I think it’s well-known that I am a fan of John F. Burns. The other day I got an email from a student at the University of Warsaw looking for his reporting from Poland after the imposition of martial law there in 1981. So I dug up the stories out of TimesSelect and copy/ pasted them to her. God bless the Internet. See the jump for a mother lode.
December 14, 1981
SOVIET WITHHOLDS COMMENT ON POLES
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Soviet Union offered no official comment today on the declaration of martial law in Poland. The Polish developments were reported in a series of largely factual dispatches by Tass, the official press agency, which stuck closely to the explanations and phraseology used by the Polish leader.
But there was no statement from the Soviet Government more than 24 hours after the martial law declaration went into effect, even though it was almost certain that the crackdown met with the aproval of the Kremlin.
Western diplomats watching the developments surmised that the Soviet leaders were withholding comment until they were sure that the Polish armed forces had control of the situation.
The Kremlin has made it clear in the past that it would not hesitate to send Soviet troops into Poland if the authorities there were faced with a challenge to Communist rule that they could not contain. No Soviet Mobilization Seen
According to diplomats with access to Western intelligence reports, the deployment of Polish troops and tanks in Warsaw and other cities was not matched by any detectable mobilization of Soviet forces in the areas bordering Poland. However, the diplomats noted that large numbers of Soviet troops are stationed along the frontier, and could be put into action at relatively short notice.
The first Soviet reports gave no hint of the degree of the Kremlin’s involvement in the decision to declare martial law. But the drastic steps announced by the Polish Communist leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, included a roundup of key Solidarity leaders, a ban on strikes and a prohibition against all meetings and demonstrations. They appeared designed to meet the Kremlin’s insistent demands for harsh action against ”counterrevolutionaries” in the Polish union.
The Soviet press printed a series of increasingly alarmist reports on the Polish situation in the week preceding the crackdown, culminating in a Tass dispatch hours before General Jaruzelski’s speech that referred to ”patriotic forces” in Poland posing an ”increasingly more resolute demand that a rebuff be given to the enemies of socialism, a rebuff they deserved by their criminal action.”
In the 48 hours leading up to General Jaruzelski’s announcement, Tass depicted Solidarity as the spearhead of an imminent ”counterrevolution,” and said the union’s leaders were setting up ”commando groups” armed with stolen weapons. Contingency Plan Followed
In its final report before the crackdown, the agency said that the union’s leaders were trying to make the situation in the country ”red hot” with a plan for a general strike aimed at overthrowing Communism.
Given the elaborate nature of the crackdown, most diplomats here assumed that it followed a contingency plan drawn up well in advance. This being the case, they said, there was no doubt that the Kremlin was told beforehand, and possibly even asked for advice on military and security aspects of the operation.
However, few Western diplomats believed that the operation was mounted on the direct orders of the Kremlin. Instead, the consensus was that General Jaruzelski, under rising pressure from the Soviet leaders to halt Solidarity’s increasingly bold assaults on Communist power, had decided that it was better for the Polish authorities to act rather than risk armed intervention by the Russians.
One reason for doubting that the Kremlin orchestrated the crackdown was the feeling that General Jaruzelski, widely respected in Poland as a patriot, would hesitate to take action against his own people that he did not believe to be justified.
But there was little doubt that General Jaruzelski’s decision to use Polish troops was the solution that the Soviet leadership had favored all along. Since the rise of Solidarity in August 1980, the Kremlin has applied pressure on the Warsaw Government to take decisive action to weaken the union and roll back the concessions granted to it, all of which were viewed by the Russians as inimical to Communist rule.
December 15, 1981
SOVIET SAYS MOVES ARE UP IN POLAND
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
The first official Soviet comment on events in Poland said today that they were ”an internal matter.” It described any ”different interpretation” implying Soviet manipulation as an attempt in itself to interfere in Polish affairs.
The statement, issued by the Government’s press agency Tass, indicated that the Kremlin, was eager to counter charges in the West that Soviet pressure had forced the Polish authorities to impose martial law and suspend the operations of the Solidarity trade union, and the statement did not explicitly endorse the crackdown. Moves Termed Polish Initiative
The Soviet press has presented the crackdown as a purely Polish initiative to save the country from the ”mortal danger” of counterrevolution.
”All these steps taken in Poland are, of course, its internal matter,” the Tass statement said. ”A different interpretation of these events in the West can only be regarded as an attempt to interfere in affairs that lie within the competence of the Poles only.”
Reflecting the high level at which it had been approved, the statement said that Tass had been ”authorized to state that the Soviet leadership” was following events closely and ”received with a feeling of satisfaction” the affirmation of Poland’s links with the Soviet Union and the other Warsaw Pact allies that was offered by Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader, when he announced the crackdown. Limited to Summary of Events
The statement limited itself to an approving summary of events, describing them as steps ”designed to create conditions for taking Poland out of the crisis situation, to protect legality and to restore public order.”
In its reluctance to endorse the measures, the Soviet Union appeared motivated by a desire to mask its influence among the Eastern European countries, partly because of possible repercussions for relations with the West. Although it has held the threat of intervention over Poland in the past, the Soviet Union has shown awareness of the political and economic penalties the West might adopt if Soviet forces imposed a solution.
By confining its comments to a Tass statement, an expedient used when the Soviet leaders wish to stop short of a formal government statement, the Kremlin also manifested caution over the possible outcome in Poland. Western diplomats believe that the Soviet leaders are hesitant to commit themselves publicly to support General Jaruzelski in case his actions provoke resistance on a scale requiring intervention.
A Tass dispatch from Warsaw indicated that the Russians were becoming confident that the Polish armed forces had the situation under control. It quoted Polish news reports to the effect that ”the overwhelming majority” of people were backing the military takeover ”as the only possibility to save the country from catastrophe and to restore law, order and calm, and to insure conditions for the normal functioning of the state and the party.”
”On the whole, the situation in Poland continues to remain calm. The armed forces, which resolutely came out against the plans of the counterrevolution, in defense of the constitutional mainstays of People’s Poland, continue to maintain high vigilance,” the Tass dispatch said.
A previous dispatch implied somewhat less assurance. It said reports reaching Warsaw from around Poland showed that ”the situation is gradually calming down,” but it added that ”provocative elements” were ”attempting to infiltrate enterprises and conduct subversive activities there.”
The Soviet press has been at pains to justify the Polish swoop as a justifiable and constitutionally authorized bid to defend the Communist system. It cited Polish Government spokesmen as the authority for the contention, as one Tass dispatch put it, that ”martial law was introduced in connection with the existence of a real danger of the overthrow of the socialist system by the forces of counterrevolution.”
December 16, 1981
SOVIET BIDS U.S. MIND ITS OWN BUSINESS
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Soviet Union used a press commentary today to tell the Reagan Administration that the declaration of martial law in Poland was none of America’s business.
Apart from a formal statement Monday by the official press agency Tass that declared events in Poland to be the ”internal affair” of the Poles, the commentary today, also by Tass, was the closest thing to an official Soviet pronouncement since the Polish Communist leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, announced the crackdown on the independent trade union Solidarity three days ago.
Although the Reagan Administration has emphasized the need for restraint in statements on Poland so as not to provoke direct Soviet military intervention, the Tass commentary said that Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. and other senior officials had set ”imperialist terms” for the resolution of Poland’s domestic problems.
”While interfering in the domestic affairs of the sovereign Polish state,” the commentary said, ”the United States is trying to prove that the events in Poland in some way concern U.S. security interests. But Poland is a member of the Warsaw Pact treaty organization, a member of the Socialist community of states, and the United States should not look there for any ‘security zone,’ as Washington is doing practically in all other parts of the globe.”
‘U.S. Security Is Not Threatened’
It added: ”In Poland, U.S. security is not threatened by anyone. No one can deprive the Polish people of their sovereign rights, and it is high time that the U.S. leaders understand that lawlessness and arbitrariness in international relations are inadmissible.”
The commentary, attributed to Vladimir Serov, a senior Tass political analyst in Moscow, appeared to be a bid to turn the tables on the Reagan Administration for statements implying that the crackdown was forced by Soviet pressures on Poland. Although Soviet demands for the supression of Solidarity were backed by repeated shows of military power on Poland’s borders during the year preceding Sunday’s move, Soviet news coverage in the last three days has presented General Jaruzelski’s actions as a purely Polish affair.
The commentary also appeared to reflect continuing anxiety in the Kremlin at the possibility that Poles might recover from the shock of Sunday’s crackdown and organize popular resistance. The absence of a formal statement on the Polish developments by the Soviet leadership has been interpreted by Western diplomats here as a sign that Moscow is wary of committing itself as long as there is any risk of disorders in Poland that could prompt the intervention of Soviet troops. Situation Depicted as Stable
A suggestion that Soviet anxieties might be receding came during the day in a number of Tass reports from Warsaw that depicted the situation in Poland as stable. The dispatches said that ”the situation remains calm in most districts of Poland,” with only ”isolated actions” by what were described as counterrevolutionary groups.
Tass also asserted, as it did yesterday, that ”the majority of Polish citizens had received with satisfaction” the actions of Polish troops and ”public order bodies.”
Today’s commentary came too late for inclusion in the evening newspapers, but it was read in full on the evening television news and was assured of prominent display in all Soviet newspapers tomorrow. It cited statements by Secretary Haig and other Administration officials in a loose and selective manner that provided a platform for the allegations of United States interference but avoided giving Soviet audiences any sense that American officials were concerned for the welfare of Poles as a whole. ‘Overt Interference’ Charged
It said Mr. Haig had ”made declarations which can be assessed only as an attempt of the U.S. Administration to impose on the Polish People’s Republic its own, in fact, imperialist terms for resolving that country’s domestic problems.
”Haig’s demands for ‘a free implementation in Poland of political experiments,’ directed, as is known, at overthrowing the existing Socialist system, are nothing but overt interference in the home affairs of that country,” it said.
