1955 - 1991

SOVIET - EAST EUROPEAN SOVIET - EAST EUROPEAN

MILITARY RELATIONS IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

SOURCES AND REASSESSMENTS

INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

L C ASSIF CI ATION

REVIEW & RELEA ES
Soviet Union

albania

poland

romania

hungary

east germany

czechoslovakia

bulgaria

THE WARSAW PACT 1955 - 1991

2 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
Table of Contents

Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 3

Sponsorship 4

Seminar 6

 Declassified Cold War Records 7

FOIA Electronic Reading Room 8

Special Collections 10

The Kuklinski Material 15

The Kuklinski Files 16

Comment on Dr. Kramer 39

The Warsaw Calendernote 41
INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

L C ASSIF CI ATION

REVIEW & RELEA ES

SPONSORSHIP

(U) The Historical Collections Division (HCD) of the Office of Information Management Services is responsible for executing the 

CIA’s Historical Review Program. This program seeks to identify, collect, and review for possible release to the public significant 

historical information. The mission of HCD is to: 

Provide an accurate, objective understanding of the information and intelligence that has helped shape the foundation of major US 

policy decisions.

•	 Improve access to lessons learned, presenting historical material to emphasize the scope and context of past actions.

•	 Improve current decision-making and analysis by facilitating reflection on the impacts and effects arising from past decisions. 

•	 Uphold Agency leadership commitments to openness, while protecting the national security interests of the US.

•	 Provide the American public with valuable insight into the workings of their Government.

Harvard possesses a wealth of resources needed to pursue the advanced study of the experiences and problems of Russia and Eurasiaamong them, teaching faculty in many of the relevant departments and the most complete Slavic library holdings of any Western 

university. 

The primary objectives of the Davis Center are to participate in the development of these resources, to provide direct services that 

allow scholars to make effective use of them, to create an environment that encourages intellectual exchange and innovation, and to 

promote the training of graduates and undergraduates in this field. 

Joining the Harvard faculty in these efforts are Visiting Scholars, Post-Doctoral Fellows, Senior Fellows, Regional Fellows, and 

Center Associates from the Boston area and around the world.

The Harvard Project on Cold War Studies promotes archival research in former East-bloc countries and seeks to expand and enrich 

what is known about Cold War events and themes. More important, it encourages scholars and students to use their research on 

Cold War topics to illuminate current theoretical debates about international and domestic politics. One of the chief means of 

accomplishing these goals is the sponsorship of scholarly publications, including the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series and the 

peer-reviewed Journal of Cold War Studies

The Harvard Project on Cold War Studies promotes archival research in former East-bloc countries and seeks to expand and enrich 

what is known about Cold War events and themes. More important, it encourages scholars and students to use their research on 

Cold War topics to illuminate current theoretical debates about international and domestic politics. One of the chief means of 

accomplishing these goals is the sponsorship of scholarly publications, including the Harvard Cold War Studies Book Series and the 

peer-reviewed Journal of Cold War Studies

THE WARSAW PACT 1955 - 1991

4 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
Bulgaria

U . S . S . R

Romania

Hungary

slovakia

Poland

East

Germany

CzechoAlbania

Moscow

Black Sea

Nor th

Atlantic

Ocean

North

Sea

Mediterranean Sea

Barents

Sea

Norwegian Sea

Baltic Sea

Caspian

Sea

Boundary representation is

not necessarily authoritative.

0 500 Kilometers

0 500 Miles

Warsaw Pact Countries, 1955-91 (U)

UNCLASSIFIED 788399AI (G00112) 10-09

Warsaw Pact

Albania*

Bulgaria

Czechoslovakia

East Germany

Hungary

Poland

Romania

U.S.S.R.

*Albania withheld support in 

1961 over the China split and 

officially withdrew in 1968.

Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 5
ABOUT THE SEMINAR

Soviet-Eastern European Military Relations in Historical Perspective;

Sources and Reassessments.

After Communist regimes in Eastern Europe collapsed twenty years ago and the Soviet Union disintegrated two years later, 

immense opportunities for archival research opened. Even though serious obstacles to archival work have persisted in Russia 

(which houses the central repositories of the Soviet regime), the archives of nearly all of the former Warsaw Pact countries are 

now fully or at least largely open. As a result, scholars have been able to explore many aspects of the Warsaw Pact that could 

only be guessed at in the past, including questions of military planning, force preparations and operations, nuclear command 

arrangements, and civil-military issues.

This seminar is designed to take stock of where we are twenty years after the collapse of East European Communism. What 

sources have become, or soon will be, available? To what extent have scholars actually been making use of the immense amount 

of information now available? How have the newly available documents changed our understanding of the Warsaw Pact? What 

questions can we now answer more confidently? What are some of the major points that are still unknown? How big a hindrance 

is pose by the continued problems with archival including documents being declassified by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, 

altered our understanding of the Warsaw Pact?

This seminar is intended to raise questions as well as to provide some tentative answers. We hope to highlight future directions for 

research and for the release of documents. Most of all, we hope to discuss how our understanding of Soviet-East European military 

relations has evolved over the past twenty years.

THE WARSAW PACT 1955 - 1991

6 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
DECLASSIFIED COLD WAR RECORDS

The CIA’s Historical Review Program (HRP)--managed by the Historical Collections Division (HCD) in Information 

Management Services--is responsible for the declassification review and release of documents detailing the Agency’s analysis and 

activities relating to historically significant topics and events. Tracing its roots back to 1985, the HRP was established as an 

outcome of congressional discussions that resulted in the passage of the CIA Information Act of 1984. The mission of the HRP is 

to showcase CIA’s national security contributions, provide an accurate, objective understanding of the intelligence that has helped 

shape the foundation of major policy decisions, and release, to the broadest audience possible, information that is not otherwise 

subject to legally required review.

The Historical Collections Division (HCD) of CIA’s Information Management Services is responsible for executing the Agency’s 

Historical Review Program. This program seeks to identify, collect, and review for possible release to the public documents of 

significant historical importance.

The mission of HCD is to:

•	 Promote an accurate, objective understanding of the information and intelligence that has helped shape the foundation 

of major US policy decisions. 

•	 Broaden access to lessons learned, presenting historical material to emphasize the scope and context of past actions. 

•	 Improve current decision-making and analysis by facilitating reflection on the impacts and effects arising from past 

decisions. 

•	 Uphold Agency leadership commitments to openness, while protecting the national security interests of the US. 

•	 Provide the American public with valuable insight into the workings of the Government.

The Historical Collection Division puts together a collection of documents that tell a story. This process provides a selective 

declassification of materials that CIA believes would be of significant historical interest. Examples of collections released 

include Soviet Finished Intelligence (Princeton Conference February 2001), Soviet NIEs, CAESAR, ESAU, POLO documents, 

Guatemala, and Kuklinski material. 

The following pages point to various locations where declassified Cold War documents from CIA files reside. The CIA FOIA site 

is the first place to visit at http://www.foia.cia.gov. Several collections which interest Cold War specialist are highlighted.

The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is a treasure trove of CIA material. The CIA 25-year declassification 

program has accessioned a variety of record collections to NARA; those collections include textual and multi-media records that 

are part of NARA's record group 263. In addition, the CIA 25-year program provides the public at NARA with access to a standalone computer system called the CIA Record Search Tool (CREST) that contains a searchable electronic record of documents 

declassified by that program since 1999. The CREST system currently contains 10.5 million pages of declassified material and is 

updated periodically with newly declassified 25-year-old documents. Researchers can also now use the CREST search tool on the 

CIA e-FOIA website to display title and bibliographic/archival information of documents on CREST that are responsive to the 

search terms. The e-FOIA website search does not provide images of the documents, however. 

Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 7
The CIA has established this site to provide the public 

with an overview of access to CIA information, including 

electronic access to previously released documents. Because 

of CIA’s need to comply with the national security laws of 

the United States, some documents or parts of documents 

cannot be released to the public. In particular, the CIA, like 

other U.S. intelligence agencies, has the responsibility to 

protect intelligence sources and methods from disclosure. 

However, a substantial amount of CIA information 

has been and/or can be released following review. See 

“Your Rights” (http://www.foia.cia.gov/rights.asp) for 

further details on the various methods of obtaining this 

information.

What’s New at FOIA?

Top Searches

The Frequently Requested Records section now shows 

June - August 2009 Top 25 Search (http://www.foia.cia.

gov/Top25PhrasesMonthly.asp) Phrases and August 2009 

Top 25 Documents (http://www.foia.cia.gov/Top25.asp) 

viewed.

Foreign Broadcast Information Service History, Part 1: 

1941-1947 (http://www.foia.cia.gov/fbis.asp)

In response to the burgeoning intelligence requirements 

dictated by the World War II (WWII), the Foreign 

Broadcast Monitoring Service (FBMS) evolved into the 

Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) on 26 July 

1942. The first 44 years of FBIS is chronicled dutifully and 

expertly in this 1969 study. Foreign Broadcast Information 

Service History, Part 1: 1941-1947 (http://www.foia.cia.

gov/txt/FBIS_history_part1.pdf) (15MB PDF)

Creating Global Intelligence (http://www.foia.cia.gov/cgi.

asp)

Discover the back story of the US intelligence community 

by exploring “Creating Global Intelligence: The Creation of 

the US Intelligence Community and Lessons for the 21st 

Century”, (http://www.foia.cia.gov/cgi.asp) a collection 

of declassified documents from the late 1940s to the early 

1950s that ultimately led to the establishment of the CIA. 

This 800+ collection allows history to come to life as well 

as giving perspectives on the complex issues that senior US 

Government officials grappled with when considering how 

to establish an enduring national intelligence capability

Air America: Upholding the Airmen’s Bond (http://www.

foia.cia.gov/airamerica.asp)

A fascinating assembly of documents (http://www.foia.cia.

gov/airamerica.asp) revealing the role that Air America, the 

Agency’s proprietary airline, played in the search and rescue 

of pilots and personnel during the Vietnam War. The 

collection has personal accounts by the rescued pilots and 

thank you letters as well as commendations from various 

officials. 

UPDATED 25-Year Program Archive Search (http://www.

foia.cia.gov/search_archive.asp)

New data has been loaded to the CREST archive search 

(http://www.foia.cia.gov/search_archive.asp).

The automatic declassification provisions of Executive 

Order 12958, as amended, require the declassification 

of nonexempt historically-valuable records 25 years old 

or older. By 31 December 2006 all agencies were to 

have completed the review of all hardcopy documents 

determined to be historically valuable (designated as 

“permanent” by the agency and the National Archives) 

FOIa electronic reading room

FOIA ELECTRONIC READING ROOM

8 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
and exclusively containing their equities. As the deadline 

pertains to CIA, it covers the span of relevant documents 

originally dating from the establishment of the CIA after 

WWII through 1981.

