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...going in, the Kremlin might ultimately decide that it has no choice. Indeed, according to a Western intelligence report, Brezhnev himself had to break a deadlock in the Politburo to block a Soviet decision to invade Poland last December. Last week's decision to give the Polish leadership another reprieve was also thought to have been adopted only after a fierce debate in the Kremlin. Reliable reports reaching Whitehall, TIME has learned, indicate that the case in favor of intervention was made by hard-line Party Ideologue Mikhail Suslov, supported by Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov. Brezhnev himself...
...Soviets the consequences could be disastrous. First of all, there would be the strong possibility of armed resistance from the Polish population and even from units of the conscript-based armed forces. "The Poles will not stand aside as the Czechs did in 1968," predicts a Bonn Kremlinologist. Though open resistance would eventually be subdued by Moscow's overwhelming might, the myth of Warsaw Pact unity would be forever destroyed, and underground rebellion might smolder on for years. Even short of that, the Soviets would have to assume responsibility for Poland's $27 billion foreign debt...
Most analysts feel that the Soviets could accept a certain amount of pluralism in Poland as long as a strong party retained a firm grip on the reins. But therein lies another political hazard-for the Polish party itself seems bent on reversing Leninist orthodoxy. In a watershed decision two weeks ago, Party Boss Stanislaw Kania bowed to rank-and-file demands and announced that delegates to July's party congress would be elected by secret ballot from an unlimited list of candidates. Until now, most delegates were chosen by the party leadership according to the Leninist principle...
Short of intervention, Moscow's hopes of stemming a tide of democratization seemed to rest with Polish hard-liners like Politburo Members Stefan Olszowski and Tadeusz Grabski. If they could seize the upper hand within the party, then the Soviets would probably have no immediate need to go in. Brezhnev himself reportedly requested that Olszowski be sent to represent the Polish party in Prague last week, and the two men held long consultations there. Some Western analysts speculated that a new party shake-up might soon substitute Olszowski for Kania, whose name went conspicuously unmentioned at the Prague congress...
Moscow's apparent strategy, says Georgetown's Hyland, appeared to be aimed at maintaining pressure on the Polish party until the hard-liners could gain control. But obviously the Soviets were as worried and mystified as everybody else. As one jittery Soviet official told a West German diplomat in Moscow, "We must be careful. Nobody knows where this crazy Polish drama is taking us all-not just the Soviet Union, but all of us, East and West alike." -By Thomas A. Sancton...