Poised for a Showdown

By Stephen Smith

With Soviet troops near by, the unions walk the tightrope

The choices were more sharply drawn than ever. Poland last week stood poised between what Warsaw Journalist Stefan Bratkowski called "a revolution of good sense," and a perilous showdown with its Soviet master. Everyone in Poland, after months of denying the obvious, finally acknowledged that Soviet intervention was a real possibility. Indeed, both the government and Solidarity, the federation of Poland's new independent unions, issued calls for moderation. But at the same time, the workers continued to test Moscow's patience with provocative moves. Solidarity brazenly announced the establishment of a special commission to defend jailed dissidents--just the sort of political gesture that the Kremlin has warned against. Meanwhile, farmers clamored for a union of their own. A huge ceremony marking the tenth anniversary of the bloody 1970 riots on the Baltic coast was planned for this week, and officials worried lest it get out of hand. If it did, Soviet troops stood on alert at Poland's borders. "The Poles," said a concerned analyst in Bonn, "seem to have a particular talent for courting national suicide." But the workers were not contemplating retreat. Said Union Leader Lech Walesa: "We are not cowards. We are not going back, ever."

U.S. intelligence experts in Washington believe that the Kremlin will sooner or later have to use force in Poland. The likelihood of intervention will remain high, they say, even if the recent Soviet military buildup turns out to be a bluff. With no sign of easing tensions, Western analysts revised their initially optimistic estimates of an earlier East bloc summit in Moscow. At that meeting Party Boss Stanislaw Kania may not have got a reprieve, as first thought. Instead, he was apparently read the riot act: either revive the party and get the country moving again--or else. "These talks were very difficult," a well-informed Polish journalist told TIME last week. "From our side there were no guarantees, and from our partners there was a notable lack of confidence."

Perhaps to soothe Moscow, Polish newspapers blamed the crisis atmosphere on the Western press. Reported Zycie Warszawy: "All the drama is to be found in news wires, newspaper columns, television and radio. None of it is in our country." Nevertheless, there was a sense that one misstep could bring tragedy. Poland's Roman Catholic bishops released a pastoral letter calling for calm and cooperation. It ended with a prayer: "Give us the spirit of peace and responsibility that there be no bloodshed or war. Defend us so that we may not lose the freedom won by our fathers at so large a cost."

The Western view that Soviet intervention is inevitable was rooted in a cold-blooded diagnosis of the Polish disease. Not only is it critical, it is chronic, degenerative and infectious. With nasty irony, Poland is proving that Marx was right: political crisis does sprout from economic difficulty. And in Poland's case, the economy is on the brink of collapse.

National income, the rough equivalent of gross national product, is expected to drop by 3% in 1980, making Poland the first East bloc country to suffer two consecutive declines. Its hard-currency debt to the West has risen to $23 billion; servicing it requires about 80% of its export revenues. Exports are down, largely because coal production is running more than 5% behind projections. Poor weather and absurdly low government price ceilings--a major disincentive to farmers--have contributed to a 12% decline in agricultural output. "Queues existed before, but now we have no food at all," complained a worker at the Ursus tractor factory outside Warsaw last week. Food exports, which earned $1.4 billion last year, have dwindled to a trickle.

Perhaps even more disturbing to the Kremlin, the Polish Communist Party is in disarray; it is seemingly unable to restrain the workers. Its discipline is poor and its morale worse. According to one report, local party groups have been attempting to reorganize without the blessing of the central committee. Astonishingly, an estimated 700,000 Communists, about a fourth of the party membership, have joined Solidarity.

Finally, Moscow is increasingly concerned that Poland's heresy will take hold in other East bloc countries, possibly in the Soviet Union itself. Says Marshall Goldman,'associate director of Harvard's Russian Research Center: "If the Poles get away with it, the Russians know it will spread." Already, reports are multiplying that tiny free trade union movements may be cropping up in other Soviet satellites. The first explicit confirmation came in a speech, published only last week but delivered a month earlier by Jan Fojtik, a Czechoslovak party ideologist. "In connection with the events in Poland," he said, "people in many places in Czechoslovakia had begun to discuss the status of the unions and their tasks in a socialist society."

