The End and the Beginning

by George Weigel

  Reagan argued that “the Vatican and the Pope had a key role to play in events in Poland and elsewhere in Eastern Europe,” for the Pope’s June 1979 visit “had showed the ‘terrible hunger’ for God in Eastern Europe.” Casaroli responded, that, yes, “there was a hunger for God in specific groups in Eastern Europe,” but that “in general, youth was ‘insensible’ to God,” which reflected what Casaroli judged to be a general apathy among young people. Thus, Casaroli concluded, “the time is not ripe yet for real change in Eastern Europe,” a judgment he subsequently repeated.

  The conversation then turned to Reagan’s determination to reduce the danger of nuclear war by reaching real disarmament agreements with the Soviet Union. Casaroli, who had suggested to Secretary Haig a U.S. strategy of “minimum deterrence” by which the United States would “accept an imbalance so along as the United States and NATO had a small but significant” nuclear force of their own, talked at some length of the arms race as an action-reaction cycle; Reagan responded by saying that he thought it more likely that the Soviets would consider real arms reductions when the United States had made clear to them that it would not lose any arms race. Casaroli responded, some minutes later, that “it was important that a major power be able to ‘save face,’ and for that reason some discreet diplomacy might be valuable”—diplomacy that the Holy See was prepared to provide, if asked. The conversation ended with Casaroli arguing in favor of “quiet diplomacy” rather than a “public campaign” in the matter of human rights in communist countries.120

  This striking conversation strongly suggests that President Reagan was rather more attuned to John Paul II’s way of reading and conducting world politics than Cardinal Casaroli. Throughout the ninety-minute conversation, it was Reagan who spoke in terms of moral witness and the power of moral conviction, and Casaroli who spoke in terms of Realpolitik. Whatever the elements of truth in Casaroli’s analysis of General Jaruzelski’s situation, it is noteworthy that it was the American president who was clearly outraged by the imposition of martial law, while the Vatican secretary of state took the measured, diplomatic view. The divergent views between Reagan and Casaroli on the prospects for change in central and eastern Europe are similarly striking; and it is not easy to see that Casaroli was accurately reflecting the Pope’s true view when he suggested that John Paul II shared the cardinal’s conviction that the time was not ripe for serious change because of apathetic young people who were “insensible” to God—a judgment that contradicted thirty years of Karol Wojtyła’s pastoral experience and had been most recently invalidated by the Nine Days of June 1979, which Casaroli had witnessed but seemed not to have understood very well. In the group’s discussion of arms control and disarmament, it was, again, Reagan who was the visionary and Casaroli the exponent of Realpolitik. Moreover, a close reading of these exchanges suggests (as did Archbishop Silvestrini’s conversations with Kazimierz Szablewski) that Casaroli and Silvestrini tended to accept the general European view that Reagan’s arms policies were irresponsible and provocative. The closing exchange, in which Casaroli gently warned the president against too vociferous an approach to human rights, is also instructive.

  Cardinal Casaroli went from Washington to New York, where he asked to meet with Eugeniusz Wyzner, the Polish ambassador to the United Nations. The meeting took place on December 17, and Wyzner’s secret report was encoded and sent by cable to deputy foreign minister Józef Czyrek on December 18. According to Wyzner’s report, Casaroli began the conversation by reporting on his recent lunch with President Reagan, Vice President Bush, Secretary Haig, and others, during which, according to Casaroli, he had tried to nudge the Americans away from thinking about the imposition of martial law as the intervention of a “foreign empire,” but rather as a Polish initiative taken “to avoid placing the country in a more dangerous situation.” Casaroli then repeated what he had told the Americans: that, on meeting General Jaruzelski in June 1981, he had formed the impression of a man who would “behave patriotically for the good of the country.”