Referring to Washington’s decision on food aid to Poland, which will allow shipments currently in the pipeline to proced while suspending decisions on future shipments, the commentary said: ”It is indicative that Washington is seeking simultaneously to do everything possible so as to maintain in Poland an atmosphere of anarchy and create additional difficulties in food supplies to the population with the help of instigatory activities.” Agencies Accused of Distortion
The effort to depict the Polish situation as stabilizing predominated in the day’s accumulation of Soviet news reports from Warsaw, somewhat replacing the concern for justifying the crackdown that was evident in earlier dispatches. Three of the four Tass dispatches during the day emphasized that calm was prevailing in the country, and one hit out at ”American agencies” for suggesting otherwise.
”A number of American agencies are spreading all sorts of inventions about some ‘armed clashes,’ ‘shootouts,’ etc., quoting some ‘third persons,’ ” the agency asserted. ”The authors of such false reports are thus displaying wishful thinking.”
Tass noted that ”even” Joseph M.A.H. Luns, the Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, ”told Western correspondents that presently there are no signs either of violence or bloodshed in Poland.”
December 18, 1981
MOSCOW CUTS BACK ON REPORTS OF RESISTANCE
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
After four days of relatively full reports, the Soviet Government press agency Tass cut back sharply today on dispatches describing resistance to martial law in Poland and actions by troops to overcome it.
The reduction in news coverage came amid continuing silence from the Soviet leadership. Although Soviet officials continue to say privately that the Polish developments are an internal affair and that they are satisfied with the Polish military’s progress, Western diplomats believe that the degree of resistance may be causing anxiety in the Kremlin.
At the same time, the diplomats reported no signs that the Russians were on the verge of moving troops into Poland. One report circulating during the day was that military reservists in the Moscow region were mobilized briefly Wednesday night in a test of readiness, but Western military attaches said this could have been a routine matter not related to events in Poland. Polish Army Expected to Prevail
Despite the reported resistance, the military attaches said the situation did not appear to be such that the Polish armed forces were in any danger of being overwhelmed. Few diplomats doubt that the Soviet Union would intervene if it judged that resistance was not being effectively contained.
An opportunity for high-level discussion among the Soviet-bloc leaders will come over the next two days, when they gather here for the 75th birthday of Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, on Saturday. Three of the guests – Gustav Husak of Czechoslovakia, Janos Kadar of Hungary and Yumzhagiin Tsedenbal of Mongolia – arrived today.
The degree of Soviet concern not to be seen as orchestrating the developments in Poland was reflected by advice offered a Western correspondent by a Soviet journalist who said the gathering over the weekend was not a ”summit” meeting, but an informal affair that was planned some time ago without reference to the situation in Poland.
There has been speculation about the Polish Communist Party’s role in the military crackdown. Stefan Olszowski, a Politburo member, was quoted by Tass as supporting the crackdown. He was the first top member of the Polish party to be so quoted, other than Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the party leader.
December 19, 1981
FOR MOSCOW, WIDER ISSUES; News Analysis
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
After 16 months of pressure and threats, the Soviet leadership this week finally secured the crackdown it wanted against Poland’s independent trade union, Solidarity, and it achieved it without the immediate involvement of Soviet troops.
The satisfaction voiced by the Soviet press seems to have been tempered by concern in the Kremlin that Polish troops might falter or be overwhelmed, drawing the Soviet military in after all. But Polish soldiers appeared today to be in control of all but a few pockets of resistance.
If the situation does not deteriorate, the Polish generals will have given the Kremlin most of what it wanted during the months that Soviet divisions hovered along the border. With practically its entire leadership under arrest, Solidarity has been dealt a stunning blow, and in a way that has relieved the Russians of the worst of the costs they would face had they done it themselves.
This made it possible today for the Soviet leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev, to proceed as planned with a grand ceremony honoring his 75th birthday, which falls tomorrow. With the conspicuous exception of the Polish leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, a succession of Communist Party chiefs from Soviet-bloc countries marched to a microphone in a gilded Kremlin chamber to eulogize Mr. Brezhnev, who responded with an equable speech that spoke of peace and made no reference to Poland. Faced With Basic Challenges
With Mr. Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders remaining silent on the Polish events, it was impossible to gauge what anxiety may have lingered behind the mask of calm. But Western diplomats here believe that the long-term implications for the Russians run beyond challenges in the factories and mines of Poland to questions about the ultimate viability of a system of authority, in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, that seems to have no answer to popular yearnings but the deadening hand of force.
As they were in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Soviet leaders were faced in Poland with a basic challenge to the monolithic system imposed on Eastern Europe after World War II. Although they hesitated far longer this time, the men in the Kremlin never left any doubt that pluralistic tendencies were as unacceptable in Warsaw as they were years before in Budapest and Prague.
In Poland, for now, Solidarity appears to have been eliminated as an effective claimant on a share of political and economic power. But the diplomats believe that once popular resistance passes, if it does, the Russians may find themselves with an ally that is amenable to their will but incapable of sustaining a productive economy or engaging the spontaneous loyalties of its people.
To some degree, the picture is the same in almost all the countries of the Soviet bloc. One Western diplomat put the problem succinctly when he said this week that any list of the problems that gave birth to Solidarity – a failing economy, a remote and inflexible government, a bureaucracy that was unresponsive and corrupt – could be applied as surely to the Soviet Union as to Poland. A New Kind of Society
Those who take this view acknowledge that the rise of Solidarity caused strains that all but paralyzed Poland, just as Soviet propaganda asserted. But, they say, the union opened a window on a new kind of society in Eastern Europe, where the labor and initiative of working people might ultimately have been harnessed to the system instead of atrophying beneath it.
Some diplomats believe that General Jaruzelski may seek to honor the pledge to continue the process of ”socialist renewal” that he gave when he announced the crackdown. But most Western envoys believe that the general, even if he is sincere, will find the Kremlin blocking any bid to renew a dialogue with Solidarity or to acknowledge however obliquely that a body other than the Communist Party can represent the popular will.
The Kremlin’s overriding objection to Solidarity all along was that it denied the Polish party’s claim to exclusive power and mocked it by attracting 10 million members, more than a third of the population. With the union weakened by arrests and barred from any overt form of action, the Western envoys believe that the Kremlin is more likely to press for its total eradication than to countenance fresh contacts.
One view is that General Jaruzelski may see himself in the role of Janos Kadar, the Communist Party chief installed in Hungary by the Russians in 1956, who kept faith with the Kremlin by eliminating any challenge to the party but eventually presided over the most farreaching economic changes in the Soviet bloc. Today Hungary is the economic success story of Eastern Europe, with a system of decentralized management that flies in the face of Marxist orthodoxy.
But Westerners familiar with Poland say that after the trauma of the past week it could be years before Poles are willing to commit their energies to any enterprise undertaken by General jaruzelski.
The moral bankruptcy of the Polish party seems likely to be part of the Kremlin’s abiding loss. Three times in the past decade Poles have seen party leaders ousted, two of them during the period of Solidarity’s success.
Worse still for the party, there is no evidence yet that General Jaruzelski sought its authority when he imposed martial law. Some reports this week suggested that the general planned the takeover with fellow officers and told the Kremlin about it before telling his colleagues in the Polish Politburo. If this was so, diplomats here say, it would be the starkest admission of all that the system the Russians transplanted to Poland 36 years ago has failed.
December 20, 1981
2 POLISH LEADERS THANK BREZHNEV
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader, sent a message to Leonid I. Brezhnev today on his 75th birthday, thanking him for his understanding over the ”dramatic and difficult situation” in Poland.
General Jaruzelski was the one Eastern European leader missing from ceremonies honoring Mr. Brezhnev. The general’s message, sent jointly with President Henryk Jablonski, was published along with other congratulations in Pravda, the Soviet party daily.
”We express to you our thanks,” the Polish message said, ”for the understanding which you have shown and still do for the dramatic and difficult situation in our country, and for the valuable economic aid that renders it possible to alleviate painful difficulties.”
The message pledged that Poland’s military council ruling under martial law would remain faithful to the tenets of Marxism-Leninism. ‘Socialist Renewal’ Affirmed
At the same time, it said, the council will honor the independence and sovereignty of Poland and continue with the process of ”socialist renewal,” the term used to describe the liberalization trend that began in 1980 with the formation of the Solidarity union in Poland.
”We strive resolutely toward its democratic development, in the spirit of socialist renewal, toward the implementation of the universal principles of Marxist-Leninism in the Polish national setting,” the message said.
It was signed by General Jaruzelski and Mr. Jablonski in the name of the ruling Military Council of National Salvation, and on behalf of the Central Committtee of the Polish United Workers (Communist) Party and the ”supreme authorities” of Poland.
Western diplomats considered it significant that Pravda had printed the text of the message, particularly the reference to ”socialist renewal.”
A hint of the difficulties the Poles might have had with the Soviet leaders came in a passage saying that, under the conditions prevailing in Poland, mutual ”understanding and trust” as well as ”ideological commonality” between the Polish and Soviet parties were of paramount importance.
In another part of the message, the Poles pledged loyalty to the alliance with the Soviet Union within the Warsaw Pact and paid tribute to Soviet troops who fell as casualties as the Red Army drove German forces westward across Poland toward the end of World War II.
December 27, 1981
SOVIET SHOWS CONCERN AT U.S. ECONOMIC CURBS
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Soviet press agency Tass continued today to report what it called ”the gradual normalization of life” in Poland but indicated in its attacks on the Reagan Administration that the Kremlin remained seriously concerned about the implications of American economic sanctions.
In a long report from Warsaw, the press agency said that the Polish radio and television had given ”numerous facts” to support the view that the situation across the country was returning to normal.
The examples it cited were the end of two confrontations between workers and Polish troops in Silesia that previously had been reported with apparent alarm in the Soviet press.
One was the occupation by workers of the steel mill in Katowice, where Tass said ”tranquillity has set in.” It did not mention that the strike there was smashed three days ago by Polish troops. Mine at Tychy Also Cited
The second example given by the Soviet agency was the end of a similar occupation of the Ziemowit coal mine at Tychy, where, Tass said, ”workers who had been forcibly held underground” had come to the surface on Christmas Eve.
Tass made no mention of the continuing occupation of the nearby Piast mine, which the Warsaw radio reported earlier was still in progress, with 1,166 miners still underground.
