Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Inside the Kremlin, by Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova. 1986. Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading

Two Inquisitive Russians With a Sophisticated Awareness of Events in Polish-Russian Relations

Authors Vladimir Solovyov and Elena Klepikova are described as Russian defectors with inside knowledge of the upper echelons of the Soviet Union, “Based on secret sources inside Russia as well as their own first-hand experience, Solovyov and Klepikova have produced a fascinating portrait of the real lives of the Soviet elite.” (back cover).

There are many subjects brought up. I focus on those that are relevant to Poland.

THE SOVIET-SPONSORED ATTEMPT ON THE LIFE OF POPE JOHN PAUL II (JPII)

Solovyov and Klepikova write, “The tragic and mysterious death of Ludmilla Zhivkova came only two months before a Turkish terrorist, under the direction of Bulgarian agents, tried to assassinate Pope John Paul II and two and a half years after some equally mysterious incidents involving umbrellas.” (p. 106).

The authors describe the long-term connection of the Soviets with the Bulgarian secret police (Derzhavna Sigurnost), “The Derzhavna Sigurnost was founded by the Soviet occupation authorities in 1944. The KGB put it partially in charge of ‘wet jobs’…Bulgaria was the KGB’s base for experiments, and the Derzhavna Sigurnost was Moscow’s trusty weapon no matter where–in Sofia, Beirut, or Rome.” (p. 107).

SOVIETS BEHIND THE MURDER OF SOLIDARITY ACTIVISTS, INCLUDING FATHER JERZY POPIELUSZKO

The authors describe Wojciech Jaruzelski as a leader disliked by Moscow for not being Soviet-servile enough, despite his imposition of Martial Law in 1981. They comment, “…Wojciech Jaruzelski’s Poland was better prepared for defense than the anarchic Poland of Lech Walesa had been. To attack Poland after the coup would have meant, for Russia, beginning a war whose duration and outcome were both unknown quantities. Under these circumstances, the only thing the Kremlin could do was play a double game.” (p. 126). On one hand the Kremlin praised Jaruzelski, while at the same time working to destabilize his regime, and to eventually get him removed from power in favor of a more Soviet-serving stooge. This was to happen through the provoking of civil disorders by a fifth column consisting of police. (p. 127).

Solovyov and Klepikova describe how this unfolded, “In 1983-4, a wave of mysterious murders passed through Poland. Grzegorz Przemik, the nineteen-year-old son of a widely known dissident Polish poet, Barbara Sadowski, died after being beaten in a police station. Andrzej Gregorz Gasiewski, a former Solidarity activist, was taken into custody by police after he attended Pope John Paul II’s open-air mass in the Warsaw soccer stadium. Several days later, his body was found on a railroad embankment in the suburbs. Jan Samsonovicz [Samsonowicz], another Solidarity activist, was found hanged from a wall in the Gdansk shipyard, where the free trade unions were born in August 1980. And finally, there was Father Jerzy Popieluszko, known throughout the country for his antigovernment sermons. His savage murder in the autumn of 1984 shook all of Poland, and Jaruzelski more than anyone else.” (p. 127).

The authors conclude that, “But once again the Kremlin’s calculations went awry. In Poland the Kremlin’s intentions were surmised at all levels, from the governmental to the popular, and the Poles were not taken in by the provocation.” (p. 128).

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I now consider some earlier aspects of Polish-Russian relations. What is striking is not the information itself, which is fairly well known, but the fact that two dissident Russian authors are verbalizing it!

CENTURIES OF RUSSIAN IMPERIALISM AGAINST POLAND

The authors trace the long history of the Russian subjugation of Poland, and remind us that, “Poland has always been the most unruly of the Russian empire’s subject nations…The Polish uprising of 1831 was put down by Emperor Nicholas I, who had been so stern and cruel in Russia as well that he was nicknamed, ‘Nick the Big Stick.’ Yet in 1863, his liberal son, Emperor Alexander II, who two years before had abolished serfdom in his own country, used no less cruelty in ‘pacifying’ Poland. We find the same amazing consistency in our own century. In 1920, Lenin, an internationalist and pragmatist, sent the newly formed Red Army into Poland to take Warsaw by storm. ” (p. 109).

IMPLICATIONS OF THE MOLOTOV-RIBBENTROP PACT (1939) AND THE TEHERAN-YALTA BETRAYAL OF POLAND (1943-1945)

With reference to Stalin, the Russian authors write, “On two later occasions, that despot, chauvinist, and imperialist, as though wreaking revenge for failure of the 1920 campaign, ‘definitely’ put Poland into Russian hands. He did so just before World War II in the military pact with Hitler, and he did it again towards the war’s end in the agreement with Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta.” (p. 109).

IMPLICATIONS OF KATYN (1940) AND THE SOVIET-BETRAYED WARSAW UPRISING (1944)

Referring to Stalin again, Solovyov and Klepikova comment, “In 1940, he had seen to it that the flower of the Polish officer corps was destroyed by his own secret police. Now, in the summer of 1944, he saw to it that the rest of the Polish army was finished off in Warsaw by Hitler, thereby making it easier to transform postwar Poland into a Soviet satellite.” (p. 110).