  Wyzner, for his part, complained about American condemnation of martial law and the Reagan administration’s speculations about its origins, while also criticizing “statements by the [Polish] Episcopate [that were being] used to inflame and incite the public.” Wyzner then reported that Casaroli, rather than fighting back, “accepted our position and the information given him,” which he promised to give to John Paul II the next day. Casaroli then assured the Pole that he “would act in a spirit of understanding and willingness to help.” The most important thing, Casaroli suggested, was to avoid a civil war; the Polish government might take into account that the Polish bishops sometimes had to say things for “fear of taking an opposing view to that of the nation,” and that this sometimes happened “contrary to their own convictions.” The cardinal then told the Polish ambassador that he had been unable to persuade the Americans to give serious economic assistance to Poland, suggesting that while he welcomed American assurances of humanitarian assistance, he thought the refusal of American aid to stabilize the collapsing Polish economy was shortsighted. Wyzner concluded his report by stating that Casaroli “understands the context and the necessity of our decision.”121

  Four days after the imposition of martial law and the day after the Wujek mine massacre, Cardinal Casaroli was still defending stability as the guiding norm for all right-thinking statesmen. John Paul II, Casaroli told Wyzner, had instructed Archbishop Silvestrini to tell Kazimierz Szablewski that, as there was no outside intervention under way in Poland, the Polish government had a special responsibility to maintain national unity and dignity. Yet Casaroli, in his conversation with Wyzner, seemed to accept the view that the WRON had acted in the face of an imminent Soviet threat, which in fact did not exist. The American administration was working under this misapprehension, too; but it seems odd that the Pope’s secretary of state would side with the Polish government’s preferred interpretation of recent events rather than with the Polish pope’s. As for Casaroli’s remarks on the Polish episcopate (which in fact had been urging moderation since December 13), it is possible that Casaroli was trying to give the Polish bishops some protection by suggesting that they were acting contrary to their true convictions; but this was, under any circumstances, a curious suggestion to make. Wyzner, for his part, may have been interpreting Casaroli’s remarks in a way that would be most agreeable to Warsaw. Yet the direct citation of Casaroli’s promise that he would “act in a spirit of understanding and willingness to help” suggests that, for the cardinal, preserving permanent working contacts with the Polish government took clear precedence over even a minimal expression of moral outrage on the day after workers were gunned down near Katowice. Here, as elsewhere, it does seem that John Paul II and Cardinal Casaroli had dramatically different sensibilities, which led to very different readings of situations and personalities.

  A KGB report on the immediate post–martial law situation in Poland, which seems to have originated with the Hungarian intelligence service and its Roman contacts, was circulated to Soviet-bloc intelligence agencies in late December. The analysis noted “much anxiety” among “Vatican officials” over a possible Polish civil war, which would lead to Warsaw Pact intervention and enormous casualties122—a rather obvious expression of the settled views of the veterans of the pre–John Paul II Ostpolitik, and a confirmation of Ambassador Wyzner’s report that Cardinal Casaroli understood the “context and necessity” of the martial law decision. For his part, John Paul II came to the view (which his cardinal secretary of state almost certainly did not share) that the imposition of martial law by the WRON was the desperate act of a crumbling regime. That judgment, like the Pope’s words and actions during the Nine Days of June 1979, rested on a set of assumptions that clearly distinguished the Pope’s view from that of his most senior diplomats, some of whom seemed to look with favor on what a Stasi informant described in January 1982 as an “Argentine solution” to the problems of Poland—rule by a military jun
ta and a return to “normality.”123 For John Paul II, however, “normalization,” meaning recognition of and respect for basic human rights, was an interim goal to be sought on the way to transformation. For Cardinal Casaroli, “normalization” was a goal in itself, a way of living normally under communism. Or as Zbigniew Brzeziński once put it, “for Casaroli, the status quo was something that could not be changed but could be made more palatable; for John Paul II, making the status quo more palatable was a tool for undermining it.” That difference in strategic vision reflected a prior difference in moral and political judgment: “For Casaroli, communism was a system of power with which one had to live. For John Paul II, communism was an evil that could not be avoided but could be undermined.”124

  On Christmas Eve, 1981, at 6 P.M., a lit candle was placed on the window-sill of the papal apartment, overlooking St. Peter’s Square. Lit candles in windows had become an international symbol of solidarity with Solidarity and with Poland, an initiative begun by two Swiss clergymen, one Protestant and one Catholic. The papal message for the World Day of Peace on January 1, 1982, condemned the “false peace of totalitarian regimes,” such as that which reigned in Poland during the Christmas holidays. Yet because the human quest for freedom was “inscribed in human conscience” (as John Paul II put it to the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See on January 16), the freedom tide was rising and what the diplomats recognized as “normality” would, one day, be overcome.