The Tass report quoted statements by relatives and miners purportedly interviewed at the surface of the Ziemowit mine to support the contention that the occupation of the mine and the destruction by explosives of one of its entrances had been organized by ”extremists” belonging to Solidarity, the suppressed trade union, against the wishes of the majority of the miners.
It quoted one woman, whom it did not name, as having said: ”Only Hitlerites act in this way. Those who keep our husbands down there have got neither ethics nor simple human compassion.” Threats of Violence Reported
A miner who was said to have escaped the enforced occupation through ”an underground passageway” was quoted as saying that ”violence” had been threatened against the miners to force them to continue the occupation.
The tone of the Tass coverage suggested that concern in the Kremlin over popular resistance to martial law might be easing. But other Tass reports and commentaries on Soviet television suggested that worries about the effectiveness of Polish troops might be being replaced by concern about President Reagan’s decision to apply economic sanctions against Poland, including a cutoff of food aid and trade financing and curtailment of Polish fishing rights in United States waters.
Since Mr. Reagan announced the steps in a televised address three days ago, the Soviet news media have struck out angrily at American efforts to construct what they have termed an ”economic blockade” around Poland. Unease Over European Response
But the emphasis of the reports has suggested that Moscow’s chief anxiety was not the American sanctions themselves but the possibility that the Administration might draw Western European nations into matching the restraints.
A Tass report from Washington today said that the Administration was ”putting gross pressure on the Western European countries in an attempt to draw its partners into the anti-Polish, anti-Soviet hysteria being stirred up by official Washington.”
It cited the tour of European capitals by Lawrence S. Eagleburger, Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, who returned to Washington earlier in the week after consultations on possible Western responses to Polish developments.
December 31, 1981
TASS ASSAILS REAGAN’S SANCTIONS AS A RETURN TO THE COLD WAR ERA
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Soviet press agency Tass accused President Reagan today of attempting ”to hurl the world back to the dark times of the cold war” with his decision to restrict Soviet-American trade and other contacts because of the Polish military crackdown.
In a report from Washington, Tass contended that Mr. Reagan knew it was futile to adopt ”new acts of blackmail and pressure” against the Kremlin in an effort to get the Russians to roll back the actions of the Polish military authorities.
The press agency said that the United States Administration was in a ”blind fury” at the failure of ”counterrevolutionary scum” in Poland and that Washington’s real purpose in ordering the sanctions was to make a final attack on the roots of detente. ‘A Campaign of Hatred’
Faced with the collapse of an American plot to restore ”capitalism” in Poland, Tass said, ”Washington’s rulers are in a hurry to whip up to the limit a campaign of hatred in respect of socialist countries, above all the U.S.S.R.”
The press agency said the Reagan Administration wanted ”to undermine the foundations of Soviet-American relations worked out as a result of huge efforts, and to curtail them to a minimum.” But Tass said the President’s ”crude diktat” to the Kremlin would fail.
”Political observers note that the Soviet Union is a great power which has never allowed, and will never allow, anyone to speak the language of black- mail and diktat to itself,” Tass said in the English version of its report. ”It is universally known that repeated attempts to ‘influence’ the U.S.S.R. with the help of various ‘sanctions’ have invariably ended in a flop, including in the recent past.”
The press agency added: ”A fresh attempt of the White House to embark once again on the long, bankrupt road of threats and blackmail cannot, therefore, be regarded in any other way than a deliberate striving of the U.S. leadership to worsen the international situation even further, to hurl the world back to the dark times of the cold war and to give U.S. imperialism a free hand in pursuing a military policy aimed at achieving world domination.” No Direct Soviet Comment
The Soviet leadership refrained, as it has done since martial law was declared in Poland on Dec. 13, from any direct comment on Mr. Reagan’s actions. Instead, it left the reaction to Tass, and the press agency resorted in its dispatch from Washington to some of the harshest Soviet language about an American leader since the intervention in Afghanistan two years ago brought a sharp turn for the worse in Soviet-American relations.
Referring to Mr. Reagan as ”the master of the White House,” Tass said he had ”resorted to direct forgery and lie” when he said that the Soviet Union had interfered in Polish affairs and bore direct responsibility for the repression in Poland.
The truth, Tass said, is that the United States ”reared the Polish counterrevolution and was pushing it toward unleashing a fratricidal war which would have plunged Poland into chaos and would have led it to a national catastrophe.”
Tass described the actions of the Polish authorities since Dec. 13 as ”an internal affair of Poland” that was undertaken ”to protect law and restore public order.”
”The blind fury of the Washington Administration over these legitimate measures taken by sovereign Poland testifies that the remains of common sense have been lost in Washington,” it said.
Tass said Mr. Reagan’s remarks ”constitute the quintessence of the great-power, imperial policy of the ruling circles of the United States, which make no account of the sovereignty of other countries and peoples. Moscow Report Omits Venom
Several hours after the agency carried the dispatch from Washington, it ran a second report under a Moscow dateline that renewed accusations that President Reagan distorted the Polish situation. But the Moscow report omitted the personal vituperation of the dispatch from Washington, and only the Moscow report was used on the evening television news, which reaches tens of millions of viewers.
The Moscow report also offered the first substantive account of the contents of a letter that Mr. Reagan received on Friday from the Soviet leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev. In his announcement Tuesday, Mr. Reagan said the Soviet leader’s letter, in reply to one from Mr. Reagan warning of American measures against Moscow if the Polish repression continued, had made it clear that ”the Soviet union does not understand the seriousness of our concern.”
Tass said that Mr. Reagan had distorted the ”essence” of the Soviet leader’s letter, but the samples that it gave indicated the message basically repeated the main themes of Soviet propaganda since the Polish crackdown occurred.
”What was mentioned in the letter?” Tass said. ”Leonid Brezhnev was urging precisely the United States to stop, at last, the interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state, the Polish People’s Republic, interference which has been continuing for a long time in most varied forms.
”The letter rejected the United States’ claims to decide for the Poles in what directions and in what ways the Polish society should develop. Leonid Brezhnev stressed that the social system in Poland had been chosen not by Washington, Moscow or other capitals, but by the Poles. No one should tell the Polish leadership how it should decide its internal affairs.”
Tass said the letter had also responded to Mr. Reagan’s warnings of American measures against the Soviet Union. ”It was pointed out in Leonid Brezhnev’s reply,” the press agency said, ”that the present U.S. Administration has done a lot, as it is, to undermine all the positive that had been achieved through great effort in relations between the two countries during the previous U.S. Administrations, and that if Soviet-American relations were eroded further the United States would bear the entire responsibility for this.”
The report also mocked Mr. Reagan’s statement Tuesday that the United States still sought a better relationship with the Soviet Union.
”Ignoring norms of international law, neglecting its commitments to other countries, the United States acts as an unreliable, not to say whimsical, partner,” Tass said. ”And, in this context, Ronald Reagan’s words in the statement about the desire of the United States to have ‘a constructive and mutually beneficial relationship with the Soviet Union’ do not alter anything. They are merely an empty phrase.”
January 2, 1982
MOSCOW’S MISGIVINGS; News Analysis
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
After three weeks of martial law in Poland, whatever satisfaction the Kremlin might have felt over the triumph of force must be balanced by anxieties over what will happen in Poland over the longer term and by an accounting of the cost to Soviet-American relations.
On the positive side, the Soviet leaders can celebrate the apparent success of Polish security forces in breaking the back of one of the most sustained popular challenges to Communist rule in any Eastern European country since World War II – without the involvement of Soviet troops.
Moreover, Soviet strategists can take pleasure from the fact that the Polish crackdown was carried out in a manner that left sharp divisions in the West on the degree of Soviet responsibility.
As happened after the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan two years ago, the United States and its Western allies have so far been unable to agree on a common stand, widening strains that are a major political asset to the Kremlin. Soviet Calls Sanctions ‘Pointless’
With the United States standing alone, Soviet propagandists have called President Reagan’s restrictions on Soviet-American trade ”pointless,” and forecast that the Kremlin would buy from other Western countries what it could not purchase from American suppliers.
A comparison has been made to the sanctions imposed by President Carter over Afghanistan, which were tougher in some respects than Mr. Reagan’s, yet still ”had no effect on the Soviet Union,” according to the official press agency Tass.
Against all this, the Soviet leaders have major anxieties that are evident from a reading of the Kremlin press. Among them are the differences that are becoming increasingly plain between the Kremlin’s hard-line prescriptions for Poland’s future and the more conciliatory attitude of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland’s Communist Party chief.
There is also serious concern here about the enfeebled state of the Polish party, around which the Russians want a politically and economically disciplined Poland to be built. Soviet dispatches from Poland have spoken of the martial law period as a time for Polish Communists to regroup, but it could be years before the discredited shell of a party that General Jaruzelski head s is capable of commanding the obedience of Poles. Deeper Chill in U.S.-Soviet Ties
Equally worrying to the Russians is the pro spect of an even deeper chill in rela tions with the United States. Although these were already at a low ebb after the intervention in Afghanistan, and sank still lower a fter Mr. Reagan took office, Soviet officials were saying privat ely just before the Polish crackdown that they believed Mr. Reagan wa s adjusting to what they called the ”necessity” of stable relati ons with Moscow.
Realists in the Kremlin undoubtedly expected some Western reaction to the Polish crackdown, and the shrill reaction to Mr. Reagan’s measures contains an element of bluff. If Western European nations are to be discouraged from imposing parallel restrictions on trade and other contacts with the Russians, it is important for propagandists here to maintain an air of indignation in the face of American accusations of Soviet complicity.
At the same, the intensity of Soviet attacks on Mr. Reagan suggests that the Kremlin’s leaders may not have calculated that the President would take direct action againt them. Tass has acused him of ”forgery and lies,” has declared that he is dragging the world back into the cold war, and has compared his attitude toward Communism with that of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Some Western diplomats believe that the Kremlin may have hoped the United States would limit its response to polemics as long as Soviet troops were not involved.
