During the Thompson-Mondale television debates, both candidates had been asked whether they regarded the present Polish government as a satellite of the Soviet Union. Mindful of the Polish-American votes that President Ford had lost in Chicago and elsewhere through giving a soft-on-communism answer to that same question in 1976, Governor Thompson had been careful to keep his answer on what might be called the hawkish side of Mr Mondale’s-One of his aides evidently feared that he had been too hawkish, and shortly before his press conference next day was urging an unwilling candidate to find some way of recanting.
By a misfortune which had dogged US politicians’ microphones on other matters Polish, a microphone inadvertently left live passed on to waiting pressmen Mr Thompson’s reply: ‘Goddammit, Art, I’m not going to say that I wish to make it clear that if the brave Polish people rise against their Russian oppressors, then a Thompson Administration would most certainty leave them in the…’ Suddenly, realizing that his words were being overheard by newsmen, Thompson ended with a grin and the words, ‘expletive deleted’-
There was a ripple of amused applause from the newsmen. In subsequent statements, Mr Thompson was at pains to emphasize that he was threatening nobody. Nonetheless, he was now to some extent saddled with this overheard statementand it would have been politically damaging for him to retreat too abjectly from it. Indeed, under questioning at a meeting of minority groups in Chicago, he attempted a counter-attack. He accused the Carter Administration’s Secretary of State, Zbigniew Brzezinski (himself a Pole by birth), of being “altogether too ready to sell his native country down the river’, Nobody who analysed Thompson’s statements could seriously suppose he was encouraging a Polish insurrec-tion, but there were a good many people (including some in Poland) who feared that restless Poles who heard what he had said repeated in garbled form might suppose that that was just what he was doing.
After Mr Thompson’s election as president on the first Tuesday in November, a memo from the Polish Ministry of Home Security ordered the political police, assisted where necessary by the army, quietly to round up potential strike leaders from factories in Polish towns other than Warsaw. The Ministry had heard a rumour that otherwise some sort of provincial general strike might be called to mark President Thompson’s Inauguration Day on 20 January.
The rumour was untrue, but the arrests caused a crisis.
The political police and the army tried to arrest workers’ leaders on 11 November, and met with resistance. In some places shots were fired. In more Polish troops were reluctant to obey orders and continue with the arrest of workers.
By 12 November factories in several provincial cities of Poland were under workers’ control, flying the prewar flag of Poland with the communist insignia torn out. Dramatic visual evidence of these events was provided by a group of dissidents working in Polish television. In Gdansk, the television station was taken over and held for some hours by technicians whose sympathies were with the strikers. Though the government reacted promptly, ordering the police to storm the station regardless of casualties, the staff were able in the time available to them to beam pictures of the riots out to Denmark and Sweden. In Sweden the authorities yielded at once to the threats which swiftly followed both from the Soviet Union and from Poland. They forbade both the use of the material in Sweden and its onward transmission. The Danes, on the other hand, passed it at once to Eurovision. From there it reached stations all over the world, affording striking and ineradicable proof of the intensity of feeling in Poland against the regime. One sequence in particular, showing Polish troops standing by while strikers wrecked a Soviet cultural centre in Szczecin, was more damaging to the Soviet Union than any.
In Wroclaw and Szczecin, communist party leaders went into the factories to ^negotiate’. in both places they then tried to break the promises made in the negotiations and arrest the workers’ leaders. In Wroclaw they failed, and the communist mayor was shot by the strikers, who also took other communist leaders as hostages. In Szczecin the Party soon regained control.
The central government then entered into negotiations. It promised no punitive action against those who had made even the most open shows of defiance, including those who had shot the mayor of Wroclaw. This promise was honoured until mid-January. The communist government went on ruling the country, butit seemed to some (perhaps to communist mayors especially)in name only. In Moscow there was growing concern.
A special meeting of the Soviet Politburo was called for 14 November, together with the heads of government of all the republics in the Soviet U nion. For this meeting the Kremlin leaders asked Academician Y. I. Ryabukhin, a Harvard-educated Muscovite sometimes known in the West as the best backroom Kissinger the Russians had, to prepare a position paper. This was what he wrote, in a document labelled ‘most secret’.