CIA has deployed an electronic full-text searchable system 

it has named CREST (the CIA Records Search Tool), 

which has been operational since 2000 and is located at 

NARA II in College Park Maryland. On this Agency site, 

researchers can now use an on-line CREST Finding Aid to 

research the availability of CIA documents declassified and 

loaded onto CREST through 2008. Data for the remaining 

years up to the present (CREST deliveries have been 

ongoing) will be placed on this site at later dates.

Search the CREST web database here (http://www.foia.cia.

gov/search_archive.asp). 

Note: it does not contain actual images of the documents as 

the regular Electronic Reading Room search does. Rather, 

it contains details on the files to speed FOIA requests.

FOIA ELECTRONIC READING ROOM

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 9
Air America: Upholding the Airmen’s 

Bond 

A fascinating assembly of documents (http://www.foia.cia.

gov/airamerica.asp) revealing the role that Air America, the 

Agency’s proprietary airline, played in the search and rescue 

of pilots and personnel during the Vietnam War. The 

collection has personal accounts by the rescued pilots and 

thank you letters as well as commendations from various 

officials. 

A Life in Intelligence - The Richard 

Helms Collection 

This collection of material by and about Richard Helms 

(http://www.foia.cia.gov/helms.asp) as Director of Central 

Intelligence (DCI) and Ambassador to Iran comprises 

the largest single release of Helms-related information 

to date. The documents, historical works and essays offer 

an unprecedented, wide-ranging look at the man and his 

career as the United States’ top intelligence official and one 

of its most important diplomats during a crucial decade 

of the Cold War. From mid-1966, when he became DCI, 

to late 1976, when he left Iran, Helms dealt directly with 

numerous events whose impact remains evident today and 

which are covered in the release.

A-12 OXCART Reconnaissance Aircraft 

Documentation

This release (http://www.foia.cia.gov/a12oxcart.asp), 

containing approximately 1,500 pages of material, 

consisting of about 350 documents, maps, diagrams, and 

photographs will provide researchers on aviation and 

intelligence with significant additional detail about the 

design and development of the A-12. Follow the link above 

to the page housing this new special collection.

special collections

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

10 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
National Intelligence Council (NIC) 

Collections on this site

The National Intelligence Council (NIC) Collection 

(http://www.foia.cia.gov/nic_collection.asp)

Analytic reports produced by the National Intelligence 

Council (NIC) on a variety of geographical and functional 

issues since 1946.

The Vietnam Collection (http://www.foia.cia.gov/nic_

vietnam_collection.asp)

Over 170 estimative products on Vietnam have been 

declassified and were released in April, 2005. This 

collection, the largest such release to date and the first 

exclusively on Vietnam, covers the period 1948-1975. Of 

the 174 documents, 38 are included at least in part in 

the hard copy volume entitled Estimative Products on 

Vietnam, 1948-1975 and appear in their entirety in its 

accompanying CD/ROM. 

The China Collection (http://www.foia.cia.gov/nic_china_

collecion.asp)

These documents were published in a book and CD/

ROM entitled Tracking the Dragon: Selected National 

Intelligence Estimates on China, 1948-1976 and were 

the subject of a major international conference cosponsored 

by the National Intelligence Council and the Woodrow 

Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, 

D.C. in October 2004.

Historical Review Office Collections 

on this site

The Princeton Collection (http://www.foia.cia.gov/

princeton_intelligence.asp)

Analytic Reports Produced by the Directorate of 

Intelligence on the Former Soviet Union Declassified 

and released for a March 2001 Conference at Princeton 

University

Collections available through the 

National Archives (NARA)

How to access the documents via NARA (http://www.foia.

cia.gov/access.asp)

Declassified National Intelligence Estimates on the Soviet 

Union and International Communism (http://www.foia.cia.

gov/soviet_estimates.asp)

Declassified Intelligence Estimates on Selected Free World 

Countries (http://www.foia.cia.gov/free_world_estimates.asp)

Declassified Intelligence Analyses on the Former Soviet 

Union Produced by CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence 

(http://www.foia.cia.gov/soviet_intelligence.asp)

An important part of CIA’s ongoing effort to be more open 

and to provide for more public accountability has been a 

recognition of the importance of declassifying historically 

significant Agency documents. The process of opening up 

the Agency’s historical record began in the 1980s when 

then Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) William 

Casey authorized the declassification and transfer of nine 

million pages of OSS records to the National Archives and 

established the Historical Review Program.

A more formal Historical Review Program (HRP) was 

established by DCI Robert Gates in 1992. Reaffirming the 

principle that the US government’s records should be open 

to the public, the program called for significant historical 

information to be made available unless such release could 

cause damage to the national security interests of the 

United States. Subsequent DCIs R. James Woolsey and 

John Deutch, and current Director of Central Intelligence 

George Tenet have supported a vigorous historical 

declassification program.

CIA’s Historical Review Program, with the exception of 

several statutorily mandated requirements, is a voluntary 

declassification program that focuses on records of 

historical value. The program’s managers rely on the advice 

and guidance of the Agency’s History Staff, the DCI’s 

Historical Review Panel, and the general public in selecting 

topics for review. Under guidelines laid out for the program, 

historical records are released except in instances where 

disclosure would damage national security-that is, for 

example, where it would reveal sensitive foreign government 

information or identify intelligence sources and methods 

that are currently in use and that are subject to denial and/

or deception. The Historical Review Program coordinates 

the review of the documents with CIA components and 

other US Government entities before final declassification 

action is taken and the documents are transferred to the 

National Archives.

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 11
Two projects currently in progress in HRP involve the 

review of National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) on 

the former Soviet Union and international communism 

and intelligence analyses on the former Soviet Union 

published by the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence. For 

more information on these specific collections, click on the 

appropriate summary title.

Declassified National Intelligence 

Estimates on the Soviet Union and 

International Communism

A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) is the most 

authoritative written judgment concerning a national 

security issue prepared by the Director of Central 

Intelligence. Unlike “current intelligence” products, 

which describe the present, most NIEs forecast future 

developments and many address their implications for 

the United States. NIEs cover a wide range of issue-from 

military to technological to economic to political trends.

NIEs are addressed to the highest level of policymakersup to and including the President. They are often drafted 

in response to a specific request from a policymaker. 

Estimates are designed not just to provide information 

but to help policymakers think through issues. They are 

prepared by CIA with the participation of other agencies 

of the Intelligence Community and are coordinated with 

these agencies. When there are alternative views about 

a subject within the Intelligence Community, the NIEs 

include such views.

CIA has made a major commitment to increasing the public 

understanding of the role played by intelligence analysis 

in the Cold War by reviewing for declassification NIEs 

on the Soviet Union and international communism. The 

declassification review and release to the public of NIEs 

on the former Soviet Union is part of a voluntary program 

initiated by DCI William Casey in 1985 and given new 

life in 1992 by DCI Robert Gates. In addition to NIEs 

and their predecessors-called OREs and produced by 

the Office of Reports and Estimates in the early postwar 

years-the review has included other interagency intelligence 

assessments-such as Special NIEs and Interagency 

Intelligence Memoranda-which are usually more narrowly 

focused or specialized in content. The declassification 

review is done in consultation with other agencies of 

the Intelligence Community, particularly those who 

participated in producing the assessments. More than 550 

documents have been declassified and released thus far 

through the voluntary program, including most recently 

documents for use at conferences titled “At Cold War’s End,” 

held at Texas A&M University from 18 to 20 November, 

1999, and “CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1991,” 

held at Princeton University on 9 and 10 March 2001.

An index of National Intelligence Estimates and other 

interagency intelligence analyses released to the National 

Archives is provided below, arrayed by year of publication. 

Click on the year desired to view those published during 

that 12-month period.

Users should note that textual material was deleted from 

a number of the documents during the declassification 

review process. The deletions were made to protect 

intelligence sources and methods or for other national 

security reasons. In those instances where deletions were 

necessary, an effort was made to avoid distorting the 

conclusions or the analysis in the documents. No deletions 

were made to conceal incorrect assessments or faulty 

conclusions, or to remove information embarrassing to 

the Agency or the Intelligence Community. The number 

of pages shown in the index for a particular document 

may be less than the total number of pages in the original 

document. To assist the reader, the following symbols are 

used in the index to indicate which documents contain 

deletions and the nature of the redactions.

• RIF (Released in Full) - The document has been released

in its entirety. 

• RNS (Released with non-substantive deletions) - The

document has been released with minor redactions, such 

as certain classification indicators, access restrictions, and 

references to names or documents not released to the public. 

• RIP (Released in Part) - The document has been released

with substantive deletions made in the text. 

Declassified Intelligence Analyses on 

the Former Soviet Union Produced by 

CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence

As part of its voluntary declassification program, in 1996 

CIA began to review for possible declassification analyses 

on the former Soviet Union produced by the Directorate 

of Intelligence. Since that time approximately 57,000 pages 

and almost 2,000 reports on the former USSR have been 

reviewed for declassification and released as part of this 

voluntary program.

The materials contained in this collection include 

intelligence reports, intelligence memoranda, provisional 

intelligence reports, economic intelligence reports, and 

research reports. Also included is a volume of selected 

early weekly and daily intelligence summaries published 

by CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence declassified 

in connection with an academic conference on CIA’s early 

Cold War-era analysis held on 24 October 1997, documents 

declassified for a conference titled “At Cold War’s End” held 

at Texas A&M University from 18 to 20 November, 1999, 

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

12 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
and analytic reports declassified for a conference titled 

“CIA’s analysis of the Soviet Union, 1947-1991” held at 

Princeton University on 9 and 10 March 2001.

An index of analyses on the former Soviet Union, produced 

by the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence and released to 

the National Archives is provided below, arrayed by year 

of publication. Click on the year desired to view those 

published during that 12-month period. A separate link is 

provided to access an index of the documents declassified 

and released for the Princeton conference - the socalled “Princeton Collection”. By clicking on a particular 

publication in the index of the “Princeton Collection”, the 

document can be viewed on-line, in redacted form. This 

feature is not available with the overall index of documents 

released. They must be viewed at NARA. In addition, 

nearly 1000 other DI analytic documents, which had 

already been released by the Agency through FOIA or 

Executive Order requests, were made available for the 

Princeton Conference. The documents were transferred 

to NARA as part of the “Princeton Collection”, under 

Accession #NN3-263-01-00 . They also can be viewed 

at NARA. Users should note that textual material 

was deleted from many of the documents during the 

declassification review process. The deletions were made 

to protect intelligence sources and methods or for other 

national security reasons. In those instances where 

deletions were necessary, an effort was made to avoid 

distorting the conclusions of the analysis in the document. 