Now that Mr. Reagan has taken his stand, the Soviet leaders must count the cost. While trade restrictions can be surmounted, there are paramount Soviet interests that deprnd on an improved relationship with Washington. First among these are the negotiations on nuclear weapons that the Soviet leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev, has insistently urged on Mr. Reagan since the American leader took office. A Clear Message From Moscow
The clearest message from Moscow in recent months has been its desire to avoid a new spiral in the arms race, not least because of the strain that it would place on the faltering Soviet economy.
Mr. Reagan’s decision not to suspend the Geneva talks on nuclear weapons in Europe was undoubtedly influenced by the importance of the discussions to America’s European allies. But the Kremlin is already looking beyond those talks on medium-range weapons to negotiations on long-range arms. The Soviet leaders may be worried that Washington’s readiness to resume nuclear arms talks – or to conclude agreements – could be blunted by the reaction to Poland.
In Poland, matters are hardly less complex. The Soviet press continues to applaud the measures taken by General Jaruzelski to eliminate resistance and get Poles back to work. But a close reading suggests that the Kremlin could part ways with the general when it comes time to set Poland’s future course.
A small sign of dissatisfaction has been the failure of Soviet accounts to refer to the general as ”comrade,” the normal designation for the head of an allied Communist Party. Pole’s Commitment to ‘Renewal’
On each occasion that he has addressed Poles since declaring martial law, General Jaruzelski has stressed his commitment to ”socialist renewal,” the Polish term for the relaxation of Communist rule that was forced on the Polish authorities by the independent labor union Solidarity. The general has spoken of the ”healthy trend” in Solidarity, and has pledged that Poland has a place for independent labor unions.
Although the Soviet press has reprinted these sections of the general’s speeches, its own commentaries have made it plain that the resurrection of Solidarity in anything like its previous form would be anathema here. Soviet reports have blurred earlier distinctions between ”extremists” in Solidarity and the union itself, and have said that the union was a tool of ”U.S. imperilaism” in an effort to topple Communist power.
As if to rebuke General Jaruzelski, the party newspaper Pravda has forcefully rejected the idea of an independent labor union in a Communist nation. In a review of a recently published book on Soviet labor unions whose authorship was ascribed to Mr. Brezhnev, the daily noted that the Soviet leader had written that ”the history of our country has shown with abundant clarity the absurdity of ‘independent trade unions.’ ”
Much attention has also been given to the state of the Polish party. The Kremlin has made no secret of its discomfort at the party’s loss of effective power to a military council, the first time that any Eastern European country has had to move the Communist apparatus as ide. But articles in Pravda have acknowledged that the need to rebuild the party – a euphemism for t he purges that have already started – could take a long time.
On this point, too, General Jaruzelski could be vulnerable. Although he is party leader, his career lies first with the Polish Army, and there is no evidence that he sought the approval of the Polish Politburo before declarin g martial law. Some Western diplomatshere think th at once military rule runs its course the Kremlin may want the gene ral to step aside in favor of one of the civilian party leaders who, unlike the general, stood four-square against Solidarityfrom the star t.
January 7, 1982
SOVIET ACCUSES SCHMIDT AND U.S. OF INTERFERENCE
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Soviet Union, reacting to the strongly critical wording of a communique issued in Washington Tuesday by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany and President Reagan, said in a press commentary today that Mr. Schmidt had joined the President in a bid to dictate the Polish Government’s domestic policies.
Although cautiously phrased, the criticism of Mr. Schmidt marked a departure from the generally approving tone of previous Soviet comment on Bonn’s attitude toward the crackdown in Poland. Western diplomats here said that the Kremlin appeared to have been dismayed by the broad agreement reached by the two leaders.
Since martial law was declared in Poland Dec. 13 the Soviet press and Kremlin spokesmen have emphasized the differences between the United States and its European allies, particularly West Germany, over the best way to respond to the Polish showdown. Some Soviet commentaries have suggested that the Kremlin was hoping that the differences would lead to major strains in the Western alliance.
In its report of the Washington meeting, the Soviet press agency Tass passed over the sections of the communique in which Mr. Reagan and Mr. Schmidt condemned the violation of human rights in Poland and demanded an end to martial law. Nor did the report make any reference to the part of the communique that noted the ”responsibility” of the Soviet Union for the Polish developments. TV Criticism Goes Further
Instead, Tass left Soviet readers to infer what they could from its assertion that ”Reagan and Schmidt,” behind statements about the right of Poland to settle its own affairs, ”are trying at the same time to dictate to the Polish leadership with whom and in what way it should settle the country’s domestic affairs.” Tass added, ”The restoration of normal relations with Poland is made dependent in fact on the prior implementation of the deman ds advanced with regard to Poland by the NATO bloc.”
In an assessment after the late night news on television, a commentator carried the criticism of Mr. Schmidt further, saying that he had joined Mr. Reagan in a bid to exert ”crude and open interference” in Polish affairs. Both versions were a turnabout for Mr. Schmidt, who has been virtually immune to criticism in the Soviet press since a visit to Bonn in November by the Soviet leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev.
The criticism of Mr. Schmidt was balanced by an approving observation of the West German leader’s demurral over the sanctions imposed on Poland and the Soviet Union by Mr. Reagan. ”Helmut Schmidt,” Tass said, ”kept his own opinion, believing that ‘sanctions’ are not the means which can be used for effective influence on the U.S.S.R.”
Again, the television commentator went further. He told viewers that Mr. Schmidt had ”remained firm in his opinion that the Polish events cannot be used as a pretext” for actions against the So viet Union, and ad ded, ”In Western Europe they understand only too well that cooperat ion with the Soviet Union serves the vital interests of their countri es.” Soviet Loan Reported
In another development related to the Polish crisis, diplomatic sources here reported tonight that the Soviet Union had granted Poland a new 2.7 billion ruble loan – equivalent to $3.8 billion -to finance the deficit that the Poles are accumulating in trade between the two nations. The sources said that the loan would cover the deficit for 1981 and 1982, and they said that the terms of the loan provided for long-term repayment at low rates of interest.
The loan agreement was reached in talks here between the Soviet Foreign Trade Minister, Nikolai S. Patolichev, and his Polish counterpart, Tadeusz Nestorowicz. A Tass account of the agreement gave no details of the loan, but said that the Soviet Union had agreed to continue its supplies of oil, natural gas and other raw materials, as well as industrial equipment and vehicles, at levels that would ”facilitate the rehabilitation of Poland’s national economy.”
January 9, 1982
SOVIET POLICY: NEW WORRIES; News Analysis
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIA L TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
After a number of propaganda at tacks in recent days on the a ttitude of Western European nations to events in Poland,the Soviet Un ion appears to have lost much of its earlier confidence that the Poli sh crackdown could be carried through without significant d amage to its ties with the European nations.
In the initial period after Polish authorities declared martial law, Soviet commentaries adopted a generally approving tone toward the posture of Western European nations. After President Reagan imposed economic sanctions on Poland, and later on the Soviet Union, the Soviet press and senior officials predicted that Washington would find itself increasingly isolated from its Atlantic allies.
However, in the last week the tone has changed. In the wake of the relatively tough statements issued by the Foreign Ministers of the European Economic Community after their meeting in Brussels on Monday, and by President Reagan and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West Germany after their meeting in Washington Tuesday, the Soviet press has adopted a more aggressive tone toward key European countries.
Only Greece Draws Praise
With varying degrees of directness, Soviet commentaries have attacked Britain, France, West Germany and Italy for their part in the condemnation of the Polish crackdown and for their willingness to lay some responsibility for the action on the Kremlin. The only European nation that has drawn any appreciative news coverage of late has been Greece, which withdrew its support of the European Foreign Ministers’ statement after a junior minister had signed it, saying that it did not wish to damage its ties with ”socialist” states.
Soviet commentators have been careful to note that none of the European nations has so far followed the American lead with sanctions, a point that weighs heavily here because of the damage a combined Western boycott could have on the Polish and Soviet economies. But the sharp edge in some of the coverage has persuaded Western diplomats that the Soviet leaders are beginning to calculate the cost of the Polish measures to their general relations with Western Europe and the damage that could be done to Soviet interests other than trade.
The sharpest attack so far came Thursday in Izvestia, the Soviet Government daily, which carried a report from Rome that was scathingly critical of the Italian Prime Minister, Giovanni Spadolini. Claiming that ”it has become a rule for the men in Rome to stand at attention in front of envoys from the White House,” the report said that Mr. Spadolini had publicly espoused what it called ”the old cock-and-bull story” about Soviet responsibility for events in Poland. Mitterrand Escapes Censure
President Francois Mitterrand of France, who has probably made the toughest statements of any European leader on the Polish situation, has escaped direct censure from the Soviet press. This has evidently been in deference to the fact that Mr. Mitterrand is a Socialist and has Communists in his Government. But Soviet attacks on France have been bitter, and one Thursday Pravda, the Communist Party daily, came close to a personal attack on the French leader.
The newspaper’s Paris correspondent said that the French news media had started ”a virtual antisocialist hysteria” over Poland, and added that some ”commentators” were not satisfied ”with the entiresystem of treaties and accords underlying the postwar realities in Europe.”
Britain’s Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, has been a favorite villain of the Soviet press since she took office in 1979, but her outspoken statements on Poland have attracted little attention. By far the largest volume of Soviet news media attention has gone to West Germany, which plays a crucial role in Soviet political and economic planning, both because of its geographic position as the forward base of Western alliance forces and for its position as the Kremlin’s biggest trading partner in the West. Schmidt Under Attack
Until he met with Mr. Reagan, Chancellor Schmidt had been excused from Soviet propaganda diatribes over Poland. But after the Chancellor subscribed to a communique in Washington that condemned the violation of human rights in Poland and spoke of the ”responsibility” of the Soviet Union for the Polish developments, the velvet glove came off, if only slightly. Mr. Schmidt, the Soviet news agency Tass said, had joined Mr. Reagan in trying to ”dictate” internal policy to the Polish Government.