Even though the Soviets are faced with all these compelling factors, intelligence experts believe that invasion represents an absolute last resort. A Western ambassador in Moscow asks rhetorically: "What would the tanks do after they got to Warsaw? They can't make the workers work." Indeed, it is more likely that Poland would become a giant welfare case leeching billions from the Soviet Union every year.

The prospect of bloody skirmishes with the highly nationalistic and traditionally anti-Russian Poles must also daunt Moscow. Although outmanned by Soviet forces on its border and hindered by outdated arms and equipment, the 210,000-man Polish army might put up some resistance. Says a Western diplomat in Warsaw: "I don't look for divisions to fight. But at the battalion and company level, they would." Last week Soviet officers in civilian clothes were reported to have moved into the Polish Defense Ministry; presumably their mission was to limit the potential for mutiny if intervention is called for.

Polish police and security forces are considered more responsive to party control than the conscript-laden army. If these internal forces could not control workers' strikes and uprisings, the Soviets could be "invited" into Poland by the Warsaw government. The Soviets could strike with upwards of 40 divisions, each consisting of 7,000 to 13,000 troops, according to an expert at the International

Institute for Strategic Studies in London. The Soviets have 31 divisions in the western Soviet Union, 19 in East Germany, five in Czechoslovakia, two in Poland; they could also draw on troops affiliated with other Warsaw Pact nations. One Western observer estimates the Soviets "could be within effective control of large portions of the country within 24 hours after deciding to invade."

Intervention would ruin whatever chance the Kremlin leaders had of establishing rapport with the new Reagan presidency. The Soviets would also be throwing away what remains of detente not only with Washington but Western Europe as well. Concerted Western action was discussed in Brussels last week at the regular winter meeting of NATO foreign ministers. Quickened by the threat on Europe's own frontiers, they readily agreed to a joint response, with specific steps depending on the harshness of the Soviet action. Arms limitation talks would surely be suspended, and the West would probably withdraw from the Madrid Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Coordinated economic sanctions could range from a suspension of trade credits to embargoes on food and high technology sales. Defense Secretary Harold Brown told NATO he had no doubt that "the West would also have to react by further building up its military capability." He won support for this even from the French. In a strong communique deliberately left unspecific to avoid provoking Moscow, the NATO foreign ministers warned that detente "could not survive if the Soviet Union were again to violate the basic rights of any state to territorial integrity and independence. Poland should be free to decide its own future."

While the NATO leaders did not entertain the possibility of military reponse, they discussed some risks that Alliance members could face in the event of an invasion. One example: the prospect of hundreds of Polish "boat people" escaping across the icy Baltic Sea, which would pose more than a refugee problem. "Do the Danes or the West Germans go to the protection of fleeing Poles with their frigates or patrol boats, and risk exchanging fire with the Russians?" asked a NATO official.

As the week began, the Polish crisis was Washington's major foreign policy concern. Alarmed by fresh intelligence reports of Soviet military activity, President Carter summoned key advisers to the White House Sunday morning, and later in the day met with the National Security Council and congressional leaders. After these sessions, the White House said that "preparations for possible Soviet intervention in Poland appear to have been completed," and warned that such a step would have "very adverse consequences for U.S.-Soviet relations."

Administration officials were disturbed that Soviet troops had been brought closer to Poland's eastern border and that Moscow was continuing to call up reservists. Intelligence reports said that command and communication links between the Soviet Union and military facilities in East Germany and Czechoslovakia were also being put in top readiness. Said a senior Administration official: "It is our judgment that they are now ready to move."

Washington had two goals in making the strong statement. It wanted to emphasize to the Poles that the Soviets were poised to strike. It also wanted to arouse world opinion against the Soviets. Before the invasions of Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, the U.S. did not publicize Soviet movements even though they were apparent. This time, officials reasoned, the U.S. should deny the Soviets the advantage of tactical surprise. As one Administration official put it: "To keep silent would have almost suggested complicity."