No deletions were made to conceal incorrect assessments or 

faulty conclusions, or to remove information embarrassing 

to the Agency.

The number of pages shown in the index for a particular 

document may be less than the total number of pages in the 

original document. In general, the excisions made to this 

collection of documents have been relatively few in number 

and often pertain to procedural requirements for sanitizing, 

primarily in the source sections of the documents, rather 

than to the text of the analysis.

To assist the reader, the following symbols are used in the 

index to indicate which documents contain deletions and 

the nature of the redactions.

• RIF (Released in Full) - The document has been released

in its entirety. 

• RNS (Released with non-substantive deletions) - The

document has been released with minor redactions, such 

as certain classification indicators, access restrictions, and 

references to names or documents not released to the public. 

• RIP (Released in Part) - The document has been released

with substantive deletions made in the text. 

The CAESAR, POLO, and 

ESAU Papers

Cold War Era Hard Target Analysis of 

Soviet and Chinese Policy and Decision Making, 1953-1973

This collection of declassified analytic monographs and 

reference aids, designated within the Central Intelligence 

Agency (CIA) Directorate of Intelligence (DI) as the 

CAESAR, ESAU, and POLO series, highlights the CIA’s 

efforts from the 1950s through the mid-1970s to pursue 

in-depth research on Soviet and Chinese internal politics 

and Sino-Soviet relations. The documents refect the 

views of seasoned analysts who had followed closely their 

special areas of research and whose views were shaped 

in often heated debate. Continuing public interest in the 

series, as reflected in numerous requesss through Freedom 

of Information and Executive Order channels, led CIA’s 

Office of Information Management Services (IMS) to 

conduct a search of Directorate of Intelligence record 

systems for documents in this series and then undertake a 

declassification review of all the documents we located. The 

147 documents in this collection, amounting to over 11,000 

pages of analysis, were written between 1953 and 1973. The 

collection includes a large number of newly declassified 

monographs as well as some tudies that have been 

previously declassified and released to individual requesters. 

The continuing sensitivity of some documents in the series 

required that they be withheld from declassification.

Lt. Col. Oleg Penkovsky: Western Spy 

in Soviet GRU

This group of documents highlights the highs and lows of 

the intelligence business. The recruitment of a well-placed 

spy, in this case a high-ranking Soviet military intelligence 

officer, lessened the tensions of the Cold War by providing 

information on the intentions, strength, and technological 

advancement of the Soviet Union. At the same time, the 

enormous risks for the spy himself became evident in the 

fate of Penkovsky -- shot as a traitor by the Soviets in 1963 

for spying for the US and UK. These documents provide 

over-the-shoulder looks from the perspective of the CIA 

Director as well as from Penkovsky himself in operational 

meeting reports. This collection ofers insights on the spy’s 

motives as well as the fruit of his espionage for us. 

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 13
Atomic Spies: Ethel and Julius Rosenberg

This collection provides interesting Agency insights on 

this post-WWII spy case. Documents cover, among many 

other topics, US intelligence activities, including FBI-CIA 

cooperation; USSR intelligence activities; the Rosenberg 

espionage network’s collection against the US atomic energy 

program; their attempts to protect the network as US 

authorities closed in on it; their arrest; Soviet propaganda; 

the Soviet’s protest of the Rosenberg’s sentencing; and 

Moscow’s reaction to the execution of their spies.

25-Year Program Archive Search

The automatic declassification provisions of Executive 

Order 12958, as amended, require the declassification of 

nonexempt historically-valuable records 25 years old or 

older. The EO was originally issued in April 1995 and 

amended in 2003, when it established 31 December 2006 

as the first major deadline for automatic declassification 

under the "25-year program."

By 31 December 2006 all agencies were to have completed 

the review of all hardcopy documents determined to 

be historically valuable (designated as "permanent" by 

the agency and the National Archives) and exclusively 

containing their equities. As the deadline pertains to CIA, it 

covers the span of relevant documents originally dating from 

the establishment of the CIA after WWII through 1981.

CIA has maintained a program operating out of the 

CIA Declassification Center to review records under the 

purview of EO 12958, as amended, before they reach their 

automatic declassification deadline. CIA has deployed an 

electronic full-text searchable system it has named CREST 

(the CIA Records Search Tool), which has been operational 

since 2000 and is located at NARA II in College Park 

Maryland. The CREST system is the publicly-accessible 

repository of the subset of CIA records reviewed under the 

25-year program in electronic format (manually reviewed 

and released records are accessioned directly into the 

National Archives in their original format). Over 10 million 

pages have been released in electronic format and reside on 

the CREST database, from which researchers have printed 

almost a million pages. To use CREST, a researcher must 

physically be present at the National Archives, College Park, 

Maryland. Recognizing this presents an obstacle to many 

researchers, we have been investigating ways to improve 

researcher knowledge of and access to CREST documents.

On this Agency site, researchers can now use an on-line 

CREST Finding Aid to research the availability of CIA 

documents declassified and loaded onto CREST through 

2008. Data for the remaining years up to the present 

(CREST deliveries have been ongoing) will be placed on 

this site at later dates.

As indicated in the "25-Year Released Documents Search" 

page below, researchers can search by the title and date, or 

date span, of documents.

Title: The title listed will be the formal title of a report or 

the stated subject of a memorandum. However, the title 

may be the best attempt by Agency indexers to identify 

documents without clear formal titles such as cables, 

letters, written notes, and other forms of communication 

and correspondence. In such cases, the title may include 

reference to the type of document, originator, recipient, or 

location.

Document Date: For a single document, the creation 

date on the first page of the document is the date to be 

searched. In a package of several documents or in a pairing 

of a document with a covering transmittal/addressee sheet 

the date will again be that of the first page. The year 1900 

is the default date used by Agency indexers for undated 

documents.

Following a successful search, the resulting document 

metadata will appear on a separate page. In addition to 

the title and date, the metadata will include the "ESDN 

number" (see below), the number of pages, the original 

classification, document type, and the release decision.

The ESDN number is the internal Agency tracking number 

which should be used when submitting a FOIA request. 

The original classification is indicated by the letters T (Top 

Secret), S (Secret), C (Confidential), U (Unclassified), and 

K for unknown or unmarked. The release decision of the 

document is either RIF (released in full) or RIP (released 

in part).

In the future, in addition to populating the CREST 

Finding Aid with records from 2003 to the present, CIA 

will continue to release through CREST documents that 

are 25-years old or older in conformance with the EO . This 

yearly requirement is referred to as the "rolling period." 

You may e-mail comments on the CREST Finding Aid 

capability to the feedback section of this site.

SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

14 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
An Analyst’s Perspective

In the course of a career at the Central Intelligence Agency, 

easily the most sensitive body of material that I had access 

to was the collection of material provided by Polish Colonel 

Ryszard Kuklinski. Over a nearly ten year period, the 

Colonel provided the United States with an unprecedented 

volume of material, but more importantly, he provided us 

with the ability to understand the thinking of the Soviet 

and Warsaw Pact General Staff.

Knowing and understanding are related but different concepts. 

It is often the case that analysts, whether of intelligence, 

financial affairs or other disciplines, know things, but 

fundamentally don’t also understand them. Knowing in this 

context is recognition of a reality: the plan dictates an attack 

on the left flank of the army. Understanding is recognition 

of why: the attack on the left flank is being undertaken 

because of certain assumptions and objectives, tempered by 

doctrine and the personality of the officer responsible for the 

plan, himself possibly pushed by outside pressures exerted by 

superiors, or other external realities.

Understanding allows for transference and the ability 

to make accurate projections. Knowing what’s going to 

happen on the left flank doesn’t necessarily imply any 

knowledge of what’s going to happen in the center, or the 

right. Understanding, on the other hand, allows both 

the intelligence analyst and the military planner or leader 

to develop an accurate picture of the whole, including 

portions for which there may be no firm knowledge. With 

understanding comes the ability, therefore, to predict 

with some accuracy how any given system would react to 

differing, often unanticipated impulses.

It also provides a context that allows the stitching together 

of otherwise disparate pieces of information, or the 

validation of others. We might, for example, have a picture 

that tells us there are more tanks than previously counted 

in a Tank Regiment, but that knowledge becomes even 

more valuable when we are able to add an understanding of 

why that number was increased.

It is precisely this kind of understanding that Colonel 

Kuklinski provided during the whole of his exceptionally 

productive relationship with the Central Intelligence 

Agency. His documents were not garden variety articles, 

which though published in nominally classified journals, 

were intended for relatively wide audiences. His material 

was either extraordinarily sensitive documentation – with 

commentary – of small, seminal, and exclusive meetings, or 

they were compilations – again with commentary, of other 

classified material. What distinguished it all was its ability 

ultimately to provide understanding.

That didn’t end with his departure from Poland. Anxious 

to continue his contribution to the dismantlement of 

the Soviet occupation, the Colonel continued to provide 

his assessments and professional views of a wide variety 

of issues, all benefiting from his long years of successful 

education and service within a highly rarified atmosphere 

that was the General Staff. Rarely have we had the 

opportunity to plumb the depths of a documentary 

collection as vast as his and then be able to follow up 

that review with detailed and direct interaction with the 

individual who was there when it was generated.

The material that’s been made available, particularly the 

material directly related to the relentless pressure put 

on the puppet Polish Government of Marshal Jaruzelski, 

easily illustrates the value of understanding, and the 

incredible contribution to freedom selflessly made by one 

brave man.

The Kuklinski Material 

And aris pappas

THE KUKLINSKI MATERIAL AND ARIS PAPPAS

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 15
THE KUKLIN ́SKI FILES AND THE 

POLISH CRISIS OF 1980-1981: An 

Analysis of the newly released 

cia documents

Mark Kramer: Harvard University

In the 1970s and early 1980s, several Polish military 

officers were secretly helping the U.S. Central Intelligence 

Agency (CIA). Of these, the most valuable by far was 

Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, a senior official on the Polish 

General Staff and a long-time aide to Defense Minister 

Wojciech Jaruzelski. For nearly a decade, from the early 

1970s through November 1981, Kukliński provided 

vast amounts of highly sensitive military, technical, and 

political-military information to the CIA. His role became 

especially important during the 18-month-long crisis in 

Poland in 1980-1981, when he sent a trove of invaluable 

documents and reports to the CIA, including detailed 

materials about the planning for martial law.