THE
RYABUKHIN
REPORT
1 Although President-elect Thompson has said some regrettable things, he is unlikely ever to countenance nuclear attack on the Soviet Union, just as we are unlikely to countenance it on the
USA
. Both superpowers have to bear in mind the high probability of second-strike destruction.
2 Despite this, we in the governing structure of the Soviet Union now face a situation which demands attention. Of the 180 heads of government in the different countries of the world, about 100 go to bed every night wondering whether they may be shot in a coup d’etat in the morning. Except in Stalin’s day, men in the top posts in the Soviet Union have not had to fear that. Now they might well soon be doing so. After what happened in Poland there is a distinct possibility of coups d’etat against several socialist governments in Eastern Europe. It cannot be wholly ruled out in some republics of the Soviet Union itself, especially in the Far East and south.
3 Nevertheless, we should not, at this juncture, send Soviet troops into Poland to arrest those workers in, for example, Wroclaw, who have been allowed almost literally to get away with murder. It has been thought unwise to order units of the Polish Army to open fire on the workers concerned. There are units of the Red Army which might conceivably also be reluctant to obey such orders. Only if the Polish government is overthrown by a plainly revanchist regime, or if similar events take place in other socialist countries (above all in the German Democratic Republic), should considerable Soviet forces be sent in to rectify the situation. Yugoslavia is a different matter (see note on the Yugoslav situation, below).
4 The position in Poland makes it important that we should put the Americans in a position of weakness somewhere else, and ensure that some humiliating retreats have to be undertaken by the Americans during the early weeks of President Thompson’s Administration. This can be called a Bay of Pigs strategy.
5 It will be remembered that in the early days of the Kennedy Administration in 1961 our agents among the so-called Cuban emigres in America, who have been in many respects useful, helped to instigate the bound-to-be-abortive American-backed invasion of the Bay of Pigs against Fidel Castro, who knew every detail of the invasion plan in advance. This humiliation of the Americans enabled Soviet penetration of South America to continue unchecked throughout the Democratic Administration of 1961-8, except that by placing offensive missiles in Cuba in 1963 Khrushchev unwisely pushed the Americans too far.
6 Unfortunately, we cannot precisely repeat the Bay of Pigs, because the United States is not preparing to invade anywhere unsuccessfully during the early days of the Thompson Administration. We should therefore try to set up situations where President Thompson in his early days will be forced to order or accept a retreat by America and its allies from a situation created by us.
7 A ‘Thompson retreat’ of this sort should be engineered in order to check a possible ‘momentum of revolt’ which may otherwise begin to be felt by the Soviet Union. At risk, if there is no such early retreat, may be the lives and livelihoods of many who work within the governing structure of the Soviet Union and its allies. If a ‘momentum of revolt’ were to spread from Poland, many would indeed go to bed each night fearing that they might be shot in a coup d’etat next morning. There is little likelihood that the United States will risk the desolation of the planet by nuclear action simply because we have provoked the President, and it is unlikely to allow possibly less stable allies like Iran to risk doing so either. On the contrary, as Thompson has to operate in accordance with a public opinion which will grow scared much more quickly than our own censor-protected public opinion will do, he will order retreats at a much earlier stage than we. A straightforward threat of nuclear holocaust carries little conviction. On the other hand, to hint at escalation towards it offers great advantage to the
USSR
. We should make constant use of this.
8 When we have brought about one or two Thompson retreats’, we should flatter the new president and move back towards detente. We should not even insist on keeping all the ground gained for our Egyptian and other allies (some of whom might become inconveniently big for their boots) during the initial Thompson retreats. We should also play upon the President-elect’s vanity by manoeuvring the lame-duck Carter Administration into taking some of the preliminary steps in preparation for a possible war before Thompson’s Inauguration Day on 20 January. Then we should proclaim on Inauguration Day that ‘Democratic Administrations have always started wars in American history, while Republican Administrations have always stopped them’, and make Thompson feel he is a great peacemaker instead of the weak demagogue he is. This desirable timetable means that we need to move quickly.
