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"Emotionally, the Soviet leaders must have wanted to intervene dozens of times in the past year," says a Western diplomat in Moscow. But the Soviets also realized the diplomatic and economic consequences would be costly: they would risk armed resistance by the proud Poles, exacerbate relations with the U.S. and Europe, affront the Third World nations they were so ardently wooing, and take on responsibility for the Polish economy.
The Kremlin kept constant pressure on the Poles with sallies of vituperative propaganda, sword-rattling threats and hints that a reduction of Soviet economic aid might put some backbone into Warsaw's fainthearted leadership. Kania was summoned to Moscow and lectured at least three times. He and his fellow centrists were forced to perform a precarious high-wire act: on the one hand, they sought to accommodate demands for liberalizations coming from Solidarity and from their own rank and file; on the other, they had to protect themselves against Warsaw party hard-liners and convince the Soviets that they were still in control.
In June the Soviet Central Committee sent Warsaw a letter, as ominous as a drum roll, that criticized by name the Polish Communists for tolerating counterrevolution: "We are disturbed by the fact that the offensive by antisocialist enemy forces in Poland threatens the interests of our entire commonwealth and the security of its borders—yes, our common security." In early July, a chill settled over Warsaw: Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko dourly descended upon the Polish capital with yet another admonition against any liberalizing tendency within the party.
Moscow's sobering warnings helped Kania curb his radicals and marshal a safe, moderate centrist majority at a crucial party congress in July. The party reformers were still strong enough to purge most of the old Central Committee, and only five top party officials, including Kania and Jaruzelski, were reelected. But control stayed in the hands of Kama's centrists, who, under pressure from Solidarity, had allowed an amount of freedom in Poland that would have been unthinkable just twelve months before.
Indeed, perhaps the greatest accomplishment of Solidarity and Walesa was that they made it possible for Poles once again to speak their minds. In Solidarity bulletins and hundreds of newly established independent newspapers, articles regularly appeared that would shock the most tolerant censor in any other East bloc country. Solidarity's national weekly Solidarnosc, for example, last month ran a blistering two-part expose on the privileges of top Communist officials. In student clubs, journalists' groups and literary unions, there were open discussions of topics that had been forbidden in the universities, such as Poland's history between the world wars. New publications bloomed like wild flowers. Edited by Catholic Intellectual Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the weekly Solidarnosc quickly reached a nationwide circulation of 500,000, easily outdistancing the once-prestigious party weekly Polityka (circ. 350,000).
The Gdansk accords had promised Solidarity access to the state broadcasting networks, but it never was given regular