limitations itself was tackled in numerous negotiations, including the so-called S.A.L.T. II talks and President Ford's discussions with Brezhnev in Vladivostok in 1974. Still, in spite of a considerable measure of agreement, the S.A.L.T. II talks remained inconclusive, primarily because of the problems of the Backfire bombers on the Soviet side and of the cruise missile on the American. Moreover, as Edward Teller and other scientists have pointed out, the difficulty in the negotiations resides not only in the entire complex of aims, attitudes, and policies of the two superpowers, but also in the very nature of scientific and technological advance, which rapidly makes prearranged schemes of limitation obsolete.
The very closely related but even larger issue of detente between the Soviet Union and the United States also sailed to an uncertain future. With explicit 'cold war' a thing of the past, detente scored a resounding success at the Helsinki conference in the summer of 1975, where the United States and other Western countries accepted in effect the communist redrawing of the map of central and eastern Europe following the Second World War in exchange for unsubstantiated promises of greater contacts between the two worlds and a greater degree of freedom in those contacts. But a comprehensive economic agreement between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. failed over the questions of the most favored nation clause, credits, and the American concern with the fate of Soviet Jews. Furthermore, before long detente was again swamped by new international developments, to be detailed later in this chapter.
Ironically, while Soviet-American relations improved and became more stable after the Cuban confrontation, and while the Soviet leaders found welcome in Gaullist France and other capitalist countries, their standing in the communist world deteriorated. The conflict with China broke out into the open around 1960 and has widened and deepened since. After the abrupt withdrawal of Soviet personnel from China in August of that year and the discontinuance of assistance, relations between the two countries quickly became those of extreme antagonism. To the sound of violent mutual denunciations the two states and parties competed with each other for the leadership of world communism, the Chinese usually championing the revolutionary position against Soviet 'revisionism.' Moreover, China became an atomic power and formulated large claims on Soviet Asiatic
territory. Observers noted that international crises such as the war in Vietnam only intensified the hostility between the two great communist states. Although China remained far behind the U.S.S.R. in industrial and technological development and although it was fully preoccupied with a 'cultural revolution,' its aftermath, and other internal problems, it could pose a major threat to the Soviet Union in the future, if not in the immediate present.
Problems in eastern Europe proved to be more pressing. The twelve years which followed the suppression of the Hungarian revolution witnessed Soviet attempts to adjust to changing times, to allow for a communist pluralism with a considerable measure of institutional and eventually even ideological diversity. In Brzezinski's phrase, satellites were to become junior allies. Even Tito usually received a kind of fraternal recognition, and he spoke with authority. Yet tensions persisted and indeed increased, both between the different east European countries and the Soviet Union and within those countries as most of them proceeded with de-Stalinization, economic liberalization, and other important changes. The break with China led in 1961 to the unexpected departure of Albania into 'the Chinese camp.' Rumania under its new leader, Nicholas Ceausescu, showed a remarkable, even stunning, independence from the Soviet Union, although it remained barely within the communist bloc and continued a hard- line policy at home. Poland, belying the promise of 1956, had its progress toward freedom arrested, and concentrated its energy on trying to contain, by petty and persistent persecution, the Catholic church, liberal intellectuals and students, and other forces favoring change.
The developments in Czechoslovakia led to a catastrophe. That highly Western country with a democratic tradition remained long under a form of Stalinism practiced by Antonin Novotny and his clique. But when in the early months of 1968 Novotny was finally deposed, the new Party leadership, of Alexander Dubcek and others, championed an extremely liberal course which included the abolition of censorship. The sweeping liberal victory in Czechoslovakia which was to be confirmed and extended at a forthcoming Party congress led to consternation in the governing circles of the Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Bulgaria, and possibly Hungary. Exchanges of opinion and an unprecedented face-to-face discussion between the members of the Politburos of the Soviet Union and of Czechoslovakia seemed momentarily to resolve the conflict. Then on the twentieth of August, Soviet troops, assisted by the troops of the four allies, invaded Czechoslovakia and quickly occupied the country. There was very little bloodshed, because the Czechoslovak armed forces had been instructed not to resist. Soviet intervention was probably caused, in no certain order of priority, by fear for the Warsaw Pact which the Czechs wanted to modify although not abandon, by the hatred of Czech liberalization with its critique of the U.S.S.R., by the concern lest liberalism at home be too much en-
couraged, and by the need to respond to the pleas of the Soviet allies, especially East Germany, who saw the developments in Czechoslovakia as an immediate threat to their own regimes. The repercussions of the intervention lasted long after the summer of 1968.
In Poland, the 1970 replacement of Gomulka by Gierek as Party secretary was followed by the introduction of an ambitious scheme to modernize and expand Polish industry and trade with the aid of Western capital and technology. By 1976, it was evident that Gierek's loudly hailed economic 'acceleration' had begun to fail. Continuing world economic crisis and mismanagement and corruption at all levels of Party and government apparatus, as well as the ever-increasing cost of participating in the Soviet-directed Council of Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON) and the Warsaw Pact, all contributed to Poland's difficulties. In 1976, workers' protests and strikes over drastic increases in food prices were followed by the rapid formation and activation of dissident organizations and clandestine printing establishments. The Catholic Church, its traditional prestige fortified by the election of the Archbishop of Cracow, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, to the papal throne (Pope John Paul II), also spoke out strongly against many of the Communist government's policies. The Gierek regime was unable to suppress the opposition effectively, in part at least, it would seem, because of its heavy dependence on continuing Western loans, required to keep the economy solvent, and the consequent need to avoid drastic action which could lead to the cutting off of Western funds.
The summer of 1980, with continuing labor unrest and economic near-collapse, led to the change of Party leadership and to a formal agreement between the Polish government and the great majority of Polish workers, now mostly represented by independent 'Solidarity' trade unions and led by a charismatic veteran of the struggle for workers' rights in Poland, electrician Lech Walesa. The agreement, accepted by the workers as a foundation for a dialogue with the government, appears to have been a tactical maneuver of the Communist authorities. No regular contacts with the Solidarity leadership and the Catholic hierarchy aimed at creating a constructive and meaningful national consensus were initiated by the government. By exploiting its monopoly over the mass media and over the distribution of increasingly scarce food supplies and consumer goods, the government attempted to undermine the position of the opposition while at the same time strongly seconding Moscow's accusations that Solidarity was attempting to subvert the political structure and international position of People's Poland. The rise to prominence of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who progressively combined the posts of Minister of Defense, Premier, and First Secretary of the Party, coincided with a gradual militarization of the administration of important branches of government and industry.
All this was done in preparation for the military coup which was executed in close cooperation with the Soviet authorities on December 13, 1981. Active resistance against the overwhelming forces of the regime was quite limited, and, from a military standpoint, the operation was carried out rather effectively. Nevertheless, the 'success' of General Jaruzelski's junta was very dubious. Although thousands of Solidarity activists, including Lech Walesa, and other dissidents were arrested and placed in internment camps, some leaders of the movement escaped arrest and an underground opposition began to form. Western economic sanctions and continuing passive resistance to the regime in the factories, offices, schools, and universities were making the task of running the country extremely difficult for the Jaruzelski regime. By the end of 1982, there appeared to be two clear choices before the military government of Poland: either to continue with the martial law administration, further alienating the population and risking a total economic collapse of the country, or to end martial law and attempt to open the few remaining channels of contact with the great majority of the Polish population in an effort to reduce tensions and improve the performance of the economy. The choice was not an easy one for the Polish Communist authorities - and their Soviet sponsors.
