143. Memorandum From Helmut Sonnenfeldt of the National Security Council Staff to the Presidentʼs Assistant for National Security Affairs (Kissinger)1
SUBJECT
- Polish Situation—Wider Implications
- Reference Intelligence Memorandum from CIA dated 18 December 19702
The CIA evaluation, coordinated with State/INR and DIA, is sound as far as it goes.
There are more serious questions that lurk in the background. The basic one is that it is once again proving extremely difficult to reform or even tinker with a Communist economy. Any rational economic measures if undertaken with any degree of speed, are bound to involve price increases for the consumer since Communist prices bear no resemblance to costs.
—In Poland there are the special additional points (1) huge amounts of zlotys have been piled up in large segments of the population, (2) wages were being lowered for some in the drive for greater productivity for profitability, (3) the regime was obviously concerned that the Christmas season would surface the zlotys hidden in stockings and bank accounts and quickly exhaust the limited supply of food etc., and (4) Gomulka was apparently persuaded that having just gotten the FRG to cede 40 thousand square miles of territory to Poland he had the political green light to clobber the workers with a price-wage squeeze. (In fact, the Polish population has long since thought this territory was theirs and in the end, even if it didnʼt think so, is more interested in a full Christmas table.)
All Communist economies have built in inflation which weighs most heavily on the population at large. Thus, once the spark of popular dissatisfaction is really lit it can, as it now is in Poland, catch fire and explode.
Beyond that, of course, the issue is not merely one of prices and supply and demand. It is one of structure. Ironically enough, again, the explosion is occurring in a country which is already a maverick in that it never went along with the irrationality of agricultural collectivization. Nevertheless it is a Communist country, run by a clique of bureaucrats interested most of all in their own survival. Real reform, introducing elements of genuine spontaneity into the system, threatens their monopoly on power. It is quite true that through what can only be called a virtuoso performance, Kadar in Hungary has over a period of some ten years let some of this happen and seems reasonably well in the saddle nonetheless. But even that story is far from told to the end.
All of this is by way of suggesting that the rigidity of the Soviet leaders is bound to be reinforced by what is happening in Poland.
—Recent Soviet economic decisions make very clear that the yen for experimentation does not exist within the political leadership. It does exist among the economic managers and you thus have a basic contradiction between those who have the political power and those who make the country function in practice. Moreover, these latter, although despised for their bourgeois attitudes and manners by many Soviet intellectuals, artists and writers, have their tacit support because they are allied against the stifling regime of the political bureaucrats.
The foreign policy implications for the Soviets from all this are complex. As I have previously suggested, Soviet political leaders of the most orthodox stripe can be quite open to trading with the West (and to providing a political-formalistic base for that by a treaty with the Germans) because in this way they hope to avoid genuine economic reform. Such leaders could even be prepared to make some kind of a SALT agreement with us although they are extremely beholden for their hold on power to those who bear arms in the USSR and who are not noted to their devotion to SALT. But they will always be on guard against the domestic political spill-over effects of economic and technical relations with the West and of any accommodations that may be reached here or there on this or that critical issue with us. This is what limits the prospects of real détente.
There is a theory that in the tradition of Pilsudski, and not unlike De Gaulle, Gomulka is given to moods of resignation and would be quite capable of walking off the job.
The CIA paper notes the possibility of Gomulkaʼs stepping down and of Gierek taking his place. It is noteworthy that in the current crisis Gomulka has been nowhere seen or heard. I think it is worth noting on this score that Gierek has sometimes been identified as a representative of that wing of the Polish Party which combines an interest in greater managerial efficiency with a highly cultivated sense of Polish nationalism. In addition, he is one Pole near the top reaches who has genuine charisma. He has long run his Silesian fiefdom as a semiautonomous province and has done so very effectively. His accession to power, if a coalition forms in Warsaw to elevate him, may or may not be acquiesced in by the Soviets. If they object, they may have to use major pressure to prevent his rise to the top and either save or persuade Gomulka to hang on or come up with an alternative. As regards the latter, no one can think of one.
But if Gierek does succeed, there may sooner or later be a blowup with the Soviets because he simply does not share Gomulkaʼs passionate (and tragic) view that Poland can only be safe as a totally loyal ally of the USSR. (De Gaulle found out about Gomulkaʼs feelings when he tried to persuade him to “broaden Polandʼs horizons.”) This aspect of Gierek should be qualified to some extent. Gierek was born in France of Polish parents and spent the war in Belgium. His attitudes are heavily influenced by the Thorez–Duclos wing of the French CP; he is thus conservative on Communist ideological issues and would therefore not consciously drive things to a clash with the Soviets. But sooner or later the dynamics of differing interests would produce in Poland what already happened there once before in 1956 and has since happened in every other East European country (except perhaps the GDR)—a conflict situation. Gierek, unlike Gomulka, might not exert himself to prevent this from occurring, especially since Polandʼs Western frontier will [Page 337] have been settled and a major source of Polish dependence on the USSR removed.
Thus, what the Polish events seem to demonstrate anew is the profound abnormality of the Soviet-imposed system in Eastern Europe and the fact that sooner or later, in one country after another though, of course, in quite different forms, there will be rebellion against this abnormality. This is the essence of the division of Europe; this is the essence of why the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe is ultimately untenable except by force (no matter how successful the Soviets may be in the short and medium term to disorient the West Europeans) and this is the basic reason why Western professors (and SPD politicians) who talk of “peaceful engagement” and glorious schemes for the “reunification” of Europe on the basis of technological convergence or whatever other vehicle they happen to make a fetish of, are romanticists and adventurers who, if listened to, will produce massive frustration in the West and a defensive reaction in Moscow that could under some circumstances produce catastrophe.
- Source: National Archives, Nixon Presidential Materials, NSC Files, NSC Institutional Files (H-Files), Box H–114, WSAG Minutes, Originals, 1969 and 1970. Secret; Sensitive. Sent for information.↩
- Attached but not printed. Also attached but not printed are Kissingerʼs talking points for the December 18 meeting; telegram 4733 from USNATO, December 18; an East German message from December 18; and two CIA intelligence memoranda on the situation in Poland.↩