This was a change from previous Soviet commentaries, which applauded Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher and Economics Minister Otto Lambsdorff for statements that played down the seriousness of the Polish situation and emphasized the lack of evidence for asserttions that the Soviet leadership was involved in the crackdown. Just before the Schmidt-Reagan meeting, Pravda confidently declared that West Germany was resolved not to allow Poland to interrupt ”political dialogu e” with the Kremlin, and a commentator o n Soviet television said that the Bonn Government knew ”only too we ll” the importance of its ties with Moscow.
Today Pravda carried what was probably the shrillest article yet on the mood in West Germany, saying that ”some in West Germany were rubbing their hands” in anticipation of a capitalist counterrevolution in Poland. But the article concluded that the ”attractions” that this prospect held for ”many on the Rhine” had been outbalanced by the necessity of peaceful coexistence.
January 16, 1982
SOVIET LOOKS TO PARTY PURGE AS NEXT STEP IN POLAND
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
After a month of martial law in Poland, the Soviet Union appears to have turned its atten tion to the need to rebuild the Polish Communist Party.
Several articles in the Soviet press in recent days have supported calls for a purge in the Polish party, and its reconstitution around ”healthy forces” who opposed compromise with the Solidarity union before the military crackdown. There has been speculation that party problems were the focus of a meeting here earlier this week between Poland’s Foreign Minister, Jozef Czyrek, and Mikhail A. Suslov, the ideologist in the Soviet Politburo.
The Soviet press gave no details of the meeting between Mr. Suslov and Mr. Czyrek. But Eastern European sources here said there was some ”frank talk” between the two on the state of the Polish party, which was effectively shunted aside when a military council headed by Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the party leader, assumed power Dec. 13.
Mr. Suslov is thought to have been among the Soviet leaders most insistent on a halt to the erosion of party authority that occurred after August 1980, when Solidarity was founded and used its support among Polish workers to win an easing of Communist controls on economic and political life. In April 1981, Mr. Suslov, 79 years old, the longest-serving member of the Soviet leadership, went to Warsaw as a delegate of the Soviet Politburo to demand an end to ”revisionism” in Poland. Insistence on Orthodoxy Western dip lomats here believe that in the long run Soviet insistence on a return to ideological orthodoxy in the Polish party could lead to pressure for the replacement of General Jaruzelski as General Secre tary, the party’s top post. Although General Jaruzelski has used troo ps to crush Solidarity and detain most of its leaders, steps that Mo scow has strongly supported, he has made several speeches sinc e the crackdown in which he has committed himself to theprinciple of independent trade unions and ”socialist renewal,” ideas that ha ve no backing in Moscow.
In retrospect, diplomats here believe that the selection of General Jaruzelski in September to succeed Stanislaw Kania as party leader was strongly supported by the Kremlin, if not actually masterminded here. Once the posts of party leader and military chief were combined, the diplomats say, it became possible for a crackdown to be mounted against Solidarity that would preserve at least a show of party legitimacy without having to clear the action in advance through the Polish Politburo, where Solidarity sympathizers would almost certainly have provided resistance.
The diplomats say, however, that the calculations in Moscow may now be running the other way. In this view, General Jaruzelski may find that his usefulness to Moscow declines as the risk of popular resistance in Poland recedes. Once martial law is withdrawn, a step that Polish authorities have hinted could come within weeks, the Soviet leadership might feel more comfortable with a party leader who stood against compromise with Solidarity from the outset, which General Jaruzelski did not. It might also be expedient for Moscow to have a party leader in Poland who was not involved in the shedding of Polish blood, as General Jaruzelski became when troops under his command shot striking workers in the initial period of martial law.
Two weeks ago there was a report that a group of hard-liners from Warsaw was in Moscow to meet secretly with Soviet leaders, a step that would have been a clear indication that General Jaruzelski’s days were numbered. The report, said to have originated at Radio Free Europe, a United States Government-f@inanced radio station that broadcasts to Eastern Europe from Munich, West Germany, asserted that the Polish visitors included Stefan Olszewski and Tadeusz Grabski, two of Solidarity’s most outspoken opponents in the Polish hierarchy. The Polish Embassy firmly denied the report.
The Soviet press has nevertheless made it clear that a purge of the party’s ranks is a top priority. At least one article in Pravda, the Communist Party daily, has indicated that Moscow expects the process to take some time. At the end of last month, the party newspaper said the difficulties in restoring order ”should not be underestimated.”
”Not everything is settled yet,” it added. ”There are problems within the party itself. It is generally known that not all of its members and organizations passed the difficult test of sharp political struggle.”
Commentaries like this have left little doubt that Soviet leaders want the clock turned back at least to the situation before last July, when the Polish party held an emergency meeting. The distinguishing characteristic of that meeting was that the delegates were chosen in contests around the country, and they adopted democratic balloting that resulted in the election of a strong group of Solidarity sympathizers to the Central Committee and the Politburo. —- Polish A rmy Asks Purge
WARSAW, Jan. 15 (AP) – Poland’s hard-line army newspaper called today for a sweeping purge of the Communist Party, the Government, colleges and the press.
The newspaper, Zolnierz Wolnosci, said some officials were ”changing like chameleons,” and it declared that ”a consistent removal of evil from our life should be started and carried out in a commissar-like manner.”
”The time of martial law creates the ideal conditions for introduction of real, effective and not apparent verification of staff in the party, administrative apparatus, economy, education, press, radio and television,” it said.
The paper said the first targets should be people who backed the ”opposition” during the 16-month labor crisis that ended with the declaration of martial law and suspension of the independent union Solidarity.
Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the party leader, Prime Minister and military chief, said after imposing martial law Dec. 13 that military commissars would back up most important Government posts to insure discipline and a return to ”normal life.”
The Polish Government, through the official news media, has sought to depict a process of steady ”normalization” under martial law. As a part of this Government campaign, Warsaw’s movies and theaters were reopened today.
January 21, 1982
SOVIET PREMIER CALLS FOR DIALOGUE NOT CONFRONTATION, WITH THE U.S.
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIA L TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Prime Minister Nikolai A. Tikhonov said today that the Soviet Union ”does not seek confrontation” with the United States and was doing all it could ”to direct the course of events into constructive dialogue.”
His remarks on Soviet-American relations, made at a Kremlin luncheon, were the first on the subject from a top Soviet leader since the military crackdown in Poland last month deepened the existing chill between Washington and Moscow. Timed for Haig-Gromyko Talks
Mr. Tikhonov’s comments contrasted with the recent tone of the Soviet press, which has accused the United States of pushing the world toward war.
(In Washington, the State Department said it had no comment on Mr. Tikhonov’s speech.) Western diplomats here believe that the speech was delivered with an eye to the meeting in Geneva next Wednesday between Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko and Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr. The meeting, their first encounter since the two men met in New York in September, is expected to cover many issues on which the two governments are opposed, including Poland and arms control.
The Soviet Prime Minister spoke at a function for a visiting Angolan delegation, but a large part of the speech appeared directed at the United States and its allies in Western Europe. The Kremlin’s desire to have the speech noted was reflected by the swiftness with which the Government press agency Tass distributed the text on its English-language service, two hours before it was transmitted in Russian.
The apparent effort to improve the atmosphere for the Haig-Gromyko talks was coupled with a strong measure of condemnation for the Reagan Administration, which Mr. Tikhonov accused of ”intensifying the arms race” and ”aggravating the international situation,” among other things by ”attempts to interfere in the internal affairs and to declare an economic blockade of Poland.”
He also warned that the Soviet Union would respond in kind if its overtures were rebuffed. ”Those who prefer the language of threats and demonstrations of strength to a peaceful dialogue should understand that we w ill take all the necessary measures to insure our secu rity and the security ofour allies and friends,” he said.
But what attracted attention were Mr. Tikhonov’s more conciliatory remarks. ”The Sovie t Union,” he said, ”is not seeking confrontation with any Western c ountry, including the United States. As in the past, we are doing eve rything we can to direct the course of events into the channel of co nstructive dialogue.”
He said this had been the aim of recent foreign policy initiatives, including proposals put forward in November by Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, during a visit to West Germany.
Mr. Brezhnev called for a moratorium on the deployment of Soviet and American medium-range nuclear missiles, preparatory to an agreement at negotiations in Geneva in which, he said, the Soviet Union would be prepared to reduce its medium-range nuclear armory ”not by dozens but by hundreds of units.”
Mr. Brezhnev’s proposal and one by President Reagan urging the Russians to dismantle all their medium-range missiles in return for agreement by the Western alliance not to proceed with the deployment in Europe of a new generation of American missiles were placed on the table when talks opened in Geneva on Nov. 30. There seems to have been little movement since, but Mr. Tikhonov, in his speech, appeared to be saying that both sides should compromise so as to reach an agreement that could lead to accommodations on other arms issues.
”In our opinion, the talks that have started in Geneva create a possibility for making a step, that is so important now, in solving the entire set of questions of arms limitations and disarmament,” he said. ”All that is needed for the successful conduct of the talks is recognition of the principle of equality and equal security.”
Some diplomats approached the speech with caution, noting that it fitted well into the main thrust of recent Soviet statements designed to wean Western European nations away from the United States on issues like Poland and arms control.
Especially since the declaration of martial law in Poland and the tough American response that followed, the Kremlin has depicted itself as a peacemaker striving to bring sense to ”militarists” and ”warmongers” in Washington.
By adopting a conciliatory stance before the Haig-Gromyko talks, a diplomat said, the Kremlin appeared to be taking this approach one step further. Although the Soviet press has reacted harshly to the stiffening stance of some Western European governments on Poland, reflected in the tough wording of the communique issued by the foreign ministers and Atlantic alliance countries, the Russians have continued, in effect, to lure the Western Europeans into a neutral stand.
Nonetheless, the diplomats said, the Tikhonov speech represented an overture that could ease tensions. They noted the contrast between his tone and the continuing barrage of press attacks against the Reagan Administration and the President personally. Commentaries on Mr. Reagan’s first year in office have been mocking, calling him the champion ”of a handful of American moneybags” and describing him as ”confused” and ”hypocritical” for the sympathy he expressed at a news conference yesterday for jobless Americans.
January 25, 1982
SOVIET PUBLISHERS SCATHING ATTACK ON ITALIAN PARTY
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
After years of mounting tension that was brought to a head by events in Poland, the Soviet Union today delivered a scathing attack on the leadership of the Italian Communist Party, the largest in the West.
