Gorbachev, Jaruzelski Try Candor in Facing Bitter Soviet-Polish Past

The bitter communist joke--that it is a cardinal sin for a Marxist-Leninist historian to “predict the past”--is being turned on its ear by Soviet General Secretary Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Polish leader Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski. Their recent official commitment is to tell the truth, the real history, about the horrors punctuating Soviet-Polish relations in the last half-century.

If the two leaders keep their word, an unprecedented new rapport could emerge between the Soviet Union and a satellite communist state in Eastern Europe. Truth could change four postwar decades of nearly total Eastern European subservience to Moscow into a gradual form of more voluntary cooperation within the Communist Bloc--a key element in Gorbachev’s campaign for radical reform of the Soviet economic and social system.

Barely noticed by the West in the onrushing process of the Gorbachev-propelled perestroika --reconstruction--offensive, this changing of relationships is a phenomenon of extraordinary impact for the future of communist countries, marking the ultimate end of the Stalinist era.

For the Poles, recognition of some, if not all, historical truth is a fundamental precondition for any measure of trust in Soviet policies and purposes. Gorbachev needs such trust in a traditionally anti-Russian Polish society because he has to have Poland as a partner for his reform movement in the face of sullen opposition by other communist regimes.

The Poles’ own sense of national dignity demands that the Russians at last atone for decades of savagery before any meaningful partnership is acceptable. The Soviets, in turn, also claim a historical case against the Poles.

Gorbachev’s willingness to reopen the tragic record represents a profound change in Kremlin attitudes: Until now, the Soviet Union was truthful and infallible. Gorbachev promised to re-examine real truth last April, when he and Jaruzelski signed a declaration of “ideological cooperation,” pledging to do away with “blank spots” in Soviet-Polish history--a euphemism for the freight of past lies.

The catalogue of Polish grievances is as vast as it is horrifying, not even including nearly 150 years of brutal Russian rule when Poland was dismembered in the 18th Century by three neighbors--Prussia and Austria being the others. Today, the Poles will happily settle for cleaning up more recent history.

The modern Polish-Soviet drama began with the 1919 invasion of Soviet Ukraine by the newly reborn Poland. The armies of the infant Soviet revolutionary state defeated the aggressors and in 1920 moved west. Soviet troops reached the outskirts of Warsaw but were in turn beaten back in what the Poles still call the “Miracle on the Vistula.” The 1919 invasion is the core of the Soviet historical case. Josef Stalin exacted an awesome vengeance, starting in the 1930s.

First came the nonaggression pact signed in August, 1939, between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Hitler invaded Poland a week later; then, two weeks later, Soviet armies rolled in from the East, occupying half of the country.

The Soviets moved immediately to achieve what Polish historians have called “the biological destruction” of their country. Polish provinces were simply incorporated into the Soviet Union. Hundreds of thousands of Poles were deported to Soviet labor camps. The deportees marked for destruction were the Polish elites--intellectual, cultural, scientific and military. Almost 200,000 members of the Polish army were interned in Russia. Among the exiles was Gen. Jaruzelski’s father, an estate administrator deported with his entire family, including young Wojciech. No one knows exactly how many died or were killed in exile but the magnitude of these migrations was suggested when 250,000 surviving Poles returned home from Russia after the war.

The most brutal horror was execution of 10,000 exiled Polish army officers in the forest near the Soviet village of Katyn. The graves were found by the Germans after they invaded the Soviet Union. Poles now generally believe that the officers were shot by the Soviets and Katyn is the symbol of powerful anti-Soviet sentiment in the population.

The murders are no longer a taboo subject in public print and senior Polish government officials acknowledge privately that Katyn is one of the “blank spots.” Another is Stalin’s refusal to let the Soviet army cross the Vistula River in support of the anti-German uprising at Warsaw in August, 1944. The Warsaw underground, the “Home Army,” was under orders from the Polish government in exile and it was strongly anti-communist. Poles believe that Stalin wanted to see the Home Army smashed, to facilitate a postwar communist regime; consequently, the Russian forces passively watched the destruction of Warsaw.

Gorbachev and Jaruzelski have decided that a Soviet decision to accept responsibility for Katyn and Warsaw--presumably blaming Stalin--is crucial in dissolving hostility toward the Soviet Union.

Truth, however, will not come easily. Care must be taken to avoid upsetting Poland’s domestic political equilibrium when the Polish Communist Party is still in disarray. But the Polish people are impatient; Gorbachev and Jaruzelski might be forced to keep their promise quickly.

Other truths remain to be told: Soviet liquidation of Polish democratic opposition in the mid-1940s to make room for the communists; removal of top leader Wladyslaw Gomulka in the late 1940s for espousing “the Polish way to Socialism”; Soviet pressures to conform to Moscow policies even when jeopardizing the Polish economy, and, finally, Leonid I. Brezhnev’s virtual ultimatum to Jaruzelski in 1981--impose martial law to eviscerate Solidarity or risk a new Soviet invasion.

Gorbachev will inevitably create problems for himself in Eastern Europe while trying to solve the Polish problem. If truth is told in Poland, the Soviets must sooner or later begin to discuss their history with Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, plus the invasions of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. None of this will be easy. But in terms of credibility in the communist world, Gorbachev has clearly reached a point of no-return. Communist historians will at last be free from jokes about the past and be able to face it.