Soviet reaction to the Polish crisis of 1980–81

The Polish crisis of 1980–1981, associated with the emergence of the Solidarity mass movement in Poland, challenged the Soviet Union's control over its satellite states in the Eastern Bloc.

For the first time however, the Kremlin abstained from military intervention, unlike on previous occasions such as the Prague Spring of 1968 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, and thus left the Polish leadership under General Wojciech Jaruzelski to impose martial law to deal with the opposition on their own.

Contrary to the interpretations of US intelligence, no preparations were underway for even minimal Soviet intervention at the time martial law was imposed, according to declassified Soviet archives. On August 25, a special commission was created in Moscow to formulate policy in response to developments in Poland. It was headed by senior Communist Party ideologist Mikhail Suslov, and included KGB chairman Yuri Andropov, foreign minister Andrei Gromyko and defense minister Dmitriy Ustinov. They were reluctant to intervene in Poland, recalling the Polish 1970 protests, and dealing already with problems in the ongoing Soviet war in Afghanistan.

The East German and Czechoslovak leaders, Erich Honecker and Gustáv Husák, however, were eager to suppress Solidarity, along the lines of previous crackdowns. The aging Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev agreed with Honecker and Husák, leaning towards intervention. A planned joint Soviet, East German and Czechoslovak attack, under the pretext of a Warsaw Pact military exercise called 'Soyuz-80,' was planned for December.

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