Never Speak to Strangers and Other Writing from Russia and the Soviet Union

Financial Times, Thursday, August 28, 1980

Russia Keeping Its Hands off Poland

Poland would need to descend into chaos and near civil war before the Soviet Union felt compelled to intervene.

Trouble in Poland has historically been associated with a weakening of the Russian empire. If the Soviet press has given pro-forma endorsement to changes in the Polish political structure unthinkable 10 years ago, it was because, under present circumstances, the Soviet leadership may have had little choice.

The extreme sensitivity of the Polish strikes and the threat they pose to the whole Socialist bloc, were emphasised by the Soviet decision to jam Russian-language broadcasts by the BBC, the Voice of America and Deutsche Welle, and by the almost total silence in the Soviet press about Poland which prevailed until Monday.

Workers emulating the Polish model could undermine the Communist Party dictatorship in every East European Socialist country, and the decision to allow the changes proposed by Mr. Edward Gierek, the Polish party leader, which include free elections to the government trade union, was a major Soviet concession.

To have refused to compromise with the strikers would have carried even graver risks for the Soviet leaders than those presented by liberalisation. The Soviet Union is in no position to launch an invasion in Europe. It is badly strained by the resistance in Afghanistan and the prospect of worsening relations with the West.

The East European allies are independent of the Kremlin only to the extent that they are able to resist its wishes. If Poland were allowed to become as free and pluralistic as Yugoslavia, thereby exerting a strong attraction for people in other Socialist bloc countries, it would be because the Russians knew that, if they invaded, the Poles would be ready to fight.

The Soviet decision to invade a satellite state depends not only on the threat of ideological contamination from fundamental democratic reforms, but also on the military and political risk.

The Soviet leaders had little to lose when they ordered the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Detente and the development of economic and trade ties with the West had not begun, the Soviet Union was not militarily engaged elsewhere, whereas the U.S. was bogged down in Vietnam, and Czechoslovakia, with a population of only 15m, would clearly not resist.

Poland today is far different. Popular animosity towards Russians has deep roots, and the Soviet Union has tried not to interfere in Poland as long as Communist Party rule was not threatened. In 1956, when Mr. Wladyslaw Gomulka came to power backed by popular riots, Mr. Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Premier, was taken by surprise and immediately flew to Warsaw without informing Polish border guards.

The invasion of Czechoslovakia required 600,000 troops, 500,000 of them drawn from the Soviet Union itself, even though there was no significant Czechoslovak resistance. An invasion of Poland, through which run vital supply and communications lines between Russia and Soviet forces in East Germany, would require at least a million men. In the face of the expected intense resistance from the Polish Army, such an invasion would arouse little enthusiasm among more liberal Warsaw Pact members.

Since the invasion of Afghanistan, the Soviet leaders have, with remarkable skill, managed to maintain their ties with West Germany, and France. These ties, and the access to Western technology which have flowed from them, have become more important to the Soviet leadership as the U.S.-Soviet relationship has come under strain.

An invasion of Poland, and a long struggle to subdue it, would probably ensure Mr. Ronald Reagan’s election as President of the United States and mark the start of an uncontrolled arms race. By alienating Western Europe, it would threaten the credit and trade position of the entire Socialist bloc, thereby confirming a new cold war. It would also provoke a drop in the Soviet standard of living which could in turn lead to the first widespread labour unrest in the Soviet Union itself.

It was probably with this in mind that the Soviet leaders decided to back Mr. Gierek, tacitly endorsing his proposals by reporting them in some detail in the controlled Press, even though the mention of political reforms being forced on a communist government by “social dissatisfaction” made astonishing reading for Soviet citizens.

Even if the Polish strikers accepted Mr. Gierek’s proposals for free elections to the government unions, rather than holding out for the establishment of independent unions, the party’s power could be seriously reduced. Poland would then have a degree of political pluralism which does not exist in any other Warsaw Pact country. Under the circumstances, new and tighter restrictions on contacts between Polish and Soviet citizens would be inevitable.

The Soviet leadership can probably live with these changes, provided that Poland’s essential allegiance to the Socialist bloc is not called into question and that no opening is created whereby the party could lose overall control.

The Soviet Union’s policy towards its allies is dictated by the expediencies of maintaining control over a vast and diverse empire. As long as communist regimes keep power, these expediencies can change.