A Covert Action by Seth G. Jones

Author:Seth G. Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2018-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

WHILE U.S. OFFICIALS WERE GENERALLY PLEASED with the Catholic Church’s activities in Poland, Soviet leaders were incensed.34 A top secret KGB memo concluded that “in recent years the Head of the Catholic church and right-wing circles in the Vatican have been stepping up subversive activity against the socialist countries and the national liberation and anti-war movements.”35 The KGB disdained John Paul II, who its leaders accused of being both anti-Communist and anti-Soviet. They blamed the church for using Poland as a launching pad for subversive activity across Eastern Europe: “The Vatican also assumes that the action of the Polish church to strengthen its position in the state can be extended to other socialist countries.”36 According to the KGB, which asked its operatives to recruit spies in Catholic organizations and the Vatican, the pope’s strategy was simple: to exploit church officials across the region as ideological shock troops that could intensify anti-Communist and anti-Soviet sentiments among the masses.

Yuri Andropov, the general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union who had succeeded Brezhnev, wrote a ferocious letter to Jaruzelski warning that the “church is reawakening the cult of Wałęsa, giving him inspiration and encouraging him in his actions. This means that the church is creating a new type of confrontation with the Party.”37 Wałęsa, who had won the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1983, gave the prize money to a Catholic Church fund to help private farmers modernize the countryside. Andropov wrote to Jaruzelski:

Today, the church is a powerful opposition force against socialism, appearing in the role of patron and defender of the underground and defender of the idea of Solidarity. . . . In this situation, the most important thing is not to make concessions, but to establish firmly a line of restricting the activity of the church to the constitutional framework, and narrow the sphere of its influences on the social life.38

Soviet leaders wanted Jaruzelski to muzzle the church. In April 1984, two months after Andropov’s death, Soviet officials summoned Jaruzelski to a railway car meeting in Brest-Litovsk, this time with Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko and Defense Minister Dimitri Ustinov. They were livid at Jaruzelski’s account of state-church relations. As Gromyko told the Soviet politburo: “Concerning the attitude of the Polish church, [Jaruzelski] described the church as an ally, without whom progress is impossible. He did not say a word about a determined struggle against the intrigues of the church.”

Presiding over the politburo review on April 26, 1984, Konstantin Chernenko, Andropov’s successor, noted sternly, “The counterrevolutionary forces continue their activities, the church leads the offensive, inspiring and uniting the enemies of communism and those dissatisfied by the present system.”

“Generally, if one may say so, the matter of building the [Communist] Party is out of line with Jaruzelski’s soul,” said Gromyko.

“I’m of the opinion that he was insincere with us,” Ustinov responded.

“It turns out,” said Mikhail Gorbachev, who had carefully reviewed the notes of the railway car meeting, “that Jaruzelski undoubtedly wanted to present the situation as better than it really was.

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