Even though Kukliński found out in September 1981 that 

the Polish Ministry of Internal Affairs had begun searching 

for a CIA spy in the upper levels of the Polish military, he 

continued his clandestine work for another two months. In 

early November 1981 the foreign intelligence directorate 

of the Soviet Committee on State Security (KGB) learned 

from a KGB source in the Vatican that the CIA had 

acquired the full plans for martial law in Poland1 The KGB 

promptly alerted the Polish authorities, who embarked 

on a much more intensive investigation for a spy in their 

midst. Because Kukliński was one of the few Polish officials 

who had had access to all of the final planning, he realized 

that it was only a matter of time until the investigators 

settled on him as the culprit. Using a specially-made “Iskra” 

encrypted communications device, Kukliński urgently 

notified his CIA case officers that he and his family would 

have to leave Poland as soon as possible. An intricate CIA 

“exfiltration” operation, which has been vividly recounted 

by the journalist Benjamin Weiser in his book A Secret 

Life, narrowly brought the colonel to safety in the West2. 

Kukliński lived the rest of his life under an assumed name 

in the United States, though he was able to travel back to 

Poland in 1998 after the charges of treason lodged against 

him by the Communist regime were officially revoked. He 

died of a cerebral hemorrhage at age 73 in early 2004.

Kukliński’s exploits have been discussed at some length in 

both English and Polish, mainly by journalists and public 

figures. A Secret Life is the most comprehensive account 

available of Kukliński’s life and his motivations in working 

— at enormous personal risk — for the United States. 

Most of the Polish books about Kukliński are anthologies 

of interviews, published articles, or mass-media coverage, 

and they run the gamut from the useful and perceptive 

to the sensationalist and polemical.3 His activities have 

1 After the CIA received copies of the plans from Kukliński, U.S. officials notified 

Pope John Paul II, in the hope that he might be able to use his influence to help 

thwart the planned operation. KGB sources in the Vatican then learned of the 

disclosure. See Vitalii Pavlov, Upravlenie “S”: Vo glave nelegal’noi razvedki 

(Moscow: Eksmo, 2006), p. 351.

2 Benjamin Weiser, A Secret Life: The Polish Officer, His Covert Mission, and the 

Price He Paid to Save His Country (New York: PublicAffairs, 2004), pp. 271-289.

3 See, for example, Józef Szaniawski, ed., Pułkownik Kukliński — Tajna misja

(Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza RYTM, 2007); Józef Szaniawski, ed.., Samotna 

misja: Pułkownik Kukliński i zimna wojna (Warsaw: Galeria Polskiej Książki, 

2003); Zbigniew B. Kumoś, ed., Nikt czyli Kukliński: Rzecz o zdradzie (Warsaw: 

Wydawnictwo Comandor, 2002); Pułkownik Kukliński: Wywiady – Opinie 

– Dokumenty (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Test, 1998); Krzysztof Dubiński and 

Iwona Jurczenko, Oko Pentagonu: Rzecz o pułkowniku Ryszardzie Kuklińskim

(Warsaw: KMSO, 1996); Maciej Łukasiewicz, ed., Bohater czy zdrajca: Sprawa 

THE KUKLINSKI FILES AND THE POLISH CRISIS OF 1980 - 1981

16 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
also been discussed, with varying degrees of accuracy, in 

memoirs by former senior government officials and military 

officers who worked with him in Poland in 1980-1981. The 

question of whether Kukliński should be regarded as a hero 

or a traitor has often dominated the public discourse about 

him in Poland.

In this Working Paper I will first discuss the provenance 

and nature of some extremely important documents 

pertaining to Kukliński and the 1980-1981 Polish crisis 

that were recently declassified. After giving a sense of both 

the value and the major limitations of the newly released 

materials, I will review the most significant findings from 

these documents about the Polish crisis. The collection 

enriches and corroborates much of what was known already, 

and it also adds many intriguing details about events in 

Poland and Soviet-Polish relations. In a few cases, as noted 

below, the materials alter existing accounts of the crisis.

The Newly Released Documents

Until December 2008, only three of the reports that 

Kukliński sent to the CIA during the 1980-1981 Polish 

crisis were available. I published them along with a 

commentary in Issue No. 11 of the CWIHP Bulletin.

4

After Weiser decided in the 1990s to write a book about 

Kukliński, he requested that the CIA declassify the large 

collection of documents supplied by or relating to the 

colonel. The CIA declined the request and also turned down 

other efforts to seek the release of Kukliński’s files. But 

after considerable negotiation the agency did consent to an 

arrangement that gave Weiser indirect access to the files.

In 2008 the CIA finally agreed to release (in sanitized 

form) some of the materials from its voluminous Kukliński 

files, starting with a selection of items pertaining to the 

Polish crisis of 1980-1981. The 81 documents in the initial 

tranche, which became available in December 2008, are 

apparently the only items about the 1980-1981 crisis 

that will be released from Kukliński’s files. They come to 

just over 1,000 pages in total, counting the cover pages 

and distribution sheets. The tranche includes the letter 

Kukliński wrote in halting English in 1972 under the 

pseudonym “P.V.” to the U.S. embassy in Bonn seeking 

contact with a senior U.S. Army officer, 44 translations 

of martial law-related documents that Kukliński 

either photographed or transcribed (including separate 

translations of two successive drafts of a speech delivered 

on 13 September 1981), 17 memoranda summarizing 

information Kuklinski provided to the CIA in 1981 

before he escaped from Poland, 1 memorandum (dated 

pułkownika Kuklińskiego (Warsaw: Oficyna Wydawnicza MOST, 1992).

4 Mark Kramer, “Colonel Kukliński and the Polish Crisis, 1980-81,” Cold War 

International History Project Bulletin, Issue No. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 48-60.

24 February 1981) summarizing information conveyed to 

the CIA by another well-placed military official in Poland, 

13 translations of commentaries Kukliński wrote in the 

United States shortly after martial law was introduced in 

Poland, 2 translations of background reports he wrote in 

the spring of 1982 about the martial law operation and 

about civil-military relations in Poland, 2 CIA analytical 

memoranda (dated 25 August 1981 and 7 December 1981) 

that rely in part on information supplied by Kukliński, 

and a 64-page translation of Kukliński’s detailed answers 

in 1983 to the CIA’s questions about “Jaruzelski’s attitude, 

behavior, and style.”5

5 At a symposium commemorating Kukliński on 11 December 2008, the CIA 

distributed a CD with audiovisual materials pertaining to the colonel, including 

scanned images of the 81 newly declassified documents. The agency also distributed 

a booklet titled “Preparing for Martial Law: Through the Eyes of Col. Ryszard 

Kukliński.” The CD gives an incorrect date of 7 January 1981 for a document that 

in fact is from 7 January 1982. This is more than just a simple typographical error; 

the document appears in the wrong place (in the area for January 1981 rather than 

for January 1982) in the chronologically organized links to documents. The booklet 

incorrectly says that the tranche includes summaries of 18 reports from Kukliński; 

in fact, it includes only 17 summaries of Kukliński’s reports, along with a summary 

of a report from another CIA source in Poland. The booklet also incorrectly states 

that 16 translations of Kukliński’s post-martial law commentaries were released; 

in fact, the CIA released only 15 translations of these documents, counting two 

short background memoranda. The booklet is also incorrect in saying that the 

tranche includes 43 translations of documents supplied by Kukliński, counting a 

1977 document that was not distributed in translation until early 1980. In fact, it 

includes 44 translations, counting the 1977 document. (Two of the translations, 

one distributed on 25 September 1981 and the other on 23 November 1981, are of 

two different drafts of the same document — a speech to be delivered by General 

Florian Siwicki, the chief of the Polish General Staff, at a crucial meeting of 

Poland’s Homeland Defense Committee on 13 September 1981. A comparison of 

the two drafts is somewhat difficult because the translations were clearly done by 

separate translators, but the substance of the two drafts is largely the same until 

the final paragraph, when a very important difference in phrasing occurs, as will be 

discussed below.) The booklet distributed by the CIA reproduces an article about 

Kukliński that was originally published in the Summer 2000 issue of Studies in 

Intelligence, “The Vilification and Vindication of Colonel Kukliński,” by Benjamin 

B. Fischer, who at the time of publication was a member of the CIA’s History Staff. 

The article contains an important error. Fischer writes:

Jaruzelski embellished the “green light” story during the 1997 

conference [in Jachranka, Poland]. According to the general, he 

dispatched General Eugeniusz Molczyk, deputy chief of the general 

staff, to Washington to confer with then-Vice President Bush just 

before martial law was declared. The Vice President, Jaruzelski told 

the conference attendees, agreed with Molczyk that martial law was a 

better option than intervention. “We took that as a sort of signal,” the 

general said, “Do it yourselves, or there will be the more feared option.” 

THE KUKLINSKI FILES AND THE POLISH CRISIS OF 1980 - 1981

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 17
These newly released materials should be used in 

conjunction with hundreds of other CIA documents 

about the Polish crisis that have become available in recent 

years. The previously declassified items, which are stored 

as scanned, fully searchable images on the electronic 

reading room page of the agency’s website (www.foia.cia.

gov) and in the CIA Records Search Tool (CREST) at the 

National Archives (NARA) in College Park, Maryland, 

include situation reports, national intelligence daily 

briefs, information cables, special analyses, intelligence 

memoranda, alert memoranda, spot analyses, national 

intelligence estimates, and special national intelligence 

estimates6. Cumulatively, these documents provide almost 

daily coverage as well as longer-term assessments of what 

was going on in Poland and in Soviet-Polish relations 

during the 1980-1981 crisis. Valuable as the newly released 

Kukliniski materials are, the immense number of other 

declassified CIA documents are essential for a fuller 

overview of the crisis.

By the same token, the Kukliński materials and other CIA 

documents need to be used in combination with the vast 

quantity of archival evidence now available in the former 

Warsaw Pact countries. Occasionally one finds information 

in the Kukliński reports that is erroneous or incomplete, 

and the reports also at times offer contradictory appraisals 

of particular events or individuals. For example, in a report 

sent in February 1981 (summarized in a memorandum 

dated 27 February) Kuklinski claimed that Mirosław 

Milewski, the Polish minister of internal affairs until July 

The only problem is that this exchange never happened.

