494 SOLIDARNOSC
The imbalance of foreign trade could only be regulated by the summary cancel-
lation of imports, on which the revival of industry would depend. Poland, which
is a rich country blessed with great natural resources, sank into a state of abject
poverty unparalleled in Europe.
As a result of the December Coup, Poland's standing on the international
scene lost all semblance of respectability. The military regime was widely seen
as a surrogate of the Soviet Union, and was treated as such. The USA pointedly
introduced economic sanctions against the USSR as well as against Poland,
demanding that the State of War be rescinded, that the internees be released, and
that genuine dialogue be initiated. Although American policy caused friction
among America's Western allies, who were scrambling at that very time to close
a series of deals with Moscow over the Siberian pipeline project, it left no room
for doubt concerning the ultimate responsibility for Poland's distress. The over-
throw of Poland's Soviet-controlled civilian dictatorship by a Soviet-controlled
military dictatorship could hardly be regarded as a major shift in the balance of
international power; but it provided a suitable occasion for giving the world a
lesson in East European realities. Those well-intentioned pundits, who had
revived their delusions about the supposed 'convergence' of the Soviet and the
Western worlds, received a rude set-back. Two Polish Ambassadors, in
Washington and Tokyo, defected; and by their pathetic reversal of roles, from
staunch Communist loyalist to eager democrat overnight, exposed the wretched
morale on which the communist elite is founded. Candles, which were lighted
on Christmas Eve in the windows of The White House and the Vatican alike,
symbolized the lengthy vigil expected by Poland's foreign friends. The Polish
Government reacted angrily when its measures of limited relaxation did not
bring the expected withdrawal of Western sanctions. As always on such occa-
sions, it was assumed that the comfortable leaders of the Western democracies,
having made their token gesture, would soon forget their love for Poland.
It must be said, however, that many harsh words were fired at the military
regime in Poland without due attention to the precise target. Indeed, it is quite
clear that the Polish authorities took great pains to conceal what was really
afoot, and may well have welcomed the deafening barrage of inaccurate foreign
criticism. For, in spite of everything, the conduct of policy in Poland lacked
many of the characteristic ingredients not only of military take-overs elsewhere
in the world but also of the usual Soviet-style programmes of 'normalization'.
The repression was highly selective, and strangely half-hearted. It lacked the
gratuitous violence of Afghanistan or El Salvador, with which it was competing
for headline space in the world's newspapers. It lacked the wholesale social ter-
ror which reigned in Kadar's Hungary after 1956, or the systematic purges of
Husak's 'normalization' in Czechoslovakia after 1968. It did not resort to mass
deportations, which would have been a sure sign of Soviet initiative; and it
lacked any note of urgency to restore the rule of the Party. Above all, it lacked
any direct involvement by Soviet personnel. For some reason, which had not
become entirely clear by the end of the State of War, the Military Regime did