A 5,000-word editorial in the Communist Party daily Pravda denounced the Italian Communists in language that was brutal by the standards of past disputes between the Soviet Union and Western European Communist parties. At one point, the editorial accused the Italians of following a policy of ”direct aid to imperialism,” tantamount in Marxist terms to treason.
”Something monstrous has happened,” Pravda said, citing the Italian Communists’ practice of ”slandering” the Soviet Union and its system over Poland, the East-West military confrontation and Soviet domestic policies.
Remarks Reminiscent of Haig
It said that the pronouncements of the Italian party’s Central Committee after a meeting this month were ”very much reminiscent of and sometimes directly coincide with the utterances” of Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig Jr.
”What does all this mean?” the editorial asked in a section that was printed in bold-face type. ”Whose class interests does all this serve? In today’s world, this means direct aid to imperialism, which has been for decades seeking to weaken socialism, to loosen it and to ideologically undermine it. This means aid to anti-Communism and to all forces hostile to the cause of social progress in general.”
Close readers of the Soviet press said they could recall no other occasion in the years that the Kremlin has been fighting a rearguard action over ”Eurocommunism,” the name given to Western European Communist parties that follow polici es independent of the Kremlin, that newspapers here had accused a C ommunist party in Western Europe of aiding imperialism. Previou sly, the charge had beenleveled only at China, and at Yugoslavia duri ng the last years of Stalin’s life. A Turning Point for Soviet
According to Western diplomats, the editorial appeared to mark a turning point in the Soviet Union’s long struggle to retrieve the waning loyalties of Western European parties. Although the editorial took care to attack the Italian Communist leaders and not the party itself, one diplomat said its message seemed to be that Moscow now regards the Italian party as ”a member of the enemy camp.”
After earlier disagreements, the French Communist Party has recently returned to the fold, supporting the imposition of martial law in Poland and the suspension of the independent trade union, Solidarity.
But Polish developments prompted what probably were the harshest condemnations of the Soviet Union ever uttered by the Italian and Spanish parties, which brushed aside Soviet disclaimers of responsibility and said bluntly that the Russians were imposing their system against the will of the Poles. Force in Poland Condemned
The Italian party has condemned the use of ”force and repression” in Poland, and demanded the release of all detainees and a resumption of the dialogue between the Communist authorities and Solidarity. In addition, Enrico Berlinguer, the leader of the Italian party, made a sweeping condemnation this month of Soviet-style Communism, citing economic failures and repression of human rights.
Mr. Berlinguer was quoted in L’Unita, the Italian party’s newspaper, as having said that ”the way followed by Russia after 1917” could no longer serve as a model for workers’ movements in Western Europe. Instead, he called for a ”new way to socialism” based on pluralism, democracy and East-West detente.
Mr. Berlinguer escaped personal censure in the Pravda editorial. However, it gave prominence to the names of three of his aides, identified as ”comrades Ingrao, Napolitano and Reichlin,” who it said were at the core of the Italian party’s dissent.
Diplomats speculated that the Soviet paper spared Mr. Berlinguer out of recognition for his stature in Italy and because of a lingering hope that the Italian party, which has taken about a third of the popular vote in recent Italian elections, might eventually swing back to Moscow’s side on key East-West issues. French Communists Praised
The Soviet press has reported approvingly on the stand taken by the French Communist Party, which described the imposition of martial law as necessary to curb excesses by Solidarity. But the Russians have ignored the Spanish party, which condemned the Kremlin for ”ignoring local realities” in Poland and called the Soviet party ”a bureaucratic montage” and its congresses ”propaganda liturgies.”
The Pravda editorial described the Italian party’s pronouncements on Poland a ”pretext” for ”an inadmissable and unjust denigration” of the Soviet Communist system. It said the Italians’ ”rather pretentious and abstract concepts about a ‘new way’ to socialism” were nothing more than the old ”opportunism and revisionism” that had been rejected by European ”workers’ movements” before.
Given the prominence of Poland in the Italian party’s attacks on the Soviet Union, the Pravda piece said surprisingly little in defense of the military crackdown. But it sneered at the Italians’ demands for negotiations with Solidarity, saying that they seemed to want not genuine democracy but ”freedom of action for those who, trampling socialist legality underfoot, and using assistance from without, are trying to undermine the socialist system.”
The editorial said that ”no such freedom” would ever be given to workers in a ”socialist” state. The Italian Communists’ attempts to equate Soviet foreign policy with that of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was ”truly sacrilegious,” Pravda said, in view of Moscow’s unbroken policy of pursuing peace and the adoption by NATO of ”the unbridled buildup of armaments as its main political credo.” The editorial grew still more indignant at the Italian party’s ”calumnious assertions” about a Soviet military threat to Europe, a position that Pravda said had previously been restricted to ”bourgeois propaganda.”
The editorial concluded that the Italians were no longer true Communists at all, judging by the positions they had taken in recent years. —- L’Unita to Print Editori al Special to the New York Times
ROME, Jan. 24 – The Italian Communist Party daily, L’Unita, will publish a full translation of the Pravda editorial tomorrow. ”In contrast with Pravda, which did not publish the statement of our party’s leadership, we will publish in its entirety the Pravda article,” said Giancarlo Pajetta, head of the party’s foreign affairs committee.
Mr. Pajetta described the Pravda article as ”insults and attacks that we had considered impossible between comrades.”
February 26, 1982
SOVIET IS SCOFFING AT CARIBBEAN PLAN
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Soviet press agency Tass charged today that ”anti-Communist paranoia” in Washington was behind the stepped-up program of aid to Caribbean nations that President Reagan announced on Wednesday.
Tass used the word ”absurdity” to characterize the Reagan statement that there was Soviet-backed subversion in El Salvador. In two commentaries on Mr. Reagan’s address to the Organization of American States, Tass said that the President’s allegations about a Soviet-backed, Cuban-managed bid to impose Communist regimes in Central America were a bid to mask Washington’s own ambitions in the region. These, it said, are to buttress ”blood-stained repressive regimes” and to protect American business interests that have flourished under them.
Insurgencies Called Indigenous
Tass charged that, by attributing insurgencies in El Salvador and elsewhere to external intrigues, ”the American President slurs the honor and dignity of millions of people and puts the United States in the way of the inexorable advance of history.”
The Tass statements were part of a counteroffensive focusing on American policy in El Salvador and neighboring countries that has been undertaken by the Soviet Union, which has long been denounced for the troops it has in Afghanistan and for events in Poland.
A spate of articles in recent weeks have described United States backing for the Salvadoran junta as reminiscent of the steps that led to the debacle in Vietnam. The articles have accused Mr. Reagan of ”hypocrisy” for condemning martial law in Poland while aiding the Salvadoran authorities.
The party newspaper Pravda compared events in El Mozote, a Salvadoran village where Government forces were reported to have slain large numbers of civilians, to killings at Lidice in Czechoslovakia and Khatyn in Byelorussia during World War II and at My Lai during the Vietnam War.
In its response to Mr. Reagan’s speech, Tass noted his pledge to oppose efforts to impose what he called ”Marxist-Leninist dictatorships of the Cuban model” on the Caribbean region.
”The absurdity of such allegations,” Tass went on, ”has been pointed out at the highest level on more than one occasion.” The inference was that Soviet assurances had been offered in official exchanges, possibly at the meeting in Geneva last month between Secretary of State Alexanxder M. Haig Jr. and Foreign Minister Andrei A. Gromyko.
March 1, 1982
POLISH LEADER IS DUE IN MOSCOW TODAY FOR TALKS
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
The arrival here Monday of a delegation headed by Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski will provide the Polish leader and his Soviet hosts with their first face-to-face discussions since martial law was declared in Poland Dec. 13.
The official Soviet press agency Tass, giving notice of the Polish group’s arrival, said today that ”the Soviet people” were confident that the visit would ”facilitate further consolidation” of the ties between the two countries.
Western diplomats here, however, say they believe that the two sides could find themselves at odds over the course of action to be taken in Poland in the months ahead. Anxiety in Soviet
Moscow has made it clear in recent weeks that it is solidly behind General Jaruzelski’s imposition of military rule. At the same time, recent Soviet news commentaries on Poland and remarks by senior officials have suggested some anxiety that General Jaruzelski, having taken firm action to bolster Communist power, could relax his grip before the ”enemies of socialism” in Poland have been thoroughly defeated.
The latest indication of Soviet thinking came in a television program Saturday in which Leonid M. Zamyatin, a Kremlin spokesman, warned that martial law had checked ”but not rooted out” what he described as counterrevolution in Poland.
Mr. Zamyatin, who heads the International Information Department of the Communist Party’s Central Committee, said that although the Polish action had destroyed the ”brain center” of opposition to Communist power, the ”so-called trade union leaders” at the heart of the trouble were now ”going underground and creating some kind of a secret network.” Commentary Seen as Warning
The remark appeared to be a veiled warning against any premature lifting of martial law. Although General Jaruzelski has set no deadline for a return to normality and warned earlier in the year that Poles should not expect an early lifting of the restrictions, his speeches since he imposed the crackdown have acknowledged that martial law itself is not a solution to the country’s problems and that some form of political dialogue will have to resume if long-term stability is to be assured.
The Soviet press has reprinted these remarks, but statements such as those by Mr. Zamyatin have implied that Moscow is much less eager for a relaxation. Diplomats said they believed that the Soviet leader, Leonid I. Brezhnev, might tell General Jaruzelski that the important thing now was to maintain control and that efforts to win the cooperation of the independent Solidarity labor union and the Roman Catholic Church should be held in abeyance.
Divergence between the Polish and Soviet views could go beyond the timing of a return to civilian rule. General Jaruzelski’s emphasis has somewhat shifted since the generally conciliatory speeches he made at the early stages of martial law, but he has emphasized on several occasions that the Communist authorities in Poland are willing to work with the ”healthy” elements in Solidarity and honor the August 1980 Gdansk agreement that recognized the union’s right to exist and to strike. Independent Union ‘an Absurdity’
The Soviet emphasis has been different. Soviet readers have been reminded of Mr. Brezhnev’s dictum in a recent book on Soviet trade unions that the notion of an independent union in a Communist country is ”an absurdity.”
