Distrust in the Ranks

In the moment of his triumph last October, Wladyslaw Gomulka cried: "The Polish people can now trust their army. It is subordinate to its own government." Gomulka dismissed Soviet Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky as Poland's Minister of Defense, sent some 50 Soviet "advisers" back to Moscow, and replaced the army's Soviet-styled uniforms with others more distinctively Polish. But last week a top Polish official admitted that even these concessions had failed to mollify the bristling patriotism of Poland's soldiers, who seemed dissatisfied not only with Gomulka's uneasy halfway house of independence, but with Communism itself.

Admitted Deputy Defense Minister Janusz Zarzycki, writing for his fellow officers in the military magazine Zolnierz Wolnosci (Soldier of Freedom): "The atmosphere actually prevailing in the army is worrying us greatly." He noted "loss of confidence in the party . . . symptoms of distrust towards the command . . . lack of faith in socialism and in its superiority over the capitalist system. There is a tendency to condemn all the work done in the past twelve years; we are also inclined not to notice all the "evil and all that is inhuman in the capitalist structure, or the aggressiveness of the imperialist policy which heads for war. We notice doubts in the purposefulness of our alliance with the Soviet Union, in the importance of Soviet aid for our economy, and in the Soviet support of our national interests. In the army there are still many activists who experienced a breakdown of faith after the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party and who are in the throes of a spiritual struggle. But how long can a Communist live as a moral wreck or as an offended virgin? A soldier who observes discipline by fear is good for parades, but we cannot make war with such soldiers." In other words, unless the commissars could talk the soldiers into a greater enthusiasm for a workers' paradise, not even the general could be sure which way. in case of trouble, the Polish soldier would point his piece.

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