THE SOLIDARITY DECADE 495not feel inclined to exploit its new-found powers to the full. It was curiously
inhibited, and by Soviet standards, unbelievably restrained. Its immobility
remained an unsolved riddle. Much may be attributed to the paralysis of the
Party machine which had suffered the political equivalent of a nervous break-
down, and which was incapable of reassuming power even if ordered to do so.
But that was not the whole story. There were tell-tale hints that Jaruzelski's
fight behind the scenes against his comrades and his would-be allies was even
more crucial than his public confrontation with Solidarity. One had to wonder
what was happening in the silent wrangle between the various factions of the
Polish Communist camp. One had to wonder why the Western press
was allowed to remain in Warsaw in force, despite occasional molestations,
unless, perhaps, it was reporting the wrong things. It was hard to imagine, if the
presence of Western pressmen and television crews did not serve someone's
interest, why an all-powerful police state could not have them all unceremoni-
ously expelled. Most interestingly, one had to wonder about Jaruzelski's role in
the run-up to Brezhnev's succession in Moscow. Jaruzelski was certainly
engaged in a holding operation, and playing the waiting game. But, to the out-
side world at least, it was not immediately evident for whom or for what he was
waiting.
For Jaruzelski was not merely Moscow's man in Poland. He was the servant
of the military interest within the Soviet apparatus, the batman of the Soviet
marshals. By taking over the People's Republic himself, he had saved the Soviet
Army from a very unpleasant task. At the same time, by deploying the Polish
armed forces, he had raised the stakes against an eventual Soviet invasion of
Poland. He was the first Polish leader since the war who put Poland in a posi-
tion capable of defending itself. His demarche cut both ways. He crushed the
hopes of SOLIDARITY; but he equally forestalled the prospect of a vendetta
against Poland by the more doctrinaire comrades in Moscow and Warsaw. No
one was to know which of the two opposite dangers he judged the more men-
acing, and to what extent, if any, Marshal Kulikov disagreed. All one can say is
that he had been schooled by the Soviet Military for the eventuality of political
intervention in Poland ever since Rokossowski's expulsion in 1956. He had
taken over the duties of the last remaining Soviet general officers in Poland - in
i960 as the head of the Army's Political Department, and in 1965 as the Chief of
the General Staff. As Minister of Defence, he had served ex officio as a deputy
commander of the Warsaw Pact joint forces for some fifteen years, in the clos-
est possible association with the Soviet top brass. In 1981—2, when he added the
posts of Prime Minister, First Secretary, and Chairman of the WRON to his col-
lection, he had ensured, for the time being at least, that no one else could mus-
cle his way on to the Polish political stage. At which point, Yuri I. Andropov
appeared at the controls of the Soviet Bloc, but with no indication whether his
elevation was connected with the ambitions of the marshals, or not. Twelve
months after the December Coup, the fate of People's Poland was back where it
had started nearly forty years before - in the hands of the Soviet Military, and