496 SOLIDARNOSC
of their Polish military aides; but there was no clue as to where it would end up.
Nor could there be. The formulation of Soviet policy after Brezhnev's death, like
the progress of the Polish Revolution, was still in a state of suspense.
The Terminal Illness of the PRL, 1983—89Seen in retrospect, it is obvious that Soviet-type Communism was suffering from
a far more deadly disease than appeared on the surface. Most Western observers
did not catch sight of the symptoms until the amazing career of Mikhail
Gorbachev in the USSR in the late 1980s and his ill-fated policies of glasnost and
perestroika. Yet to a political sophistique like Jaruzelski, a member of the Soviet
Bloc's secret inner circle, the writing on the wall must have been visible consider-
ably earlier. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that Jaruzelski, who had been
closely associated with Andropov long before Gorbachev had, was acting under
Soviet licence to use Poland as a laboratory for the reformist strategy that only the
privileged, well-informed elite of the KGB were capable of pursuing. Most Poles
were too angry with Jaruzelski to see what he was up to; and, in any case, a res-
cue for Communism was the last thing they wanted. Yet if Gorbachev proved to
be Communism's false Messiah, Jaruzelski was its pseudo John the Baptist.
Unfortunately for Jaruzelski, the power game of the Soviet leadership, which
was essential for the success of a Soviet satellite, did not play itself out in the
most favourable way. Yuri Andropov died in Moscow in February 1983 within
a year of his elevation. His successor, Konstantin Chernyenko, was an ageing
nonentity, whose moribund inertia made the late Brezhnev look the paragon of
dynamism. Gorbachev, who reached the top in March 1985, was slow to reveal
his hand, and initially gave priority to the reduction of international tension. So
it was 1987 at least before Jaruzelski could be seen to be working in unison with
a really congenial Soviet leader. By that time, Jaruzelski's impasse was far
advanced, and Gorbachev was approaching the point where the USSR's
European satellites had lost their former usefulness.
Jaruzelski's impasse derived from the consequences of his own triumph. By
leading twentieth-century Europe's most impressive military coup, he had
totally disabled the democratic opposition. But he had also destroyed the
confidence of the Polish Communists, and had crippled the civilian structures
through which the PZPR had once operated. Short of using the Army
indefinitely as a substitute government, in a strategy which would have contra-
dicted his Party's ideological principles and would have weakened the country's
military readiness, he could only hope against hope that new allies and inven-
tive helpers would materialize. Meanwhile, Poland's practical problems multi-
plied. The PRON experiment proved abortive. Industrial productivity remained
catastrophically low. Tinkering with market mechanisms could not lift the
deadweight of central economic planning. Foreign debt stayed damagingly high.
International sanctions blocked the prospect of further international assistance.
Most worryingly perhaps, the underground opposition was creating a viable