challenged the primacy of the Communist Party, and yet more so because it was about God.
In Poland, Communists picked a bad place to try to further their atheistic empire. Poland is a homogenous nation, with a population 95 percent ethnic Polish and Roman Catholic. The nation is an unshakable bastion of Catholicism. The routine Communist war on religion was a tall task there.19 The Polish faithful remained deeply devout; the Church there was stronger and more intact than in any other nation in the Soviet bloc.20
Thus, it was profound that in 1978 Rome picked its first non-Italian pope in 455 years and its first Slavic pope ever—one from no less than Poland, the heart of the Soviet bloc. The timing was exquisite. John Paul II, Reagan, and millions of Poles perceived no coincidence in that timing, but instead divine planning. To Reagan, this pope represented the best of both worlds—unwavering faith in God and strident anti-Communism. As a boy, Karol Wojtyla routinely paused after Mass to light candles and offer a series of prayers “for the conversion of Russia.”21 Now, as pope, he was empowered to offer more than prayer.
Reagan paid close attention to the pope’s June 1979 trip, where the Holy Father famously and movingly told his brothers and sisters, in words packed with New Testament meaning, “Be not afraid.” On June 3, John Paul II openly insisted that all Eastern European governments be allowed freedom of conscience, individual rights, private property, elections, and independence. He asserted: “There can be no just Europe without the independence of Poland marked on its map.”22 Clearly, Reagan had found a kindred spirit, one who shared his own bold willingness to speak out.
The reaction in Moscow was unsurprising, as the godless suggested a solution for the Poles’ stubborn faith: more godlessness. “The solution for the Karol Wojtyla problem,” Ukrainian Communist Party Chief M. Vladimir Shcherbitsky chimed in from across the Soviet border, “must lie in a renewed and more vigorous propaganda in favor of atheism in the Soviet Union and its ‘fraternal socialist societies.’”23
In his radio broadcasts on the pope’s trip, Reagan blasted this “Communist atheism” that had preyed on Poland following World War II. In one broadcast, an outraged Reagan remarked: “These young people of Poland [who greeted the pope] had been born and raised and spent their entire lives under Communist atheism. Try to make a Polish joke out of that.”24 In another titled, “A Tale of Two Cities”—which he later recycled as a speech in Dallas25—Reagan asked:
Once in the days of Stalin he is said to have dismissed the Vatican by contemptuously asking: “How many divisions does the Pope have?” Well, in recent weeks that question has been answered by Pope John Paul II. It has been a long time since we’ve seen a leader of such courage and such uncompromising dedication to simple morality—to the belief that right does make might.
On our TV screens we’ve seen the reaction to this kind of leadership. Wherever he went in his native land the people of Poland came forth in unbelievable numbers. There were crowds of 400,000, 500,000, 1 million, and then 5 million, gathered from miles around, even though they don’t have the easy means of transportation we have, and they gathered knowing there was every possibility they were risking their livelihood and even their freedom.
For 40 years the Polish people have lived under first the Nazis and then the Soviets. For 40 years they have been ringed by tanks and guns. The voices behind those tanks and guns have told them there is no God. Now with the eyes of all the world on them they have looked past those menacing weapons and listened to the voice of one man who has told them there is a God and it is their inalienable right to freely worship that God. Will the Kremlin ever be the same again? Will any of us for that matter? Perhaps that one man—the son of simple farm folk has made us aware that the world is crying out for a spiritual revival and for leadership.26
After the pope’s visit, Reagan was never the same. He sensed the immensity of what had transpired and recognized that this was a momentous event that threatened Communism’s hold on Eastern Europe. Richard Allen sat with Reagan in June 1979 watching these news reports. “He said then and there that the pope was the key figure in determining the fate of Poland,” said Allen. “He was overcome by the outpouring of emotion that emanated from the millions who came to see him.”27
When Bill Clark, another close adviser, was asked if Reagan “realized then and there” that Poland could be the “splinter to break apart the Soviet empire,” he went further: “He felt that far before June 1979. He had tremendous interest in Poland and its strategic importance, going back to Yalta and Potsdam, which he felt were terrible days. He knew Poland would be the linchpin in the dissolution of the Soviet empire.”28
The future president’s thinking on the power of Poland and the pope’s 1979 visit was not the shared opinion of the West at the time. In a June 5, 1979 editorial, the New York Times declared authoritatively: “As much as the visit of Pope John Paul II to Poland must reinvigorate and reinspire the Roman Catholic Church in Poland, it does not threaten the political order of the nation or of Eastern Europe.”29
While these dissenting opinions were not limited to the New York Times, Reagan continued to believe that Poland was the key to the unraveling of the Soviet bloc in Eastern Europe. Inspired both by the potential that the pope represented and by a clear sense of his own role, Reagan found himself in a position to put his desires into play.
AUGUST TO DECEMBER 1980
In the wake of the pope’s visit, 1980 proved to be a watershed year for Solidarity. The pope had given new impetus to the workers’ movement, and in the summer of 1980, this momentum reached a crescendo when Edward Gierek, the Communist Party secretary and arguably the most powerful man in Poland, felt obliged to resign.
The intensity rose even higher on August 16, 1980, when Lech Walesa, who was then emerging as one of the top antigovernment union activists, called on his fellow workers to leave the Gdansk shipyard, leading to a tense confrontation between strikers and the government. The outside world could not have imagined what happened inside the negotiation room in Gdansk that day, when an unknown member of Solidarity removed the bust of Lenin from the nearby desk and replaced it with a black-and-white photo of Ronald Reagan cut from a newspaper.30 Considering that Reagan had not even been elected president yet, let alone inaugurated, this was a remarkable gesture. Organizers negotiated an agreement with the Polish government on August 20, 1980, formally creating Solidarity. A few weeks later, in September, Prime Minister Edward Babiuch, in power only seven months, resigned. Things were falling apart everywhere, except within Solidarity’s ranks.
Within about three months of the August 1980 agreement, the membership of Solidarity exploded from zero to ten million members, comprising roughly 50 percent of all Polish workers, including farmers. It was a massive grassroots, social movement that became precisely what the USSR most feared—a massive political movement as well.
Lech Walesa was suddenly more confident than ever. Moreover, his confidence had been buoyed by the results of the November election in the United States. On December 7, 1980, a fearless Walesa stood on a snowy, windswept plain on the outskirts of Gdansk and spoke openly about politics and the U.S. election. “It was intuition, perhaps,” he said, “but one year ago I envisioned what would happen. Reagan was the only good candidate in your presidential campaign, and I knew he would win.” Walesa spoke presciently that December day: “Someday the West will wake up and you may find it too late, as Solzhenitsyn has written. Reagan will do it better. He will settle things in a more efficient way. He will make the U.S. strong and make it stand up.”31
JUNE 1981
A few months later, the new president returned Walesa’s optimism. In a June 1981 press conference, UPI’s Dean Reynolds reminded Reagan that at Notre Dame he had claimed that Communism was a “sad, bizarre chapter” in human history whose last pages were in the process of being written. Reynolds followed: “In that context, sir, do the events of the last ten months in Poland constitute the beginning of the end of Soviet domination
