It is unlikely that this had any effect on Soviet thinking, as the military option remained on the agenda. The German and Czech borders were closed and the Soviet press agency TASS announced that Soviet military manoeuvres would be taking place on Polish territory. On 5 December the Polish Party leadership and the ministers of defence and the interior flew to Moscow for talks.
Solidarność continued to grow as new unions, of journalists, publishers, teachers, students, peasants and other groups, sprang up and affiliated themselves, and by the end of the year it had over nine million members, representing 30 per cent of the adult population. This inevitably altered its profile and its motivation.
The Party’s evident helplessness in the face of genuine people power had encouraged individuals at every level of society and in every walk of life to think and do the hitherto unthinkable. Know-ledge and information on every subject from politics to ecology was disseminated through a rash of independent publications. People openly talked about and debated taboo subjects, and teachers began to tell their pupils the real story of the Second World War and the truth about Katyn and the Warsaw Uprising. Writers pulled out of their bottom drawers things they had never conceived of publishing; film-makers set about making films they had only dreamt of making; émigrés returned, some, like the Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz, in triumph. A mood of deep exhilaration reigned, particularly among the young, even though the political situation remained ominous and the economic conditions catastrophic.
The harvest of Gierek’s economic policy was a bitter one. The foreign debt reached giddy heights while the machinery bought with borrowed currency either fell to pieces or ground to a halt for lack of spare parts. What trimming Gierek had attempted in the late 1970s had resulted in skimping at the last moment, so that many projects suffered in the finishing stages, while a scale of pollution unknown elsewhere in Europe added to the misery of the population. By 1979 over 75 per cent of export revenue went to service the foreign debt. An inflexible freeze on foreign spending ruined what little chance there was of muddling through, and hit the health service severely. By the summer of 1981 there were widespread shortages of drugs, and no syringes with which to administer them. Malnutrition and diseases connected with dirt and deprivation reached epidemic proportions.
The cost of living rose by some 15 per cent in the first six months of 1981, and many everyday products were only available on the black market or in government foreign-currency shops. Even factories resorted to barter in order to obtain essential materials and supplies. Tens of thousands of people emigrated, and while many found work in the West, the helpless were gathered in refugee camps in Austria and West Germany. The situation was developing into a world crisis as the West waited to see whether the Soviet Union, which was chastened by its disastrous invasion of Afghanistan, would dare resort to its usual measure of invading a disobedient ally.
In Poland, the authorities employed delaying tactics with regard to Solidarność, while trying to disrupt its activities. Protest meetings were brutally attacked by ZOMO units, which did everything they could to provoke violence in the hope of being able to turn the issue into one of law and order. The government delayed passing the laws which would permit the trade union to function legally, thereby undermining the Gdańsk accords. As Solidarność staged nationwide strikes on 27 and 30 March to force its hand, Polish television broadcast images of Soviet troops conducting exercises. Tension mounted as President Ronald Reagan, who had assumed office two months earlier, issued a warning to Moscow not to intervene.
The situation in Poland was beginning to polarise along political lines. In February, Solidarność had issued a programme which made it clear that it believed economic improvement could not be achieved without political change and called for ‘a complete renewal of the country’. That same month, General Jaruzelski had taken over as Prime Minister, and in March he authorised procedures for the imposition of martial law.
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union sent its Polish counterpart a letter in which it criticised it for giving in to counterrevolution, and the Kremlin urged it to act. But the PZPR was in no condition to play a leading role. Its Congress, which opened on 14 July 1981, revealed deep divisions between hard-liners and revisionists. The dominant atmosphere was one of fear and hesitancy, and people continued to leave the Party in large numbers.