Fischer did not attend the Jachranka conference, and he is mistaken about 

what Jaruzelski supposedly “told the conference attendees.” The transcript of 

the conference — published by Nina Smolar under the title Wejdą, nie wejdą: 

Polska 1980-1982 — Wewnętrzny kryzys, międzynarodowe uwarunkowania 

— Konferencja w Jachrance, listopad 1997 (London: Aneks, 1999), pp. 282-283 — 

makes clear that Jaruzelski never said that he had sent Molczyk to meet with Vice 

President Bush. (Indeed, the notion that Jaruzelski would have relied on Molczyk 

— a military arch-rival — for this sort of assignment is preposterous.) Jaruzelski 

stated that Deputy Prime Minister Zbigniew Madej met with Bush in December 

1981 — which is true. Madej and Bush discussed bilateral economic relations, 

and the meeting was reported on the front page of the main Polish Communist 

newspaper, Trybuna Ludu. The reason that Fischer went astray is that, instead of 

checking the Polish transcript or tapes of the Jachranka conference, he relied solely 

on an article by Jane Perlez that appeared in The New York Times on 11 November 

1997. Perlez does not know Polish and had to rely on an inept translator. I took 

part in the Jachranka conference and knew exactly what Jaruzelski had said, and I 

was stunned when I saw Perlez’s article. I checked the recorded tape just to be sure 

and then wrote a letter to The New York Times on 12 November 1997 that read 

partly: “Among errors in Perlez’s article are her persistent references to Marshal 

Viktor Kulikov as a general (a rank lower than his actual rank of marshal) and 

her claim that the Polish official who met with then-Vice President George Bush 

in 1981 was Eugeniusz Molczyk, the deputy chief of the Polish General Staff. In 

fact, the official in question was Zbigniew Madej, the Polish deputy prime minister. 

General Jaruzelski said that Madej had gone to Washington. He never referred to 

Molczyk.” The New York Times did not publish my letter and did not publish a 

correction of Perlez's errors. That is the fault of the paper. But Fischer should have 

checked what Jaruzelski actually said, instead of relying on a flawed second-hand 

source.

6 Copies of many of the relevant documents are also stored at the National Security 

Archive, a private repository in Washington, DC, which has played a valuable 

role in seeking the declassification of relevant documents through the Freedom of 

Information Act.

1981, had said that a “declaration of martial law could be 

the greatest tragedy in Polish history and for this reason 

should be treated as the last resort,” whereas in a report 

several months later (summarized on 24 June 1981) the 

colonel characterized Milewski as “part of the group of 

hard-liners [in the PZPR leadership] who are submissive 

to Moscow.”7 Scholars nowadays have to bear in mind 

that Kukliński was writing his reports under extreme 

constraints of secrecy and time and did not have the 

opportunity to go back afterward and edit his reports for 

consistency. Researchers who want to use the Kukliński 

materials should go carefully through the entire collection 

to distill the information in its proper context and should 

cross-check the information not only against other CIA 

documents but also against relevant items from former 

East-bloc archives.

Limitations of the Newly Released 

Collection

The CIA’s decision to release some of the Kukliński 

materials is heartening, but the limited scope of this initial 

tranche is disappointing in several respects.

First, the CIA released no documents at all from 1980, 

apart from a lengthy translation of a 1977 Polish document 

that was disseminated in February 1980 to the highest 

officials in the U.S intelligence community. (The length of 

the 1977 document — the draft of a directive to be issued 

by Poland’s Homeland Defense Committee — might 

partly account for the long delay in distributing it. The 

translation comes to 111 pages. 8) Translations of some 

of the documents that Kukliński provided to the CIA in 

late 1980 are included in the tranche because they were not 

circulated within the U.S. intelligence community until 

1981, but nothing from the reports that Kukliński sent to 

the CIA before late January 1981 — not even a December 

1980 report that I obtained from Kukliński and published 

in full in the CWIHP Bulletin more than a decade ago — 

is included in the CIA release. We know from numerous 

sources, including Kukliński’s own testimony (in various 

interviews), Weiser’s A Secret Life, Douglas MacEachin’s 

7 This latter characterization is accurate. In two separate commentaries in late 

December 1981, Kukliński placed Milewski among the “hardliners” on the PZPR 

Politburo and stressed that Milewski was “much more willing to cooperate with 

the Soviets than was Wojciech Jaruzelski.” See “Contacts between Polish Military 

and Politburo Officials,” CIA Intelligence Information Cable, 20 January 1982, 

FIRDB-315/01100-82, p. 2; and “Relationship between the Polish Ministry 

of National Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” CIA Intelligence 

Information Cable, 29 January 1982, FIRDB-315-01802-82, p. 1.

8 The full document comes to 114 pages, counting the two cover sheets and routing 

slip. The CIA translators of this document and of other items in the Kukliński 

collection chose to render the term Homeland Defense Committee (Komitet 

Obrony Kraju, or KOK) as the “National Defense Committee.” The phrase obrony 

kraju is more accurately translated as “homeland defense.” The phrase obrony 

narodowej would be translated as national defense, as in Poland’s Ministry of 

National Defense (Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej).

THE KUKLINSKI FILES AND THE POLISH CRISIS OF 1980 - 1981

18 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
book on U.S. intelligence performance during the Polish 

crisis, and memoirs by former national security officials 

such as Robert Gates and Zbigniew Brzezinski, that the 

colonel sent many informational reports to the CIA in the 

late summer and fall of 1980, especially in the first half of 

December 1980, when he feared that Soviet/Warsaw Pact 

military forces were about to enter Poland. Indeed, the CIA 

itself has confirmed, in its booklet accompanying the newly 

declassified documents, that “from the initial outbreak 

of labor unrest in July 1980 . . . Col. Kukliński provided 

periodic reporting and commentary on the chaotic 

progression of events.”9 Unfortunately, no information 

from any of Kukliński’s reports prior to 21 January 1981 

was released.10

Second, even though this initial tranche includes 

translations of a few dozen of the martial law-related 

documents that Kukliński photographed or transcribed 

in 1981 as well as 17 summaries of the reports he sent in 

1981, it excludes a large number of other documents and 

reports he transmitted in 1981. Weiser notes that on one of 

the many occasions in 1981 when Kukliński transferred a 

package of materials to the CIA — on 10 September — he 

“included film of ninety documents pertaining to martial 

law.”11 Similarly, during another typical liaison — on 21 

June 1981 — Kukliński gave the CIA “twenty-one rolls 

of film that held some 880 pages of documents.”12 The 

magnitude of these and other exchanges leaves little doubt 

that this initial tranche covers only a small fraction of the 

martial law-related documents supplied by Kukliński in 

1981. As for the reports, among those excluded are two 

that I published along with a commentary in the CWIHP 

Bulletin in 1998.13 Even with the reports that are covered, 

9 “Preparing for Martial Law,” p. 5. Two of the declassified summaries of reports 

from 1981 also refer back to some of the 1980 reports sent by Kukliński. The 

report summary dated 11 February 1981 refers to a report summary from 7 

November 1980 (with identifying number FIRDB-312/02991-80, TS #808302). 

The report summary dated 27 February 1981 refers to the 5 December 1980 report 

I published in the CWIHP Bulletin in 1998 (the CIA’s summary of it was given the 

title “Plans for Warsaw Pact Intervention in Poland on 8 December”).

10 Of the newly released materials, the earliest summary of one of Kukliński’s 

reports — a memorandum dated 23 January 1981 — recapitulates the first 

message sent by Kukliński on his “Iskra” transponder, which could transmit and 

receive brief encrypted messages. A previous “Iskra” device supplied by the CIA 

failed to work properly, but the second model allowed Kukliński to transmit 

his message at 10:00 p.m. on 21 January 1981. The summary of the message is 

briefly excerpted in Weiser, A Secret Life, p. 232. All previous messages had been 

conveyed by car passes or dead drops. Unfortunately, the second “Iskra” device 

also soon malfunctioned, and the same was true of several subsequent models that 

briefly worked and then malfunctioned. By September 1981 the inability of CIA 

technicians to produce a durable “Iskra” transmitter spurred Kukliński’s case 

officers to express “frustration, disappointment — we are beyond words.” Not until 

the following month, a few weeks before Kukliński had to leave Poland, did the 

CIA provide him with an “Iskra” device that worked properly. See ibid., pp. 229-

232, 235-236, 238, 248, 253, 263, 265.

11 Ibid., p. 253.

12 Ibid., p. 253.

13 Among the other report summaries from 1981 that have not been released 

are ones dated 30 January 1981 (FIRDB-312/00339-81, TS #818020), 17 

March 1981 (FIRDB-312/00838-81, TS #818081), and 26 March 1981 

(FIRDB-312/00304-81, TS #818034).

the CIA released only summaries of them, not the original 

texts (or translations of the original texts).

Third, the CIA did not release any of the Polish originals 

from Kukliński’s files and apparently does not intend 

to. This is unfortunate, for it means that scholars have 

no way to check whether the information summarized 

by the CIA has been translated accurately. The report 

summaries contain occasional discrepancies that might 

not appear in Kukliński’s original reports and that 

might instead have arisen during the translation or the 

summarizing (or both).14 Fortunately, this problem is less 

germane to the 44 translations of documents included in 

the tranche. With most of these, we can check the quality 

of the translations against the originals that have been 

declassified by the Polish government. Vast quantities of 

materials pertaining to the martial law planning are now 

available in Poland, including tens of thousands of pages of 

documents that were recently transferred to the Instytut 

Pamięci Narodowej (Institute of National Remembrance) 

in Warsaw. Other declassified items concerning the martial 

law preparations and the Polish authorities’ response 

to Solidarity are stored at three key repositories — the 

Archiwum Akt Nowych (Modern Records Archive), the 

Centralne Archiwum Wojskowe (Central Military Archive), 

and the Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Wewnętrznych 

(Ministry of Internal Affairs Archive).

Fourth, some other items from the Kukliński files that 

are cited in Weiser’s A Secret Life, such as the messages 

sent to Kukliński by his CIA case officers, the agency’s 

internal history of the Kukliński case, and intra-CIA 

correspondence about Kukliński during the Polish crisis, 

were wholly excluded from being released.

Fifth, the CIA did not provide an inventory of Kukliński’s 

files. In the absence of that, we cannot really get a sense 

of how this initial group of documents fits into the 

larger piture. It would be especially worthwhile to see an 

inventory of the reports and warning letters that Kukliński 

sent to his case officers in 1980-1981.