  * In the cable, the Polish phrase for the archbishop’s astonishment is virtually untranslatable, suggesting as it does that Silvestrini “grabbed his head” or “clapped his hands to his head”; a colloquial English equivalent would be “his jaw dropped”

  * Other intelligence agencies were not so reluctant to play in this lethal game (although the SB seems not to have been involved, at any stage—perhaps because it was not fully trusted in Moscow). In August 1982, under the personal direction of Markus Wolf, the Stasi would initiate “Operation Papsf [Operation Pope] in response to requests from its sister secret intelligence service in Bulgaria to cover any tracks that might lead to a Bulgarian link to Mehmet Ali Agca. Operation Papst worked to reinforce a bit of Soviet-bloc disinformation that had previously gotten into international media circulation, to the effect that Agca’s connection to the Grey Wolves, a murky “right-wing” Turkish terrorist outfit, proved that he was motivated by Islamist passions—a curious suggestion, given Agca’s striking lack of religious sensibility. The full details of Operation Papst are unknown, but it is inconceivable that an operation of this sort would have been mounted without the approval, and even the supervision, of the KGB. As was typical of such efforts on the part of Soviet-bloc intelligence services, the work of Operation Papst was described as a response to anticommunist campaigns by the West—which in this case was a particularly ludicrous suggestion, given that no Western intelligence agency wanted to touch the idea of a Soviet connection to Agca and the assassination attempt on John Paul II.93

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Victory

  June 7, 1982 Pope John Paul II and President Ronald Reagan meet at the Vatican.

  November 12, 1982 Yuri Andropov succeeds Leonid Brezhnev as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

  February 1983 Operation TRIANGOLO attempts smear of Pope JohnPaul II.

  March 1983 John Paul II challenges Marxist governments and guerrilla movements in Central America.

  April 25, 1983 Jerzy Kuberski meets Archbishop Achille Silvestrini to discuss John Paul II’s impending visit to Poland.

  June 16–23, 1983 John Paul II’s second pastoral pilgrimage to Poland.

  July 22, 1983 Martial law in Poland ends.

  October 5, 1983 Norwegian Nobel Committee announces awarding of Nobel Peace Prize to Lech Wałęsa.

  October 19, 1984 Father Jerzy Popiełuszko is murdered.

  March 11, 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev succeeds Konstantin Chernenko as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

  December 1985 John Paul II meets Elena Bonner, wife of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.

  January 13, 1987 John Paul II receives General Wojciech Jaruzelski in the Vatican.

  June 6, 1987 John Paul II and President Reagan meet in the Vatican.

  June 8–14, 1987 John Paul II’s third pastoral pilgrimage to Poland.

  June 1988 John Paul II sends Vatican delegation led by Cardinal Agostino Casaroli to Moscow celebration of millennium of Christianity among eastern Slavs.

  February 6–April 5, 1989 Polish Round Table negotiations; Operation TRIAN-GOLO documents disappear.

  June 4, 1989 Polish elections return overwhelming Solidarity victory.

  September 12, 1989 Tadeusz Mazowiecki becomes postwar Poland’s first noncommunist prime minister.

  November 24, 1989 Cardinal František Tomášek aligns Catholic Church with Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution.”

  December 1, 1989 Pope John Paul II receives Mikhail Gorbachev at the Vatican.

  Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, John Paul II’s successor as archbishop of Kraków, had learned about the archbishop’s role as Defensor Civitatis early in life. On the morning of September 1, 1939, as the Luftwaffe bombed the city, the twelve-year-old Macharski heard his father call the prince-archbishop, Adam Stefan Sapieha, to ask what should be done. “I stay!” replied Sapieha. The elder Macharski turned to his family and announced, “We stay, too.” Some four decades later, in that same spirit, Cardinal Macharski defended his people against the depredations of the self-inflicted wound of martial law—which, on the evening of June 22, 1983, had been in force for more than a year and a half.