9 The five (partly alternative) plans that might be put into effect quickly are: (a) Operation’Middle East; (b) Operation India; (c) Operation Central America; (d) Operation Southern Africa; (e) Operation Yugoslavia. We know from our agents in the US that Thompson’s adviserse.g., in last week’s so-called secret Think-Tank report and the Ex-Secretary’s reportare worried about all five of these, and are in ihe usual state of capitalist muddle about how to react to any of them. As will emerge, I recommend only Operation Middle East and Operation Southern Africa. 1 am opposed, for reasons 1 will state, to Operations India and Central America. 1 would also not yet implement Operation Yugoslavia. But let us keep the Americans worrying for a time that we may start any of them.
10 Operation Middle East. Some people in the Democratic Socialist Republic of Egypt have long wished to arrange coups d’etat in the enormously oil-rich and effete states of Saudi Arabia, Iraq and the Gulf, and to proclaim a new United Arab Republic. We have hitherto restrained them from this. We should now actively and immediately encourage it. A Middle East planning team should be set up, and make daily reports to the Politburo each evening at 6 p m from now on Primary (and attainable) objective by Thompson’s Inauguration Day on 20 January, the new president should have to take steps to restrain Iran and to safeguard America’s oil, jumping humiliatingly through hoops plainly held by us Secondary(but more difficult) objective it will be a very great advantage indeed if thereafter Egypt remains in command of the oil of a new United Arab Republic, and we can remain in command of Egypt
1! Operation India Some of the Asian republics of the Soviet Union are frightened that the more successful (and unfortunately more capitalist) successor states of the old Indian Union may gravitate towards the China Japan co-prosperity sphere, this is the so-called policy of ‘turning India into a hundred Hong Kongs’ Our Asian comrades say this could intensify pressures in the industrializing Soviet-Asian republics to move the same way. and even ‘bring a coup d’etat in Khabarovsk’, where too many Japanese businessmen are now allowed on day trips from Tokyo in connection with joint Japanese ventures for the development of Siberia It is therefore suggested, under Operation India, that friendly socialist stales of the former Indian Union be encouraged to overrun successful capitalist neighbours (especially the smaller and most capitalist and most successful-ones), this is the so-called strategy of ‘making those hundred Indian Hong Kongs into a hundred Goas’ 1 am opposed to a full Operation India at this juncture. because (a) I am not sure we would win (we would be allying ourselves with the weakest forces m the region, not the strongest), (b) I do not want to annoy China-Japan at this time (it is vital to keep China-Japan separate from America, instead of unnecessarily promoting an alliance between them), and © we should not disperse our effort in these next few critical weeks By all means, however, make the Americans think uneasily that an operation in India may be in the wind Perhaps we should encourage some ‘trade union’ strikes in appropriate places in capitalist India, and possibly some assassinations I suggest that a second-rank
KGB
planning team be given this responsibility Objective to keep the pot boiling, but not to precipitate any actual changes of regime, except if some rotten Indian capitalist apples fall off the bough right into our buckets
12 Operation Central America Our Caribbean friends (among whom Jamaica is now rather more valuable than Cuba) say that the new President of Mexico is a dynamic and able man, who is dangerously liable to turn Mexico into a prosperous and breakthrough country This could raise the danger of coup^ d’etat against the governments in South America The Jamaicans and Cubans are therefore eager to arrange a coup d’etat in Mexico in these next few dying weeks of the lame-duck Carter presidency I am opposed to Operation Central America on much the same grounds as 1 oppose a full Operation India (a) we might not succeed, and (b) Mexico is altogether too near America, and an attempted communist coup d’etat there might unite Americans around Presidents Carter and Thompson. possibly even leading to decisive American action, while our whole object is to find operations which will produce disunity. and where America cannot take decisive action because the outgoing and incoming Administrations will not agree Once again, however, as with Operation India, there might be a case for a modified version of Operation Central America An assassination of the Mexican president could be advantageous, done by somebody who cannot be traced to us, while we express the most effusive condolences to the still capitalist but much weaker Mexican vice-president, whose vanity will be assuaged by then acceding to office A
KGB
team should report on the possibilities