Sixth, it is unclear why a memorandum dated 24 February 

1981 was included in materials from Kukliński’s files. The 

source of the report summarized in that memorandum 

was not Kukliński. The memorandum itself indicates, in 

a note at the end, that “the source of this report is not the 

same as the source of [a summary] dated 11 February 

1981, which reported on certain subjets also covered in this 

current report.” Two factual discrepancies between the 

11 February and 24 February memoranda leave no doubt 

14 For example, the date of a KOK meeting held on 13 September 1981 is variously 

given as 13 September and 14 September, including in the two separate 

translations of General Siwicki’s speech. The declassified Polish records of that 

meeting make clear that it was held on the 13th.

THE KUKLINSKI FILES AND THE POLISH CRISIS OF 1980 - 1981

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 19
that Kukliński was the source of the report summarized 

on 11 February (and therefore was not the source of the 24 

February memorandum). The report summarized in the 11 

February memorandum indicates, as do other reports from 

Kukliński (and as Kukliński did in numerous interviews 

going back to 1986), that a delegation of 18 Warsaw Pact 

generals led by Army-General Anatolii Gribkov, the 

first deputy commander-in-chief of the Warsaw Pact’s 

Joint Armed Forces, toured Poland in early February 

1981 to exert pressure on the Polish authorities and to 

assess the reliability of the Polish army. The 11 February 

memorandum correctly gives the dates of their visit as 3 to 

8 February. By contrast, the report summarized in the 24 

February memorandum says that the delegation consisted 

of 20 (rather than 18) generals and that they arrived in 

Poland on 4 February. Because Kukliński always cited the 

figure of 18, it is safe to assume that he was not the source 

of the 24 February memorandum and that the information 

in it must have come from another Polish military 

official who was secretly helping the CIA.15 The only 

connection the 24 February document seems to have with 

Kukliński is that it refers to the alphanumeric filing code 

(FIRDB-312/00531-81, TS # 818052) of the 11 February 

memorandum for which he was the source.

Valuable Findings about the Polish Crisis

Despite the shortcomings of the initial tranche of materials 

from the Kukliński files, the 81 newly declassified items 

shed valuable light on the situation in Poland and the 

nature of Soviet-Polish relations in 1981 and early 1982. 

Since the mid-1990s, the original texts of most of the 

15 Most likely, the source of the information was Colonel Włodzimierz Ostaszewicz, 

the deputy chief of Polish military intelligence until September 1981, when he was 

exfiltrated by the CIA. Ostaszewicz was a neighbor of Kukliński, but neither man 

at the time knew that the other was also helping the CIA. Another possible source 

of the information was Colonel Jerzy Sumiński, a senior military intelligence 

official until March 1981 when he was exfiltrated by the CIA. On the impact of 

Sumiński’s and Ostaszewicz’s espionage, see Witold Bereś and Jerzy Skoczylas, 

eds., Generał Kiszczak mówi: Prawie wszystko (Warsaw: Polska Oficyna 

Wydawnicza BGW, 1991), pp. 65, 173, 178-180.

documents supplied by Kukliński have become available 

in the Polish archives, including the large collection of 

martial law-related documents transferred to the Instytut 

Pamięci Narodowej. However, some of the documents 

(e.g., the letters exchanged between Jaruzelski and Marshal 

Viktor Kulikov, the commander-in-chief of the Warsaw 

Pact joint armed forces, on 24 June and 28 August 1981, 

and the two versions of a speech to be delivered by General 

Florian Siwicki, the chief of the Polish General Staff, at 

a meeting of Poland’s Homeland Defense Committee on 

13 September 1981) had not come to light before. More 

important still are the 17 memoranda summarizing 

reports sent by Kukliński to the CIA before November 

1981. Some of the information in these reports had been 

disclosed earlier in Kukliński’s interviews or in declassified 

East-bloc or Western documents, but the newly available 

memoranda contain many fresh details and offer a richer, 

fuller perspective. Indeed, the summaries of the reports are 

so interesting that one regrets all the more that the CIA 

is apparently not going to release the original texts of the 

reports or the full set of the summaries.

Both the reports and the documents reveal or corroborate 

several crucial points about the martial law planning, civilmilitary relations in Poland, and Soviet-Polish interactions 

that are worth highlighting here.

Soviet Pressure

The materials reaffirm something that is already wellknown from a great deal of other evidence, namely, that 

both Jaruzelski and Stanisław Kania, the First Secretary of 

the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) until Jaruzelski 

succeeded him in mid-October 1981, came under relentless 

pressure from Soviet officials to crush the opposition and 

restore orthodox Communist rule. The magnitude of 

the pressure varied over time, but at no point did it fade 

altogether. Soviet leaders were determined to compel the 

Polish authorities to act. The reports from Kukliński, as 

summarized in the CIA memoranda, give a good sense of 

the thinly-veiled threats from Soviet military commanders 

and political leaders in 1981. Marshal Kulikov and his chief 

deputy, General Gribkov, repeatedly traveled to Poland in 

1980-1981 as high-level envoys for the ruling Politburo of 

the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and for 

the Soviet Defense Ministry. The two men’s trips to Poland 

invariably were intended, at least in part, as a means of 

coercive diplomacy.

The Kukliński materials show that in addition to the 

pressure exerted by Kulikov and Gribkov, the Soviet 

Defense Ministry was able to use several other channels 

of influence in Poland. One such channel was the group of 

Soviet generals and colonels who served as “representatives” 

to Poland for the Warsaw Pact Joint Command. These 

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20 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
Soviet officers, Kukliński reported, “spoke strongly [about] 

the need for decisive ation against Solidarity and for a time 

encouraged the Polish military to stage a coup against the 

regime of Kania and Jaruzelski.”16 Another channel of 

influence was the nearly 100 Soviet/Warsaw Pact generals 

and colonels who were assigned to an ad-hoc Warsaw Pact 

command center that was formed in the spring of 1981 

in Legnica (a city in southwestern Poland that was the 

headquarters of the USSR’s Northern Group of Forces), 

ostensibly for the Soyuz-81 joint military maneuvers. Even 

after the Soyuz-81 exercises ended, the Soviet generals 

continued to operate out of Legnica and paid frequent visits 

to “Polish military units at the military district level, as well 

as through division and regimental levels” to gauge “the 

morale of the Polish troops and their ability to function 

under martial law.”17 (The command center remained in 

place until June 1982.) A further channel of influence for 

the Soviet military was the roughly 30 Soviet officers who 

served at the Rembertów military communications center 

on the eastern outskirts of Warsaw. They were reinforced 

in mid-1981 by groups of Soviet officers who secretly 

brought in military communications equipment and set it 

up at nearly two dozen sites around the country without 

the knowledge of the Polish government, ostensibly for 

a new round of Warsaw Pact military “exercises.”18 The 

high-frequency military communications network they 

established under the auspices of the Warsaw Pact was 

supported by special communications troops of the Soviet 

KGB, who “could easily monitor the telephone conversations” 

of Polish military and political leaders.19 All of these units 

were backed up by the two tank divisions of the USSR’s 

permanent Northern Group of Forces in Poland.

Thus, even when Kulikov and Gribkov were not in the 

country, the many other Soviet military officers stationed 

in Poland could keep up the constant pressure on Kania 

and Jaruzelski. Soviet political leaders, for their part, were 

in almost constant touch with the Polish authorities, urging 

them to act or face the consequences. Looking back on 

the crisis, Kukliński was convinced that Jaruzelski in late 

1980 and the spring and early summer of 1981 had feared 

that the entry of Soviet troops into Poland was a distinct 

possibility:

There is no doubt . . . that [General Jaruzelski] 

arrived at a conviction, not without certain basis, as 

16 “Relationship between the Soviet Military Representation to Poland and the 

Polish General Staff,” CIA Intelligence Information Report, 13 May 1982, 

FIRDB-312/01036-82, p. 5.

17 “Soviet Penetration of the Polish Military,” CIA Intelligence Information Cable, 

25 January 1982, FIRDB-315/01528-82, pp. 3-4.

18 “Attitudes of the Polish Ministry of Defense and Soviet Military Positions in 

Connection with the Current Political Situation in Poland; Results of the Meeting 

of the Polish National Defense Committee on 19 June,” CIA Memorandum 

summarizing information from Kukliński, 24 June 1981, FIRDB-312/01995-81, 

TS #818168, pp. 1-3.

19 Ibid., p. 5.

it appeared from the veiled comments of his closest 

friend Siwicki, that the USSR is to repeat in the 

PPR [Polish People’s Republic] one of its scenarios 

from Hungary, Czechoslovakia, or Afghanistan. This 

convicion solidified with Jaruzelski still more in [the 

first half of] 1981 when the USSR undertook further 

preparations in this direction.20

Kukliński outlined the steps the Soviet military had taken 

to prepare for armed intervention, and he said he had “no 

doubt that under the influence of these facts” Jaruzelski 

had concluded that there was an “actual danger” to the 

existence of Poland as a “separate state.” 21 This point 

applies at least as much to Kania, whom Soviet leaders 

trusted even less than they did Jaruzelski. Indeed, the 

pressure from the Soviet Union was so intense during the 

crisis that Kania’s ability to fend it off for more than a year 

was remarkable.

Internal Pressure

The reports from Kukliński confirm that Soviet and 

Warsaw Pact leaders were not the only ones who were 

attempting to force Kania and Jaruzelski to impose martial 

law. A great deal of pressure also was coming from within 

the PZPR, especially from Stefan Olszowski, whom 

Kukliński described as the “principal leader of the Moscow 

group,” and Tadeusz Grabski, “a man of many limitations 

. . . [who] was designated to do the ‘dirty work.’”22 Pressure 

also was exerted by hard-line Polish military commanders 

such as General Eugeniusz Molczyk, the deputy chief of 

the Polish General Staff, and General Józef Urbanowicz, 

the first deputy minister of national defense, both of whom 

20 “Jaruzelski’s Attitude, Behavior and Style,” CIA translation of Kukliński’s 

responses to questions, 1983, pp. 43-44.

21 Ibid., p. 45.

22 “Polish Military and Security Reactions to the Current Political Situation in 

Poland,” CIA Memorandum summarizing information from Kukliński, 15 June 

1981, FIRDB-312/01888-81, TS #818164, p. 3.

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SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 21
signal both to the Polish military and to the security forces 

that “a ‘radical solution’ [i.e., martial law] was the only 

alternative to the domestic crisis.”25

Jaruzelski’s Demeanor

Kukliński’s reports, and his lengthy retrospective 

profile of Jaruzelski, underscore the conflicing strands of 

Jaruzelski’s personality. The general at times was capable 

of acting decisively and forcefully, especially when it 

would benefit Soviet interests. But as Jaruzelski took on 

greater responsibility for imposing martial law, he became 

increasingly nervous, almost to the point of being paralyzed. 

