All across Europe, hundreds of thousands of communists, peace activists, church leaders, students and nervous citizens poured into urban avenues and parks to protest NATOS's (not the Soviets') missile deployment. And while most of |
the world was watching the peace-loving throngs, something new was happening in Poland. It did not seem new at first because the Poles were forever going on strike. But this time the workers at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk formed a union that would actually represent the workers' interests against the state's. When the Polish government offered to negotiate, it gave de facto recognition to the right to strike. The result was the creation of Solidarity, the first labor organization inside the Soviet bloc to challenge head-on the communists' claim to represent the proletariat. As Solidarity grew and threatened the stability of the Polish regime, Moscow faced a dilemma: Would it use its troops as it had in Hungary and Czechoslovakia? We know from recently opened archives that the Soviets were prepared to intervene, but only as a last resort. They much preferred to let the Polish communists handle the crisis themselves, knowing that an invading Soviet army would face opposition from the entire nation and might not even be able to end the strikes. Brezhnev & Co. decided against using force and settled for installing General Wojciech Jaruzelski and martial law. The decision would echo in Eastern Europe.  2 of 5
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To the West, it looked like a significant strategic shift, and NATO adopted what became known as the "two-track decision." The alliance would offer not to deploy any additional missiles if the Warsaw Pact would eliminate the SS-20s, but in the meantime NATO would proceed with its own modernization: 572 new intermediate-range nuclear missiles.