The pressure rose again the following day when TASS, the official Soviet news agency, warned that "counterrevolutionary groups" within Solidarity were turning to "open confrontation" with the Polish Communist Party and with factory and office administrators. At the Iskra ball bearing and spark plug factory in Kielce, TASS charged, workers had ousted the management and disarmed security guards. The dispatch, which originated in Warsaw, also said that officials of the pro-party trade unions had been replaced by "persons who openly adhere to antigovernment positions." Both Solidarity and the official Polish press denied the story.

It was the harshest attack yet on the new unions, and implied a dangerous drift toward lawlessness that needed rectifying. Significantly, the TASS report was broadcast by Radio Moscow, but did not appear in Soviet newspapers, suggesting it was intended for Poland and the West rather than domestic consumption.

Three days later TASS carried portions of a truculent speech by Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov. Addressing a high-level military group whose proceedings would ordinarily be secret, Ustinov called for "heightened vigilance against the aggressive aspirations of imperialist forces, against the attempts of reaction to damage the positions of socialist countries, specifically of socialist Poland." The implication that pressures on Poland were external rather than internal was similar to charges made against "Western imperialists" and "West German revanchists" before the invasion of Czechoslovakia.

In Poland, the official army newspaper attacked Solidarity for three straight days. The newspaper, Zolnierz Wolnosci, lamented Poland's "lack of order," and underlined its strategic importance as a transportation and communications bridge between the Soviet Union and East Germany, the Warsaw Pact's western flank. Cautioned the paper: "Closing one's eyes to the imperialistic plans would mean suicide." In a tough speech on Saturday, Kania himself declared menacingly that his government had "enough justification and strength to curb the action of open foes of socialism."

The two-pronged propaganda assault kept Solidarity on the defensive--just as Moscow had hoped. Union leaders felt compelled to issue a statement denying that Solidarity was trying to spread "chaos and anarchy." Said the union: "We believe that negotiations are the best way to meet understandable worker demands and defend social interests." After months of steadily intensifying demands, Solidarity's leaders late last month declared a moratorium on strikes and urged the impatient rank and file to give the government some breathing space. Not only was the strike moratorium being heeded last week, but two of Solidarity's more militant locals were sounding almost repentant. The Warsaw branch said talk of a general strike had been a "mistake"--despite the fact that the workers' pressure won the release of two imprisoned Solidarity sympathizers. Similarly, leaders of the railway workers said it had been an "error" to shut down commuter lines in Gdansk and Warsaw several weeks ago.

Solidarity Leader Walesa seems torn between his impulse toward restraint and his desire to show that the unions cannot be cowed. In an interview with TIME he was alternately combative and cautious. "The authorities have been trying to provoke strikes, and these provocations are unacceptable," he said at one juncture. "If the government does not stop, we will really have a strike--a very serious one." A moment later, he was appeasing: "We do not want to strike, but our solutions will be adapted to circumstances."

Meanwhile, a new union claiming to represent 500,000 of Poland's 3.2 million private farmers scheduled a meeting this week to discuss ways of protesting the government's refusal to give it legal status. Under consideration are public demonstrations, sit-ins at local government offices and an interruption in food deliveries. Leaders of Rural Solidarity, as the movement is known, say that they will not call strikes unless their industrial counterpart approves, which is highly unlikely. Even so, the farmers have injected yet another substantial element of tension into the crisis. Said a West German Foreign Ministry specialist: "A month ago, even two weeks ago, an argument over the Warsaw court's decision not to register the farmers as an independent union would not have been so risky. But now a hair-trigger situation exists."

Trust has been the pivotal element throughout Poland's four-month war of nerves. The unions have prevailed so far because they engender it and the regime does not. The government lost what little credibility it had ten years ago, when the army and police opened fire on rioting workers in Baltic seaports, killing at least 49. "It really started here in 1970," says an intellectual in Gdansk. "After 1970, both sides behaved differently." Tuesday is the tenth anniversary of that fateful day, and hundreds of thousands of Poles were expected to gather outside Lenin Shipyard's main gate to honor the fallen workers by dedicating a 138-ft.-high monument with three steel-girder crosses on top. To the old men sitting 730 miles away in the Kremlin, that scene would be a disturbing one indeed.

--By Stephen Smith. Reported by Erik Amfitheatrof and Barry Kalb/Warsaw

With reporting by Erik Amfitheatrof, Barry Kalb/Warsaw

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