Word: suslov
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Kania's lip service to the Soviet bloc, the Central Committee's actions seemed to fly in the face of Moscow's injunctions. Only six days before the plenum began, hard-lining Soviet Ideologue Mikhail Suslov had flown to Warsaw to deliver what was presumed to be a stiff warning to hold the line against further democratization. Shortly after that, a sizzling article published by TASS, the official Soviet news agency, charged unnamed Polish party reformists with "revisionism"-one of the gravest epithets in the Communist lexicon and one that was invoked against the reform-minded Czechoslovak...
Most Western analysts saw Suslov's trip as a gloves-off bid to stem the tide of Polish reform. "They don't send Mikhail Suslov to hand out flowers," said a European diplomatic analyst in Moscow. Added a senior Western diplomat: "I have no doubt that he read them the riot act." If that was in fact Moscow's message, then Suslov was the right mailman. Unsmiling and wraithlike behind dark-rimmed glasses, the 78-year-old party theorist has long been the Kremlin's chief "liquidator of deviationists," as one Western expert...
...Suslov's visit may have been prompted by fears that Warsaw's Central Committee meeting this week would sanction further democratic reforms. Shortly before the visit, in fact, Kania told a socialist youth congress that "we have an unbending will to continue the process of social renewal, to develop democracy in the party and state, to reform the national economy, social life and government personnel." One could hardly draw up a list of goals more abhorrent to the Kremlin...
What most alarmed the Soviets, perhaps, were rumors that Olszowski and Grabski might be purged at the Central Committee plenum. If such a move was in the works, Suslov may have been out to save the two men from an ignominious sacking. Suslov may also have urged a postponement of the Polish Party Congress, now scheduled for July, and inveighed against plans to elect delegates to it by a democratic secret ballot...
...Suslov's personal intervention in Poland coincided with some reminders that armed intervention could ultimately enforce Moscow's injunctions. Members of the Warsaw Pact's Military Council, a phalanx of top-level generals, converged on the Bulgarian capital of Sofia last week for a three-day strategy meeting. Speaking in Moscow on the 111th anniversary of Lenin's birth, meanwhile, Soviet Politburo Member Konstantin Chernenko accused the West of trying to "destabilize" Poland and warned that "we will not allow anybody to infringe on the lawful interests of our country and our allies...