Kukliński recalls that Jaruzelski “was torn internally” 

because, on the one hand, he agreed with Soviet leaders 

that Solidarity had to be crushed, but, on the other hand, 

“he saw initially no chances” of achieving that goal.26 For 

Jaruzelski, the crisis of 1980-1981 was a “period of nearly 

uninterrupted stress and the greatest psychological tension.” 

Under pressure, he “lost his characteristic self-assurance” 

and “was even close to a breakdown.” Throughout this 

period, the general was wont to “procrastination and [an] 

inability to make decisions.” At one point, “Jaruzelski was 

so upset that he swayed and could not utter a sentence.” By 

mid-summer 1981 he had become so “exhausted mentally 

and physically” that he wanted to resign.27 Kukliński 

recounts how Jaruzelski would shut himself in his office for 

long periods, refusing to meet or speak with anyone. The 

general “distinctly avoided any contats when he sensed that 

he would be subjected to pressure. He literally hid from 

[Marshal] Kulikov . . . and met with him only when he had 

no choice.”

One thing that is not fully clear from Kukliński’s materials 

is why the Soviet Union stuck with Jaruzelski to the end. 

Kukliński often notes that the Warsaw Pact’s chief military 

representative in Poland, Soviet Army General Afanasii 

Shcheglov, was openly contemptuous of both Jaruzelski 

and Siwicki, who was Jaruzelski’s most trusted aide 

throughout the crisis.28 Other Soviet military commanders, 

including Marshal Kulikov, were equally dismissive of 

25 “Background to the Polish Imposition of Martial Law,” CIA Intelligence 

Information Cable, 15 December 1981, FIRDB-315/22383-81, pp. 6-7.

26 Unless otherwise indicated, the quotations in this paragraph are from the 64-page 

translation of Kukliński’s comments, “Jaruzelski’s Attitude, Behavior and Style,” 

pp. 19-21, 25. The translation, unfortunately, is often deficient; it would have 

been much better if the CIA had released the original Polish text along with the 

translation.

27 “Polish General Staff Evaluation of Soviet Military Presence and Activities 

in Poland; Premier Jaruzelski and the Polish Ministry of Defense’s Attitude 

Regarding Martial Law and the Current Situation in Poland,” CIA Memorandum 

summarizing information from Kukliński, 17 July 1981, FIRDB-312/02264-81, 

TS #818185, p. 6.

28 See, for example, “Polish Government Plans for Possible Soviet Military 

Intervention and Declaration of Martial Law,” CIA Memorandum summarizing 

information from Kukliński, 27 February 1981, FIRDB-312/00679-81, TS 

#818061, pp. 2-3, 6.

enjoyed unstinting support in Moscow.23 The role of the 

hardliners in the PZPR and the Polish armed forces has, 

of course, long been known, but Kukliński’s observations 

show how fierce the pressure was and how Soviet officials 

sought to exploit it.

Another source of internal pressure was the growing 

influx of conscripts into the Polish armed forces who 

had been exposed for at least a while to the influence of 

Solidarity.24 Kukliński reported that, as time passed, the 

Polish General Staff, “became increasingly concerned 

[about] the reliability of its conscripts in the face of 

Solidarity activism” — something that is also abundantly 

evident in declassified Polish documents. To bolster the 

army’s reliability and “stave off Solidarity[‘s] influence 

among the rank and file military,” the General Staff took 

several steps beginning with the spring 1981 induction 

period, including “the stationing of new conscripts outside 

their province of residence” and the “concentrating of new 

conscripts in separate (isolated) sub-units.” The aim was 

to prevent existing soldiers from being “contaminated” by 

“new conscripts, who would have greater and more recent 

exposure to Solidarity, and who were presumably more 

sympathetic to Solidarity’s goals and actions.” These steps, 

however, came at a price. Inevitably they resulted in lower 

“combat readiness of the sub-units manned by new recruits” 

and disrupted the training schedules of the full units. Two 

further important steps — the retention of pre-1980 

conscripts after their 2-year period of service was over, and 

the postponement of the induction of new draftees — were 

adopted in the fall of 1981 to forestall “the dilution of the 

overall reliability of the force with new conscripts.” Such 

measures could not have been sustained over the long term, 

but the idea was to ensure the maximum reliability of the 

armed forces as the date for the imposition of martial law 

approached.

These internal factors, combined with the external pressure, 

gave the Polish authorities a strong incentive to move ahead 

expeditiously with martial law, before the situation reached 

a point of irreversible crisis that might provoke a large-scale 

Soviet military incursion. Kania was able to withstand the 

surge of internal and external pressure during his time 

as PZPR First Secretary, but, as Kukliński noted, “the 

removal of Kania as party leader in October 1981” was a 

23 “Soviet Influence among the Current Polish Leadership; Composition of the 

Council of National Salvation,” CIA Intelligence Information Cable, 18 December 

1981, FIRDB-315/22625-81, pp. 1-8; FIRDB-312/01995-81, TS #818168 (cited in 

note 18 supra), pp. 1-4; “Contacts between Polish Military and Politburo Officials,” 

pp. 1-4; “Relationship between the Polish Ministry of National Defense and the 

Ministry of Internal Affairs,” pp. 1-3; and “Comments on a Recent Photograph 

of the Polish Military Council of National Salvation; Former Polish General 

Staff Officer with Access to the Highest Levels of the Polish Armed Forces,” CIA

Intelligence Information Cable, 26 February 1982, FIRDB-315/03775-82, pp. 1-8.

24 All quotations in this paragraph come from “Measures Taken to Ensure the 

Reliability of Polish Conscripts,” CIA Intelligence Information Cable, 28 January 

1982, FIRDB-315/01801-82, pp. 1-5.

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22 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
Jaruzelski, treating him with what Kukliński described 

as open “scorn.”29 Kukliński reports that “in the summer 

of 1981, Kulikov remarked to Polish General Florian 

Siwicki that Jaruzelski was ‘the main impediment’ to 

martial law.”30 Declassified Soviet documents indicate that 

although Soviet political leaders at first had great faith in 

Jaruzelski, his continued deferral of any action caused them 

to become deeply worried that he would “lose his nerve” 

and fail to do what they wanted.31 Kukliński’s reports and 

many declassified documents from the former East-bloc 

archives reveal that Soviet and East German leaders were 

striving, from an early stage, to foster hard-line alternatives 

in Poland who could replace Kania and Jaruzelski and 

move decisively to impose martial law. Kukliński’s 1983 

assessment notes that

Moscow [initially] reposed the greatest hopes for the 

“restoration of order” especially in Jaruzelski. When, 

however, under the pressure of the population, the 

[Polish] authorities kept retreating and Jaruzelski 

delayed using the military until more favorable 

conditions would arise, the Soviet leadership 

considered him incapable of acing and undertook 

concrete steps to replace him and Kania with more 

decisive people. Jaruzelski received a series of reports 

from Polish generals and other officers who were 

prepared for it by the Embassy of the USSR in Warsaw 

and by the representatives of the Supreme Commander 

of the Combined Armed Forces attached to the Polish 

military.32

In mid-1981 the Soviet and East German authorities and 

their Polish collaborators were on the verge of forcing 

Jaruzelski’s (and Kania’s) ouster, either at a PZPR Central 

Committee plenum in June or at the PZPR’s Ninth 

29 “Soviet-Polish Positions on the Declaration of Martial Law in Poland; 23rd 

Meeting of the Military Council of the Combined Armed Forces of the Warsaw 

Pact in Sofia, Bulgaria; and Soviet Air Operations in Poland,” CIA Memorandum 

summarizing information from Kukliński, 29 April 1981, FIRDB-312/01362-81, 

TS #818124, p. 5.

30 “Soviet Pressure on Polish Leaders to Impose Martial Law,” CIA Intelligence 

Information Cable, 27 January 1982, FIRDB-315/01627-82, p. 2.

31 See Mark Kramer, Soviet Deliberations during the Polish Crisis, 1980-1981, 

CWIHP Special Working Paper No. 1 (Washington, DC: Cold War International 

History Project, 1999).

32 “Jaruzelski’s Attitude, Behavior and Style,” p. 43.

Congress in July.33 In the end, however, the Soviet Union 

backed off and decided to place all its bets on Jaruzelski. 

The Kukliński materials do not clarify why Soviet leaders 

staked so much on someone whose fortitude they clearly 

doubted even as the time for the martial law operation was 

drawing near.

Soviet Forces in Poland

Another issue that is left unclear in the newly released 

materials is the size and configuration of Soviet military 

forces in Poland in the latter half of 1981. A summary of 

a long message sent by Kukliński to the CIA in mid-July 

1981 reported a sharp increase in the quantity of heavy 

weapons deployed by Soviet troops in Poland and a farreaching reorganization of the two Soviet tank divisions in 

Poland — the 90th Guards Tank Division based in Borne 

Sulinowo and the 20th Guards Tank Division stationed in 

Świętoszów.34 According to the summary (dated 17 July 

1981), the Polish General Staff “estimated that there are 

900 to 1,000 T-55, T-64, and T-72 tanks at the BorneSulinowo firing range” as of mid-July. Kuklinski also 

reported, albeit on the basis of third-hand information, 

that each of the three regiments in the 90th Guards 

Tank Division had been reorganized into 27 companies 

(rather than the customary 9) and that each regiment 

was equipped with more than 300 tanks. This essentially 

meant that the three regiments had been transformed 

into “armored divisions of a truncated structure consisting 

primarily of armored and antiaircraft elements.” Kukliński 

noted that the Polish General Staff had received “as yet 

unconfirmed information that a similar situation exists at 

the Swietoszow firing range and that the number of Soviet 

tanks in this area exceeds 1,000 combat vehicles [sic].” 

Presumably the rationale for converting the two Soviet tank 

divisions in Poland into six “truncated” (i.e., streamlined) 

divisions — and thereby tripling their military deployment 

capacity almost overnight — would have been to ensure 

that they were more suitably configured for strike-breaking, 

internal policing, and administrative functions.

The reorganization of the Soviet Union’s Northern Group 

of Forces (NGF) along the lines described here would 

33 See Kramer, Soviet Deliberations during the Polish Crisis, p. 120; and the 

excerpts from transcribed KGB documents in Christopher Andrew and Vasili 

Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret 

History of the KGB (New York: Basic Books, 1999), p. 524.

