(See Cover)
Russia seems to be impregnable, but she is not at all. Poland is her weak spot.
—Bismarck (1887)
In a smoke-filled basement room in Warsaw's Polytechnic Institute last week, 30 determined young Poles probed deep for the weak spot in Russia's hitherto impregnable Communist empire. No plotters, and meaning to be peaceable, they were asking questions: How much farther can Poland go on the road to democratization without risking a Soviet crackdown? Can the Polish Communist Party slow down the momentum of Poland's drive for complete national independence? The answers could also spell out the end of Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe, and a formidable reduction of Soviet power itself.
The Polytechnic students saw a specific test for their questions: Poland's general elections next January. A free and honest election in Poland today could result in a clean sweep for the now banned Catholic parties, so deep runs the revulsion from Communism. The January elections will not be free, but the Communists, under intense pressure, will offer approved alternate candidates on a one-party slate for the first time. The Polytechnic students (members of Catholic, Socialist and Communist youth organizations) seemed ready to accept this, provided they could nominate some of the "approved alternates." Similar groups among factory workers and peasants—most prominent in the fight for liberalizing the tyranny—are taking the same line. Though their chosen candidates might have to be Communists, they wanted to make sure that they were also patriotically Polish. For the moment, they were not asking more.
What made the students and workers wise in their time and situation was not alone the example of Hungary. They also had a belief in a man, once disgraced and imprisoned, almost forgotten a year ago, whose firm defiance of the Russians had shot him up through the crumbling Communist apparatus to a position of national hero. In Wladyslaw Gomulka many Poles feel that they found a leader before it was too late.
The Guarantee. It was a mutual discovery. In the new nine-man Politburo, Gomulka has few comrades he can trust, and not a few old Communist enemies. His position there depends on his continuing influence on the workers and intellectuals who hold him in such high regard. He is taking great pains to cultivate and preserve that regard by the only means he knows: hard work, courtesy, firmly expressed cautionary advice and, for a fanatic Communist, daring departures from the old Stalin economic and political dogmas.