Poland was the largest and most influential country under Soviet domination in Eastern Europe. It was ground zero for the West’s efforts to smuggle and spread a vast array of ideas amidst the Stalinist propaganda of the era. The CIA consistently led the charge in supporting Eastern Europe’s dissidents.
“The ideological manipulation system in Poland was one of the most complex in the world.” It was managed by the Main Office for the Control of Presentations and Public Performance. The censors were everywhere in a country where “every typewriter had to be registered, access to every photocopier was restricted, and a permit was needed to even buy a ream of paper.” There was one novel that was the number one priority of all censors in the Eastern Bloc—Orwell’s 1984 sat at the top of the pyramid.
By the late 1970s, there was an active underground publication operation within Poland. It supported by the clergy, the writers’ association, and the foreign press. By 1980, the CIA-backed International Literary Center in New York was sending a million books per year through the Iron Curtain, with one-third going to Poland. The decade that would see the Wall fall began with a successful Solidarity strike at the Lenin Shipyards. The Gdańsk Accords afforded the workers—and the entire population—a new set of meaningful rights. A quarter of the population joined Solidarity, and thousands of uncensored books were published. The joy and thrill of freedom lasted until December 1981, when the government imposed martial law. Enacted at the instigation of the Soviets, who were threatening invasion, the government arrested thousands, inspiring memories of WWII. The underground immediately went to work seeking material it could use to print the voices of opposition to the government. Help came from various organizations in Paris, providing books, printing materials, and money—all backed by the CIA.
In 1982, the Reagan administration began to funnel money directly to Solidarity. At year’s end, the Jaruzelski regime lifted martial law in name only. The repression continued, but the underground battled on. More and more money, books, and printing equipment poured into the country. What the CIA called its “Radio Shack revolution” led to the shipping of fax machines, video cassettes, and recorders, further advancing the cause of free speech.
In 1986 and 1987, the Polish security police captured the three largest deliveries ever smuggled into the country and “exposed and humiliated dissidents at home and abroad.” In August, Solidarity launched a nationwide strike, causing the regime to realize it could not crush every demonstration in Poland. The government began to bargain, while those paying attention to Moscow slowly realized the game was changing. Gorbachev had already decided not to use force again to keep nations in line, and his reforms were incompatible with ongoing totalitarianism.
The so-called Round Table Talks were “a no-going-back moment, which would end with the demise of a political system.” The negotiations ground on until the following April and resulted in Solidarity once again being established as a legal entity, with semi-free elections scheduled. The vote in early June gave Solidarity 99 of 100 seats in the new Senate and all of the contested seats in the lower body. Throughout Europe, borders were opening and regimes were failing. Finally, on November 9, the Wall came down. For all intents and purposes, communist rule in Europe was over, and the peoples of Eastern Europe were free. Lech Wałęsa spoke to the U.S. Congress.
This is an intriguing and enlightening story, one that has been largely kept under wraps for decades. The man who ran CIA operations for most of the Cold War was a Romanian refugee, George Minden. When he retired, Solzhenitsyn presented him with a copy of The Red Wheel with the notation, “with gratitude.”
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