Andrzej Kastory

The events that took place in Poland in summer and autumn of 1980 drew strong interest from the Western countries. In the United States, the potential literal execution of the Gdańsk Agreement was considered an existential threat for the communist system in Poland. The British embassy in Warsaw indicated that Russians had a reason to see “anti-socialist elements” in Poland. There are
approximately, the British wrote, 32 millions of them, and if Poland were an island on the Pacific Ocean, it would not have a communist regime. It is not an island though. The Foreign Office estimated that the consequences of Soviet intervention in Poland would have been lower than in the case of Afghanistan, as the latter regarded a new area, posing a potential threat to the vital interests of theWest. Another subjugation of Poland would not disturb the strategic or political balance in Europe.
Russia would consider the consequences of intervention in Poland temporary and the risks of the lack of intervention permanent, as inactivity would be an incentive for other Warsaw Pact states. Russia planned to launch the manoeuvres of Soviet the military supported by Czechoslovakian and East German divisions on 8 December. Ryszard Kukliński immediately informed the USA about this fact. It was obvious that the manoeuvres could easily turn into an armed intervention. In his letter of 3 December 1980 to Leonid Brezhnev, President Jimmy Carter emphasised that the United States was utterly committed not to take advantage of the situation in Poland and not to threaten the justified interests of the Soviet Union in the region and that they cared only about letting the Polish nation deal with its internal problems, as imposing certain decisions would have had a negative impact on American-Soviet relations. On 5 December, the Prime Minister of Canada, Pierre Trudeau, wrote a similar letter to Brezhnev. He pointed out that Canada understood the interests of the Soviet Union, in particular regarding Central Europe and stated that the allegations that Western state wanted to use the events in Poland against the Soviet Union were unfounded.
The anticipated invasion on the night of 7 and 8 December did not occur indeed. President Carter was convinced though that Moscow would finally invade, as the Solidarność movement was wholly counter to the rationale of a totalitarian system. On 19 December, Zbigniew Brzeziński informed the president that the invasion had been postponed indefinitely. He believed that the basic cause was the effectiveness of Western propaganda, which convinced the Kremlin that Western countries would apply mass political and economic sanctions.
Whilst not undervaluing the importance of Western propaganda and actions aiming at discouraging
Russia, the root cause of withdrawing from immediate intervention in Poland were military considerations, including reluctance to engage in another armed conflict in addition to Afghanistan and concern about military cooperation between the United States and China announced by Brzeziński. Therefore, this time, unlike during the crises of 1956 and 1968, Russia decided to use more refined measures to protect its interests in Poland, leaving the task of dealing with the enormous Solidarność movement to local quislings, as the English called them.