488 SOLIDARNOSC
Soviet leadership had decided on a show of strength, if not in the form of direct
military intervention at least in the form, as in Czechoslovakia in August 1968,
of threatening military manoeuvres. A Soviet warfleet appeared in the Baltic off
the Bay of Gdansk. Soviet tank divisions massed on Poland's eastern frontiers.
According to American satellite surveillance, the tanks on one day actually
crossed onto Polish territory. President Carter's National Security adviser,
Polish-born Zbigniew Brezezinski, held an urgent telephone conversation with
the Polish Pope in Rome - it was mid-December 1980. But then the tension sub-
sided. No intervention occurred.
Much remains to be clarified about this curious episode. But the essential out-
lines can be deduced. One knows, for example, that General Jaruzelski was
appointed Prime Minister shortly after the start of the crisis, thereby giving his
pro-Muscovite faction of the PZPR a hold over the state machine irrespective of
the faltering Party leadership. One also knows, from what happened later in the
year, that early in 1981, secret planning began under Jaruzelski's direction for a
military coup. In the view of some commentators, the main question revolved
round the conundrum of whether Jaruzelski acted of his own free will or on
orders sent by Moscow. But such a debate ignores the realities. As a Soviet
placeman inside Poland throughout his career, Jaruzelski did not have the
option of making his own decision. He might conceivably have taken the initia-
tive in proposing a course of action that was subsequently approved by his mas-
ters in Moscow. He could fairly claim to have acted from humanitarian motives,
by seeking to keep bloodshed to a minimum. And by preferring the solution of
would-be Soviet reformers as opposed to the advocates of merciless repression,
he could be regarded as playing a relatively skilful and enlightened political
game. But it was a game that was played within the framework of Soviet domin-
ation over Poland. Whatever explanations Jaruzelski was to give in his mem-
oirs, patriotism simply could not have entered the equation.^3
Throughout 1981, therefore, Solidarity struggled to realise its objectives,
oblivious to the preparations that were being made to suppress it. It overcame
numerous difficulties. On March 19, it resisted the temptation to take to the
streets in response to a police provocation at Bydgoszcz, where Solidarity
activists were savagely beaten. (The Bydgoszcz Affair was terminated at the end
of the month by an accord in Warsaw which many people considered to make
unnecessary concessions.) In early July, it survived the threatening debates of a
Communist Party Congress which many expected to end in a call for Soviet
intervention. In September, it successfully organized a national congress of its
own in which, despite the feverish and chaotic atmosphere, delegates from all
over Poland confirmed the overwhelming popularity of its cause. Above all, it
attracted the support of some ten million members; and it became the natural
arbiter of all manner of disputes - in the factories, in the big housing estates, in
the shops, even in the streets. 1981 was a year of maximum social distress.
Empty food stores were closed for most of the day. Families stood in line
for hours on end waiting for their meagre rations. Queues at petrol stations