Moscow's hawk flies to Warsaw with a warning
Just a "friendly visit." That was how the official Polish press described the sudden jaunt to Warsaw last week of a high-level Soviet delegation headed by hawkish Politburo Ideologue Mikhail Suslov. But friendship, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. For hard-lining Polish Politburo Members Stefan Olszowski and Tadeusz Grabski, who were on hand to greet their Soviet comrades at Okecie Airport, the handshakes must have felt fraternal indeed. For Warsaw's Party Boss Stanislaw Kania, who led the delegation, and who has shown a tenacious commitment to reform, Suslov's arrival may have seemed more like a Siberian blizzard.
The visitors immediately retreated to the Central Committee's marble headquarters in central Warsaw for a six-hour meeting with the entire Polish Politburo. The bland Soviet official statement that followed significantly omitted any reference to the customary "identity of views" and contained no expression of confidence in the Polish leadership.
Most Western analysts saw Suslov's trip as a gloves-off bid to stem the tide of Polish reform. "They don't send Mikhail Suslov to hand out flowers," said a European diplomatic analyst in Moscow. Added a senior Western diplomat: "I have no doubt that he read them the riot act." If that was in fact Moscow's message, then Suslov was the right mailman. Unsmiling and wraithlike behind dark-rimmed glasses, the 78-year-old party theorist has long been the Kremlin's chief "liquidator of deviationists," as one Western expert put it. He had already delivered a none too subtle admonition at the tenth East German Party Congress two weeks ago: "Any deviations from our socialist teachings result in fatal consequences." That was hardly an empty threat, since it came from a man who, according to Western intelligence reports, has been demanding armed intervention in Poland for months.
Suslov's visit may have been prompted by fears that Warsaw's Central Committee meeting this week would sanction further democratic reforms. Shortly before the visit, in fact, Kania told a socialist youth congress that "we have an unbending will to continue the process of social renewal, to develop democracy in the party and state, to reform the national economy, social life and government personnel." One could hardly draw up a list of goals more abhorrent to the Kremlin.
What most alarmed the Soviets, perhaps, were rumors that Olszowski and Grabski might be purged at the Central Committee plenum. If such a move was in the works, Suslov may have been out to save the two men from an ignominious sacking. Suslov may also have urged a postponement of the Polish Party Congress, now scheduled for July, and inveighed against plans to elect delegates to it by a democratic secret ballot.