70 THE END OF THE COLD WAR
visit to Poland in August 1983. Having spent years combating com-
munism as Archbishop of Kraków, he knew the tricks needed to
undermine the communist order. He made regular pronouncements
on spiritual values. He gave Poles a degree of confidence that things
would eventually turn out well for them. Receiving Vice President
Bush in the Vatican in December 1984, he called for the Americans to
nudge Jaruzelski towards a less repressive policy. He reckoned that
party rule left the Polish First Secretary with little room for manoeu-
vre. Only measures of cautious pressure on him stood any chance of
proving effective and the Pope recommended that the West should lift
the regime of economic sanctions.^30
Back in Moscow, Gromyko was encouraging about Jaruzelski’s
chances. On 23 December 1981 he told his ministry officials that
things were going better than he had thought conceivable. He was
pleased about Poland’s army and security forces. He accepted that
problems would take years to solve even with the USSR’s assistance;
but he felt certain that Soviet people would understand that this was a
price worth paying. Gromyko knew as much about Poland as he had
known about Afghanistan. He declared that the counter-revolution
had had its wings clipped in Warsaw and that Solidarity was defeated.
Somewhat contradicting himself, he added that socialism could perish
in Poland if Jaruzelski’s martial law met with defeat; and he accepted
that the process of ‘normalization’ might take many more years. He
insisted that the Poles themselves were dealing with the situation with-
out dictation by the Kremlin.^31 His performance did nothing to
enhance confidence in the Politburo. Poland had been one of the
touchstones of the USSR’s status as a European power. It had been the
same since the Russian Empire had helped to dismember the Polish
lands at the end of the eighteenth century, and Russians prided them-
selves on their expertise in understanding and handling the Poles.
Gromyko’s tired exposition annoyed Ministry of Foreign Affairs offi-
cials who saw deep trouble ahead.^32
The American administration had its own dilemmas about Eastern
Europe, and the Defense Department clashed with the State Depart-
ment. When the National Security Council met on 5 January 1982,
Weinberger put the case for economic sanctions against the USSR. He
wanted to prohibit the International Harvester Company from com-
pleting a deal to sell agricultural machinery to Moscow. Weinberger
asked for the licences to be cancelled. While admitting the machines
could not be turned into weapons, he declared: ‘It helps them to har-