Moreover, Soviet commentaries on Poland have blurred the distinction that they made at an earlier stage of the crisis between ”extremists” in Solidarity and the union itself, implying that Moscow would prefer a Poland without Solidarity, or without it in any recognizable form.
At the same time, Soviet coverage of the events since Dec. 13 has stressed the debilitated state of the Polish economy and the need to get Polish workers back to acceptable rates of production.
General Jaruzelski could use these themes to bolster his arguments for an early return to normality. Like the economies of the other Soviet-dominated nations of Eastern Europe, Poland’s economy is intricately linked with the Soviet Union’s, and it has taken several billion rubles in Soviet aid to keep Poland from collapse. Purge Likely to Be a Topic
Another topic that is considered certain to be discussed in the Jaruzelski visit is the continuing purge of the Polish party. Soviet reports have dwelled on the need for review of the party membership to cleanse it of ”opportunists” and others who backed or went along with Solidarity’s rise.
On this score as well, General Jaruzelski may have cause to resist. Diplomats said they believed that General Jaruzelski, having lost much of the popular support he enjoyed before the military crackdown, might be loathe to narrow his political base further by ridding the party of centrists who would support modest efforts at change. At the same time, diplomats say, the Polish leader will come here knowing that resisting Moscow beyond a certain point could prompt the Soviet leadership to initiate moves to replace him with someone more pliable.
March 2, 1982
MOSCOW WELCOMES POLISH LEADER WITH ENDORSEMENT OF CRACKDOWN; Excerpts from remarks, page A5.
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Polish leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, arrived here today to an effusive welcome and a strong endorsement from Leonid I. Brezhnev.
Mr. Brezhnev and five members of the Soviet Politburo waited in biting cold at Vnokovo Airport to welcome General Jaruzelski on his first trip outside Poland since he launched the military crackdown there 11 weeks ago.
After being kissed by Mr. Brezhnev on both cheeks and after reviewing an honor guard, the Polish leader drove into the capital with the Soviet leader along a route lined for miles by crowds waving Polish and Soviet flags and hoisting portraits of the two leaders. Feted at Kremlin Dinner
After several hours of talks, General Jaruzelski and his delegation were feted at a Kremlin dinner at which Mr. Brezhnev applauded the ”timely measures” taken by the Polish leaders to defend Communist rule. Mr. Brezhnev also emphasized the ”identical understanding of current and coming tasks” that he said had marked the talks here.
But the Soviet leader appeared to warn against any premature relaxation of martial law, as demanded by the United States and other Western nations that have imposed economic sanctions on the Warsaw Government.
Mr. Brezhnev, making his first published remarks on Poland since an exchange of letters with President Reagan in December, called the situation there ”complicated and sometimes dramatically difficult.”
Looking ahead, he said that ”beyond the present complicated day, one can already see a better day coming,” but his emphasis appeared to be on resisting Western pressures for an early return to civilian rule and a broad-based political dialogue.
”It is not easy for Poland today,” the Soviet leader said. ”The waves of anarchy, chaos and terror are not rolling back overnight. The imperialist powers, the United States in the first place, are increasing their pressure on Poland and in doing so are trampling underfoot both law and morality. They would like to bring new trials and ordeals upon the heads of Poles.”
”But let no one hope that socialism will not defend itself,” Mr. Brezhnev added. ”It will – and with all resolution.” In his reply, General Jaruzelski seemed at pains to impress the Soviet leaders with the Warsaw Government’s caution and resolve in the face of what he called an ”extremely difficult” situation.
In contrast with his speeches in Poland, he said nothing that could be regarded as conciliatory toward the Solidarity trade union and others pressing for changes of the Communist system, emphasizing instead the need for time to allow martial law to work.
”Stabilization is setting in,” he said. ”But the struggle continues.” At the same time, the Polish leader seemed to be telling the Kremlin that the price for resisting Western pressures would be increased Soviet economic aid, already running at several billion rubles a year. In an unusually candid assessment he said that the economic sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies had ”significantly complicated” the economic situation, which he described as ”grave.”
”Our economy needs a strong additional impulse so that it could restore, in a shorter period, its balance, and rid itself of its dislocations” he said. ”Soviet assistance is this impulse.” Try to Offset Charges by West
But the warmth of the Polish leader’s reception and the good will emphasized by both leaders in their dinner speeches suggested that a primary purpose of the visit is to portray the two countries as friendly partners, offsetting charges in the West that the Warsaw Government imposed martial law at the Kremlin’s bidding.
The mood contrasted strongly with visits that the Polish leaders made to the Soviet Union during Solidarity’s rise. A year ago in Moscow Mr. Brezhnev was stiffly formal toward Stanislaw Kania, General Jaruzelski’s predecessor as Poland’s Communist Party leader, but today he made a show of embracing the general when they met on the airport tarmac.
The bunting along the route to the Kremlin, the banners proclaiming friendship and the crowds bused in for the occasion were as elaborate as they have been for any visiting Eastern European leader in recent memory.
Soon after his arrival, General Jaruzelski and his party paid their respects at Lenin’s Mausoleum in Red Square. They repeated the procedure at the Tomb to the Unknown Soldier along the Kremlin wall and at the plaque in the wall marking the burial place of Feliks E. Dzerzhinsky, the Polish-born Bolshevik who was the first head of the Cheka, the forerunner of the modern K.G.B., or state security police. Stress Warsaw’s Responsibility
Both leaders went out of their way to stress the sole responsibility of the Warsaw Government for the military crackdown, as well as the necessity of it.
Mr. Brezhnev said that the Soviet leadership ”received with full understanding word of the national decision by our Polish friends to defend people’s power,” without which, he said, ”the destinies of Poland, stability in Europe and the world at large would have been jeopardized.”
General Jaruzelski offered a lengthy tribute to the role of the Soviet Army in driving the Germans from Poland in World War II and emphasized Poland’s postwar obligations to the Soviet Union.
But when it came to the decisions that led to martial law, he said, ”we made them independently and as a sovereign state, being deeply convinced that they meet the interests of socialist Poland and the cause of peace in Europe.”
March 3, 1982
JARUZELSKI ENDS HIS VISIT WITH A PLEDGE TO SOVIET
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish leader, flew home today after having assured Soviet leaders in two days of talks that any further attacks on Communist rule in Poland ”will be cut short.”
The assurance was reported in a 3,500-word joint communique, which also rebuffed Western pressure for a return to normality in Poland. The document called Western economic sanctions ”outright blackmail” and said that all such efforts to undermine Communism would fail.
General Jaruzelski ended his first trip outside Poland under martial law with departure ceremonies as elaborate as those that greeted him on Monday.
Leonid I. Brezhnev, looking more frail than he has for months, led the Politburo at Vnukovo Airport for the send-off after a motorcade through streets lined with cheering, flag-waving people.
The communique, which was issued as General Jaruzelski’s plane landed in Warsaw, said that Mr. Brezhnev had accepted an invitation to visit Poland. Return Visit Unlikely to Be Soon
But the uneasy manner of the 75-year-old Soviet leader during the visit suggested that he might not be strong enough to undertake the journey any time soon. During the departure ceremonies, he virtually shuffled past the honor guard and a worried-looking aide reached out a hand at least once to steady him.
The communique offered only generalities about General Jaruzelski’s discussions with Mr. Brezhnev, Prime Minister Nikolai A. Tikhonov and other high officials, including Yuri V. Andropov, head of the state security service.
But the document suggested that the general had sought to assure the Soviet leaders that his Government would not permit a return to the political turmoil that preceded the imposition of martial law on Dec. 13.
”It was stressed by the Polish side that any attempts to resume actions aimed at causing economic disarray, at resumption of anarchy, disturbances, at changing the social and political system will be cut short most resolutely in the future, too,” the communique said. Impact of Western Sanctions
In a speech on Monday, General Jaruzelski conceded that Western sanctions had ”significantly complicated” Poland’s economic situation, which he described as grave. The communique said the Western countries were interfering in Poland’s internal affairs in defiance of international law, the United Nations Charter, the 1975 Helsinki agreement on security and cooperation in Europe and ”existing treaties and agreements.”
”The sides view the discriminatory measures with regard to the Polish People’s Republic and the Soviet Union proclaimed by the United States and some of its allies as outright blackmail and pressure and as an attempt to shake the peaceful structure of interstate relations and as a threat to peace and security in Europe,” the communiqu’e said.
”It was emphasized that all calculations at undermining the mainstays of socialism in Poland, including such calculations abroad, would inevitably fail.”
The document did not mention the eventual lifting of martial law, an issue that was believed to have been central to the talks. But sections stressing the Poles’ vigilance in the face of ”enemies of socialism,” their resolve to strengthen the Communist Party and their determination to keep Poland a faithful Soviet ally suggested that General Jaruzelski had met Soviet concerns about a premature relaxation by stressing his own loyalty and caution.
At the same time, the communique implied that the Polish leader and the ministers who accompanied him had put forward a political program for carrying Poland beyond martial law.
The document quoted them as having said that the military crackdown had saved Poland from ”the abyss of chaos and anarchy,” but it also quoted them as having said that ”the economic, political and social life that has been seriously disturbed as a result of the actions of the enemies of socialism is now gradually normalizing.”
Another hint of the Polish authorities’ desire to win Soviet backing for an eventual relaxation came in a passage that affirmed the belief ”in the creative, constructive strength of the Polish people.”
”Having put an end to mistakes of the past and firmly rebuffing subversive antistate actions,” the communique said, ”they are determined to build a strong and flourishing Polish state, a society of labor and justice, a society confident of tomorrow.” No Return to Past Policies
The reference to past errors was in keeping with promises by General Jaruzelski that there would be no return to the inflexible policies that led to the founding of the independent Solidarity trade union in August 1980.
Most of what the communique had to say about the situation was attributed to the Polish side, and the Soviet leaders gave few hints of whatever strictures they might may have laid down. A passage quoted Mr. Brezhnev as having stressed the Soviet party’s respect for trade unions and their work in improving the lot of the workers.
