The Crusader

United States. “If we are to keep alive the hope for freedom in Poland,” Reagan told the pope, “it lies in this direction.”⁶²

Although he was clearly disturbed by the events unfolding, Reagan grasped the uniqueness of this historical moment. In his diary entry for December 15, 1981, two days after martial law was declared, he noted that in that day’s NSC meeting, “I took a stand that this may be the last chance in our lifetime to see a change in the Soviet empire’s colonial policy re Eastern Europe.”⁶³ Nonetheless, he also noted that his options were limited and fraught with danger. Among these, he did not desire a re-occurrence of what had happened under President Eisenhower, whom Reagan greatly respected, during the Hungarian uprising of 1956. He later remembered: “Although we wanted to let the Polish people who were struggling for liberty know that we were behind them, we couldn’t send out a false signal (as some say the United States did before the doomed 1956 uprisings in Hungary), leading them to expect us to intervene militarily on their side during a revolution.” Hence, “as much as we might want to help, there were limits on the actions our people would support in Poland, especially if, as was likely, there was a charade in which the Polish government appeared to request intervention by Russian troops.”⁶⁴

Within the Reagan administration, the situation was tense and filled with peril. The State Department, said Richard Pipes, assured the NSC that the Soviet Union was not involved—a foolish assumption that Reagan must have instantly deemed ludicrous. Pipes said that the NSC meetings of December 19, 21, 22, and 23 were emotionally charged—“inspired largely by Reagan’s mounting fury at the communists.” He said that Reagan’s mind raced back to the 1930s when the democracies failed to halt German and Japanese aggression, a history which he had long ago vowed never to repeat.⁶⁵

At the December 21 meeting, Pipes said that Reagan, “spoke eloquently and in great anger,” claiming that the events in Poland were the first time in sixty years that something of this magnitude had happened. Referencing a 1937 FDR speech that advocated a “quarantine” of aggressor states, Reagan suggested that diplomatic and economic relations with the USSR be reduced to a minimum. Moreover, he recommended that if U.S. allies did not join in, America should review its alliance. Reagan even maintained that the United States should be prepared to boycott nations that continued to trade with the Soviets.⁶⁶

As talk escalated, Reagan began to get impatient with developments, insisting at the December 22 meeting that the White House faced “the last chance of a lifetime to go against this damned force.” In response to Reagan’s lead, Pipes said that the rest of the cabinet, “fell in step, although with varying degrees of enthusiasm.” Secretary of State Haig worried about the reaction of Western European allies to any form of U.S. sanctions, while cabinet members whose departments involved the economy—the departments of Commerce, Treasury, and Agriculture —were also concerned. Nonetheless, said Pipes, “on Reagan’s insistence, quite severe punitive measures were adopted”—measures soon to be announced.⁶⁷

DECEMBER 23, 1981: A CANDLE AND A PRAYER

With feelings escalating on both sides, tempers reached critical mass by December 23. The day began with a Genrikh Borovik piece for Literaturnaya Gazeta titled “Plot Against Poland,” with the subtitle, “Lies, Lies, and More Lies—In Both American Newspapers and Washington’s Official Statements.”⁶⁸ If Borovik was angry when he filed his article, by the end of the day he would be screaming. On the other side, the Reagan team started the day with another dramatic NSC meeting on the crisis, in which Secretary of State Haig warned that any U.S. sanctions against the USSR would incense Western Europe, especially West Germany, which was led by the leftist Helmut Schmidt. “So be it,” was Reagan’s reply. If this was the case, then America would “go it alone.”⁶⁹

After the meeting, Reagan reached for his favorite, surest weapon—the rhetorical missile. He told reporters that “if ever there was an example of the moral bankruptcy of communism,” martial law was it.⁷⁰ Yet, he had much more to say, and later that evening, on national television, he gave a major presidential speech on the Poland situation. In the speech, he noted that ten million of Poland’s thirty-six million citizens were members of Solidarity. Taken together with their families, he rightly said that these Solidarity members accounted for the “overwhelming majority” of the Polish population. “By persecuting Solidarity,” said Reagan, the Polish government, which he saw as acting as an extension of the Soviet government and broader Communist movement, “wages war against its own people,” a point he made repeatedly in days ahead.⁷¹

With Christmas only two days away, Reagan connected the spirit of the season with Poland: “For a thousand years,” he told his fellow Americans, “Christmas has been celebrated in Poland, a land of deep religious faith, but this Christmas brings little joy to the courageous Polish people. They have been betrayed by their own government.” Using words like “terror tactics,” “tyranny,” and “crime,” he described the actions of the Communists in stark detail, weaving his frustration and anger into his carefully chosen words.⁷²

Working his way through the text, Reagan then made an extraordinary gesture, one that defined the speech and produced quite a ripple effect. The idea itself was simple, but its ramifications were profound: The president asked Americans that Christmas season to light a candle in support of freedom in Poland. Stemming from a private meeting that Reagan had with the Polish ambassador, Romuald Spasowski, and his wife, Reagan felt that the symbolic action would unite America and show Poland that the people of the country were behind them. At the meeting with the president the previous day, both the ambassador and his wife had resolved to defect to the United States. Michael Deaver witnessed the moving meeting:

The ambassador and his wife were ushered into the Oval Office, and the two men sat next to one another in plush leather wingback chairs. Vice President Bush, and the ambassador’s wife, sat facing them on a couch.

The ambassador had in his hand a pocket-sized note pad with wire rings and lined paper, and he was obviously referring to notes he wanted to give to the president of the United States. Meanwhile, his wife, a tiny, delicate-looking woman, kept her head in her hands the entire time, while George Bush put an arm around her shoulders to comfort her.

The ambassador said, “It is unbelievable to me that I am sitting in the office of the president of the United States. I wish it were under better circumstances.”

He begged the president never to discontinue Radio Free Europe. “You have no idea,” he said, “what it meant to us to hear the chimes of Big Ben during World War Two. Please, sir, do not ever underestimate how many millions of people still listen to that channel behind the Iron Curtain.”

Then, almost sheepishly, he said, “May I ask you a favor, Mr. President? Would you light a candle and put in the window tonight for the people of Poland?” And right then, Ronald Reagan got up and went to the second floor, lighted a candle, and put it in the window of the dining room.

Later, in what I still recall as the most human picture of the Reagan presidency, he escorted his guests through the walkway and out to the circular drive on the South Lawn of the White House. In a persistent rain, he escorted them to their car, past the C-9 Secret Service post, holding an umbrella over the head of the wife of the Polish ambassador, as she wept on his shoulder.⁷³

That candle might have brought to mind those lit after Mass by a young Karol Wojtyla. Then and now, they burned bright for Russia’s conversion.

Of course, the Communist press was not quite so sentimental. Enraged by the religious symbolism, even the slightest American invocation of God sent the Soviets seething. “What honey-tongued speeches are now being made by figures in the American administration concerning God and His servants on earth!” fumed a correspondent from Moscow’s Novoye Vremya. “What verbal inventiveness they display in flattering the Catholic Church in Poland. Does true piety lie behind this?”⁷⁴

Unable to grasp the sincerity of this display of faith, the Soviet press doubted that piety was the motivation for Reagan. The next day, on Christmas Eve, commentator Valentin Zorin dashed before the TV cameras to question the “rather doubtful Christmas gift” Reagan had just given to Americans. The president had delivered a speech that “flagrantly distorted” events in Poland and the Soviet role.⁷⁵ Zorin spoke for the collective state’s collective judgment: Reagan had yet again egregiously lied about the Soviet role in Poland, and