  On that night, the last of John Paul II’s second pilgrimage to his homeland, Cardinal Macharski expected to host the papal party and several distinguished guests at dinner in the archiepiscopal residence at Franciszkańska, 3. The residence was on the edge of the Planty, the great greenbelt the Austrians had created around Kraków’s Old Town along the line once occupied by the city’s fortifications. The papal party, including Cardinal Agostino Casaroli, the secretary of state, had arrived, as had other guests, including Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger of Paris, the son of Polish Jews who had moved to France; Lustiger’s mother had perished in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Everything was ready except for one thing: the guest of honor, Pope John Paul II, was not present.

  General Wojciech Jaruzelski had decided that he must have a last, one-on-one meeting with the Pope, who had insisted on seeing the still interned Lech Wałęsa the day before, much to the regime’s displeasure. John Paul agreed to the change of schedule and the meeting with Jaruzelski was set for late afternoon in a room in Wawel Castle. It may be assumed that the conversation involved a “frank exchange of views,” as the diplomats say.

  Cardinal Macharski told his guests to start eating, as the soup was getting cold. While the first course was being consumed, John Paul II came in, sat down, ate a bit of soup, and then heard a boisterous crowd of young people who were gathered on the Planty, calling for him to come to the window. So the Pope got up, went to the window, and bantered back and forth with the crowd for fifteen minutes or so. At which point, as Cardinal Lustiger later recalled, Cardinal Casaroli burst out to a startled dinner company, “What does he want? Does he want bloodshed? Does he want war? Does he want to overthrow the government? Every day I have to explain to the authorities that there is nothing to this!”1

  But there was something to it—something that would bend the course of world history in a new and better direction.

  John Paul II had always taken quite literally Christ’s injunction to Peter to “strengthen your brethren” (Luke 22.32). That strengthening took different forms, given diverse circumstances. Poland I, the Nine Days of John Paul II in June 1979, ignited the revolution of conscience that gave birth to the Solidarity revolution. Poland II, the papal pilgrimage in June 1983, was intended to lift the spirits of a people who had been crushed yet again so that they might be strong enough to r
eturn to the path that martial law was supposed to have blocked—the path to responsibility and freedom. Poland III, in June 1987, would set in place the moral foundations for the successful completion of that remarkable journey, which would come two years later with the election of a Solidarityied government: something that seemed beyond imagining on the night of June 22, 1983—at least to those for whom the preservation of stability was the prime moral and political imperative.

  BACK TO THE UNDERGROUND

  Time magazine named Lech Wałęsa “Man of the Year” in its January 4, 1982, issue, which included a lengthy story that introduced many Americans to the details of the drama that had been unfolding in Poland since 1979. The more consequential Polish-American conversation of the moment, however, did not involve magazines but letters: a dozen or so letters exchanged by President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II during Reagan’s first year in office. In this classified correspondence, the two men explored issues of mutual concern, including martial law in the Pope’s homeland and the president’s determination to propose genuine disarmament, not just arms “control,” to the Soviet Union when the two sides began negotiations over intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Geneva later in 1982.2

  President Reagan clearly understood that John Paul would continue to play a crucial role in Poland, and perhaps beyond. Thus, on Reagan’s instructions, General Vernon Walters and CIA director William Casey briefed the Pope in Rome on U.S. intelligence findings and policy directions. According to former Radio Free Europe Polish service director Jan Nowak, then a consultant on Polish affairs to the U.S. National Security Council, the president insisted that the Pope be informed about sources as well as given information; thus John Paul knew of the work of Polish colonel Ryszard Kukliński, whose reports had been invaluable in the December 1980 crisis and who had been keeping his U.S. contacts informed of martial law plans before he and his family were exfiltrated in November 1981.3 The Reagan administration provided substantial funding for underground Solidarity in the years after martial law was imposed, with much of the money being managed through the AFL-CIO. John Paul II would have been informed of this, and doubtless appreciated it—especially as it helped relieve the suffering of the families of interned Solidarity activists.