The communique contained no pledge of Soviet aid beyond the $3.8 billion in credits extended in January. The Soviet leaders undertook in the document to ”continue to render support and assistance,” but Poland was also called on to ”make efforts to insure balanced Soviet-Polish trade.” This was an allusion to the disruption of Polish deliveries to the Soviet Union caused by the economic crisis in Poland.
Calling for an expansion of joint Soviet-Polish economic projects, the communique spoke of the potential for expanding ”mutually beneficial cooperation in a number of industries” and said a stable political situation in Poland would promote better utilization of that potential.
May 18, 1982
MOSCOW SENDS A HIGH OFFICIAL TO POLAND
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
A top Soviet adviser flew to Warsaw today for talks with Polish leaders that the press agency Tass described as a ”friendly working visit.”
Konstantin V. Rusakov, a member of the nine-member secretariat of the Soviet Communist Party’s Central Committee, is the most senior Soviet official to visit Poland since martial law was imposed there five months ago.
Tass said that an initial meeting between Mr. Rusakov and the Polish Communist Party leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, had concentrated on ”questions of developing ties” between the Polish and Soviet parties.
However, the timing of the visit, two weeks after the outbreak of major demonstrations in Warsaw and other Polish cities by supporters of the Solidarity labor union, suggested that Mr. Rusakov had been assigned to assess the Polish situation at first hand and to convey to the Warsaw leadership the serious view that the Kremlin takes of the renewed challenges to the Polish authorities.
Responsibility for Liaison
Mr. Rusakov, who is 72 years old, has responsibility within the Soviet party apparatus for liaison with allied Communist parties. After a wary approach in the initial period after the Polish military crackdown, the Soviet press adopted the line that Poland was gradually returning to ”normal,” meaning that challenges from the remnants of the independent trade union Solidarity were declining and that the country’s crippled economy was slowly picking up.
However, this line began to waver earlier this year and since the illegal demonstrations by Solidarity supporters on may day and in the days following there has been a return to some of the virulent propaganda that characterized Soviet reporting on Poland in the period before martial law.
The dominant theme, as before, has been that the ”wild scum” who initiated the ”bacchanalia” in Warsaw in early May, as Literaturnaya Gazeta put it in a commentary last week, did so at the behest of the United States and according to a ”script” laid down by the Central Intelligence Agency. A Permanent Burden
The American purpose, it has been claimed, has been to foster ”domestic contradictions” that would make Poland a permanent burden on the rest of the Soviet bloc, thus weakening the Soviet Union and making it a more pliant adversary in negotiations with the United States on arms and other issues.
One Tass commentary, quoting Polish officials, even suggested that ”another possible reason” is ”to relegate to the background the shameful conflict over the Falkland Islands,” in which Soviet propaganda has depicted the United States and Britain as defending ”imperialist” interests.
A Tass commentary on President Reagan’s speech last week in Eureka, Ill., said that Mr. Reagan’s expression of concern over the events in Poland was ”nothing short of a cover-up for the incessant attempts of certain U.S. circles to encourage in every way the anti-socialist forces in Poland, to incite them to disrupt law and order and to raise artificial obstacles to the process of socioeconomic stabilization.”
The Tass commentator, Yuri Kornilov, dismissed Mr. Reagan’s offer to join in a program of Western economic support for Poland if it lifted martial law, released political prisoners and resumed negotiations with Solidarity. Tass Commentator’s View
”Certain Washington politicians, obviously mistaking the Polish People’s Republic for California or Texas, continue to ‘teach’ it how to organize its life and what sort of domestic policy to pursue,” he said.
Such reporting suggests that the Kremlin may be no more disposed to back a resumption of political discussion with opposition elements in Poland now than it was when General Jaruzelski visited Moscow in March.
Diplomats following the situation here believe that the Soviet leadership is eager to get the Polish economy moving again before it drags the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries into deeper economic trouble of their own.
The obvious choice would be some gesture towards Solidarity, but Soviet information outlets have made it plain that the Kremlin wants the complete elimination of the union in its old form.
Accordingly, Mr. Rusakov is thought likely to tell the Polish leaders that the elimination of opposition in any form must be the paramount objective before any further easing of martial law restrictions is considered.
June 24, 1982
FRENCH-SOVIET CREW BEGINS SPACE MISSION TODAY
By JOHN F. BURNS, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
If all goes well, a 43-year-old French Air Force colonel, Jean-Loup Chretien, will ride a Soviet rocket into earth orbit Thursday with two Russians, thus becoming the first astronaut to fly in space who is neither an American nor a citizen of a Communist nation.
For Colonel Chretien, a Breton-born fighter pilot, successful completion of the eight-day flight will mean a place alongside such heroes of French aviation as Louis Bleriot, who in 1909 piloted the first airplane to cross the English Channel. But the culmination of the 21-months he spent at Star City, the Soviet astronauts’ training center on the northeast outskirts of Moscow comes at a time of chill in French-Soviet relations, and the political atmosphere has clouded what both nations originally envisioned as a celebration of detente.
The schedule calls for the dart-shaped rocket to blast off from the Baikonur space launching center in the desert outside the city of Leninsk in Kazakhstan at 8:29 P.M., Moscow time, placing the Soyuz-T 6 spaceship into orbit 185 miles above the Earth. On Friday, the craft is scheduled to rendezvous and dock with the Salyut 7 orbiting laboratory in which two other Soviet astronauts have been working for six weeks.
Televised Coverage of Launching
The launching will be the first to be televised live in the Soviet Union and Europe since the Apollo-Soyuz mission in 1975, and many of the experiments that the astronauts will conduct aboard Salyut were developed by scientists in France.
The flight will also add a new word to the space vocabulary. After some debate, French officials decided that the American word ”astronaut” and its Russian equivalent, ”cosmonaut,” could not be adopted by the French tongue. Colonel Chretien will therefore be known in France as the nation’s first ”spationaute.” And the French food industry has seen to it that the crew’s diet aloft will include such novel space foods as jugged hare a l’Alsacienne, crab soup and lobster pilaf with sauce a l’Armoricaine, squeezed from tubes in the manner traditional among space travelers.
A report from the space center Tuesday said that the 300-ton rocket had been rolled out to the launching site and erected on the gantry ready for blastoff. Tass, the official Soviet press agency, said that Colonel Chretien and his Soviet partners, Col. Vladimir A. Dzhanibekov, the mission commander, and Aleksandr S. Ivanchenkov, the flight engineer, had completed their ”pre-liftoff inspection” of the craft before it was rolled out, and noted that Colonel Chretien had thanked the specialists who assembled it in Russian.
”We will not forget your hands of gold and your friendly hearts” he was quoted as saying. Reticence of Frenchman
By a curious paradox, Colonel Chretien may have to watch what he says more carefully than his Soviet companions in the 142-orbit mission, which is scheduled to end July 2 with the French-Soviet crew returning to a landing site near Arkalyk, also in Kazakhstan. According to reports from Paris, the Frenchman has been ordered not to say or do anything that would give the flight the aura of a political spectacular.
Leonid I. Brezhnev, the Soviet leader, proposed the joint flight to Valery Giscard d’Estaing in a visit to Moscow in 1979 by Mr. Giscard d’Estaing, who was then President of France. The mission was envisaged as the culmination of a joint program of space science that began in 1966. But as the announcement at the time made clear, the flight was also to be a manifestation of special relationship that the two countries had developed under detente.
By last year, when Francois Mitterrand won the French presidency, that relationship had turned sour because of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. Although the Mitterrand Cabinet includes several Communist ministers, the new Socialist Government loosened its ties with Moscow even further and, after the imposition of martial law in Poland last December, there was speculation that the joint flight would be canceled.
But Mr. Mitterrand ordered the flight to proceed, provided that it was stripped of political trappings. No French minister will be present for the launching, which will be attended by the French Ambassador and officials of the French space agency, the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales. No Government-to-Government messages are planned and reports from Paris say that Colonel Chretien has been asked not to participate in the salutes to peace and progress that accompanied the nine flights in the ”Intercosmos” series in which Soviet astronauts flew with pilots from allied Communist nations.
For the reticent Colonel Chretien, not having to hold up photographs of Mr. Brezhnev to the Salyut’s television cameras while the Soviet astronauts loft portraits of Mr. Mitterrand could be a relief. The Western friends he made in Moscow in his training, which he shared with a French backup pilot, Maj. Patrick Baudry, say that he is acutely aware of the awkward position in which political developments have landed him. Hints of Cool Relationship
For their part, the Russians are said to have chafed at the restraints imposed on the venture by the French. Their misgivings have been largely hidden in the buildup to the flight, but the different views were suggested by an interview with the crewmen printed in a special preflight edition of Izvestia, the Soviet Government newspaper.
Asked for an assessment of the flight’s significance, Colonel Dzhanibekov, a veteran of two previous flights, including one last year with a Mongolian astronaut, stressed the ”strengthening of mutual understanding” generated by such undertakings, as well as the scientific aspects. Colonel Chretien limited his remarks to the scientific benefits, saying that ”cooperation is good for everyone.”
The situation is in stark contrast to the only previous manned flight the Russians have undertaken in conjunction with the West, the Soyuz-Apollo mission of July 1975, which was celebrated by the Russians and Americans.
Soviet-American relations have deteriorated since then to the point that the Reagan Administration allowed a 10-year-old space cooperation agreement with the Kremlin to lapse last month.
Opposition to the Chretien flight among French scientists has focused on the political aspect, but there have also been charges that the 1,100-pound package of scientific equipment built in France for tests that are to be carried out in the mission amounts to a free transfer to the Russians of Western technology that would otherwise be denied them. However, Hubert Curien, president of the French space agency, says that the $9 million the mission will cost France will be more than repaid by the data gained.
The French equipment, carried to the Salyut complex earlier this month by an unmanned Progress ferry craft, is designed for a series of experiments in space medicine, astronomy, biology and metallurgy that French scientists say will in some respects go beyond anything yet attempted by Soviet and American scientists.