rivalry with America intensified, Eastern Europe
became more troublesome for the Soviet Politburo and its client rulers
in the region. People said that the Polish situation was hopeless but
not serious. The point about this joke, if it truly was a joke, lay in the
feeling that although communism could do nothing to cure Poland of
its ills, there was no prospect of the communists falling from power.
The Polish People’s Republic seemed locked forever in the cage that
the USSR had fitted around it in 1945; and the same fate appeared to
await most of the other East European countries.
Poles in their millions detested their Soviet oppressor. Even inside
the ruling establishment there were many who shared this sentiment.
The standard of living in Poland was higher than in the superpower on
its eastern frontier; but the Polish people, with their large diaspora and
access to global information, also knew how shabby their conditions
were in comparison with the countries of advanced capitalism. They
resented their nation’s subjection to an alien power and its ideology.
They yearned for genuine independence as well as cultural and reli-
gious freedom; and their history was full of episodes of revolt against
foreign dominion. They had secured a degree of easing of their plight
since the mid-1950s. The Catholic Church had permission to function,
and even to welcome Pope John Paul II – Archbishop of Kraków until
his election as Supreme Pontiff in 1979 – to the country so long as
there was no direct threat to the political status quo. The communist
leadership under Eduard Gierek had financed its ambitious industrial
schemes through loans that it raised from West European banks. This
had bought it time as subsidies were made to wages and food pro d-
ucts; but by 1981, according to the American Senate Committee on
Foreign Relations, Poland owed $27 billion in hard currency – half in
private bank loans and half in governmental credits. The banks were