34 FIRDB-312/02264-81, TS #818185 (cited in note 27 supra), pp. 1-2. Borne 

Sulinowo, a small town in northwestern Poland known as Gross-Borno when it 

was under German rule prior to 1945, was the top-secret site of one of the largest 

Soviet military bases in Poland throughout the Communist era. The town and 

all the surrounding area (mostly forests) fell under exclusive Soviet jurisdiction in 

1945 and did not appear on any official maps until 1992. Świętoszów, a tiny village 

in western Poland known as Neuhammer when it was under German rule prior 

to 1945, was the site of another Soviet military base throughout the Communist 

era. Located near the East German border, Soviet forces deployed in Świętoszów 

would have played an important role in Warsaw Pact operations against the North 

Atlantic Treaty Organization. 

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SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 23
have meant that the number of tanks deployed by the 

90th Guards Tank Division had more than tripled, at least 

temporarily. Data compiled by the Polish government after 

Soviet/Russian troops completed their withdrawal from 

Poland in 1993 indicate that the NGF’s two tank divisions 

were equipped with a combined total of roughly 600 tanks 

and 450 armored vehicles in the early 1980s.35 The CIA, in 

its summary of Kukliński’s message, inserted a bracketed 

“comment” that the 90th Tank Guards Division, “according 

to available information, . . . is equipped only with T-62 

tanks” and that “there are only 322 tanks in a Soviet 

tank division.” The CIA also noted, in another bracketed 

comment, that “according to available information, there 

are not 1,000 tanks at Swietoszow. However, depending 

upon the definition of combat vehicles, there could well be 

over 1,000 such vehicles.” The manpower needed for six 

“truncated divisions” could have been drawn (though just 

barely) from the roughly 62,000 soldiers in the NGF, but 

even under a loose definition of “combat vehicles,” the six 

divisions could not have been set up without a major influx 

of tanks and armored vehicles — roughly doubling the 

number deployed by the NGF.36

It is conceivable that the extra weapons were brought into 

Poland in connection with the Soyuz-81 joint military 

exercises in the spring of 1981 or in preparation for other 

exercises slated to be held in Poland in the summer of 

1981 and were simply left there afterward. Several of 

Kukliński’s reports mention that during the Soyuz-81 

exercises the NGF secretly “deployed new military 

installations, primarily communications, in Poland 

without the knowledge or prior agreement of the Polish 

Government.”37 A report sent by Kuklinski in June 1981, 

35 “Najważniejsze dane statystyczne związane z pobytem wojsk radzieckich w 

Polsce,” in Północna Grupa Wojsk Armii Radzieckiej w Polsce w latach 1945-1993 

(Warsaw: Ministerstwo Obrony Narodowej, 1995), pp. 41-45. See also Jerzy 

Domagała, “Bratnia straż,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), 28 April 2004, p. 3; and The 

Military Balance, 1981-1982 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 

1981), pp. vii, 12.

36 The number of soldiers in the NGF comes from “Najważniejsze dane statystyczne 

związane z pobytem wojsk radzieckich w Polsce,” p. 43.

37 FIRDB-312/01995-81, TS #818168 (cited in note 18 supra), p. 1.

as summarized in a CIA memorandum dated 24 June, 

provided a detailed list of some 20 sites at which groups of 

Soviet soldiers had deployed new military communications 

equipment. But the summaries of reports now available do 

not indicate when the NGF brought in hundreds of extra 

tanks and armored personnel carriers. One assumes that 

such a large expansion and reconfiguration of Soviet forces 

would have been detected by U.S intelligence agencies, but 

declassified CIA documents from the time do not confirm 

that such deployments actually took place.38

This issue was raised again in two subsequent items 

released from the Kukliński files, namely, two cables from 

December 1981 that provide translations of comments 

made by Kukliński in the United States shortly after 

the imposition of martial law in Poland. In one of these 

cables, dated 21 December, he remarked only briefly that 

hundreds of extra armored vehicles had “been in or near 

Soviet-controlled training areas in Poland since at least 

early summer” for “four additional Soviet divisions.”39 The 

second cable, dated 15 December, deals with the issue at 

greater length. A paragraph near the end starts with the 

following:

Source [Kukliński] reported that the Polish General 

Staff has ascertained, on the basis of some fragmentary 

reports, that the Soviets have reorganized regiments 

of their two “permanent” divisions located on Polish 

territory into six “truncated divisions.” Each of these 

“truncated divisions” is composed of a combination of 

about 300 tanks and armored vehicles and adequate 

numbers of personnel to operate them. Excluded 

from the “truncated divisions” are engineer, chemical, 

and rocket troops and the like, as these would not be 

necessary for acions in Polish cities. As of the summer 

of 1981, Polish General Staff personnel believed that 

the “truncated divisions” were located in forested areas 

surrounding the “permanent” Soviet facilities at BorneSulinowo and Swietoszow. 40

The remainder of the document — another one or two 

paragraphs — is blacked out. The description here is 

similar, but not identical, to Kukliński’s earlier statements 

about the reorganization of the NGF. It is unclear 

whether Kukliński himself brought up this topic again 

or whether he came back to it in response to CIA queries. 

Unfortunately, the security deletions prevent us from 

learning anything more about the issue.

38 See, for example, Director of Central Intelligence, Warsaw Pact Forces Opposite 

NATO, National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 11-14-81D, January 1982, Vol. 1 

(“The Estimate”); CIA, National Foreign Assessment Center, Implications of a 

Soviet Invasion of Poland, PA 81-00297/SR 81-00090/ER 81-10274, 24 July 1981; 

CIA, “USSR-POLAND: Military Activity,” in National Intelligence Daily, 27 July 

1981; and CIA, “USSR-POLAND: Military Activity,” in National Intelligence 

Daily, 9 July 1981.

39 “Background to Present Situation in Poland and Possible Soviet Role,” CIA 

Intelligence Information Cable, 21 December 1981, FIRDB-315/22804-81, p. 5.

40 “Background to the Polish Imposition of Martial Law,” p. 7.

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Intervention Scenarios

Since the 1990s, scholars have known from declassified 

materials in the former East-bloc archives, as well as from 

Kuklinki’s own testimony in numerous interviews, that 

Soviet and Warsaw Pact commanders devised plans to 

send allied military forces into Poland in December 1980 

to support the imposition of martial law. The previously 

available sources show that the Soviet plans envisaged 

the use of Soviet, East German, and Czechoslovak troops 

in ostensible “military exercises” on Polish territory. The 

newly released Kukliński materials suggest that two of 

the three other Warsaw Pact countries — Bulgaria and 

Hungary — would also have contributed forces. A report 

sent by Kukliński on 21 January 1981, as summarized in 

a CIA memorandum dated 23 January, indicates that the 

colonel had “learned that a Bulgarian airborne unit and 

an unidentified Hungarian unit were also supposed to 

[have] participate[d]” in the military “exercises” in Poland. 

Another report, summarized in a memorandum dated 29 

April 1981, mentions that when senior Hungarian military 

officers spoke with their Polish counterparts at a highlevel Warsaw Pact meeting in Bulgaria on 22-23 April, the 

Hungarians alluded to the “participation [of Hungarian 

troops] in the military occupation of Czechoslovakia ” in 

1968. The Hungarian officers then expressed “hope” that 

the Polish authorities would impose martial law on their 

own so that “we [the Polish and Hungarian officers] would 

not have to meet in Poland.”41 The implication was that 

if the Polish regime did not act, Hungary would join the 

USSR, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Bulgaria in 

deploying soldiers into Poland. In June 1981, Kukliński 

reported that Marshal Kulikov — who clearly expected 

that Kania and Jaruzelski would soon be ousted and that 

martial law would be imposed — had told General Siwicki 

that “various elements of the Soviet army as well as the 

East German, Czechoslovak and even the Hungarian 

and Bulgarian armed forces” would soon hold exercises 

in “Polish training areas” as part of “an intensification of 

exchanges of military training areas among the Warsaw 

Pact member states.”42 Presumably, the exercises would 

have been intended to support the introduction of martial 

law in Poland. In December 1981, shortly after Poland 

fell under martial law, Kukliński (by then in the United 

States) offered a background commentary on the situation. 

He again stated that under the “plans for Warsaw Pact 

[military] intervention” in Poland, “token units from 

Hungary and Bulgaria would also participate.”43

These hints of Bulgarian and Hungarian participation 

in possible military operations in Poland are consonant 

41 FIRDB-312/01362-81, TS #818124 (cited in note 29 supra), p. 5. 

42 FIRDB-312/01995-81, TS #818168 (cited in note 18 supra), p. 3.

43 “Background to Present Situation in Poland and Possible Soviet Role,” p. 5.

with previously declassified CIA documents, which 

speculated that Bulgarian and perhaps Hungarian troops 

would have been used along with Soviet, East German, 

and Czechoslovak soldiers to support the Polish army 

and security forces in introducing martial law. A special 

national intelligence estimate from late January 1981 

predicted that “East Germany and Czechoslovakia . . . 

and probably Bulgaria would be willing to take part” in 

a military incursion into Poland “regardless of its scale 

or the form that it took.” The SNIE also indicated 

that “the Hungarians might feel compelled to provide 

a symbolic contingent of troops.”44 Documents in the 

Bulgarian and Hungarian archives do not conclusively 

show whether political leaders in Sofia and Budapest had 

decided to send units to take part in Warsaw Pat military 

“exercises” in Poland, but the archives do make clear that 

senior Bulgarian and Hungarian officials were alarmed 

about what was going on in Poland and were vehemently 

supportive of forceful action against Solidarity.45 If the 

Soviet Union had decided to press ahead with joint military 

“exercises” in Poland in December 1980 or April 1981, one 

can imagine that the Bulgarian authorities, led by Todor 

Zhivkov, would have readily complied with a Soviet request 

to send an “airborne unit” and that the Hungarian leader, 

János Kádár, also would have agreed to dispatch at least a 

token contingent of soldiers. Only the Romanian leader, 

Nicolae Ceauşescu, who himself was deeply opposed to the 

rise of Solidarity and supportive of martial law, would have 

refrained from contributing troops to a Warsaw Pact force.

44 Director of Central Intelligence, Poland’s Prospects over the Next Six Months, 

Special National Intelligence Estimate (SNIE) 12.6-81, 30 January 1981, p. 11.

45 János Tischler, “The Hungarian Party Leadership and the Polish Crisis of 1980-

1981,” and Jordan Baev, “Bulgaria and the Political Crises in Czechoslovakia (1968) 

and Poland (1980/81),” both in Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 

no. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 77-89 and 98-99, respectively.

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Potential for Resistance

An important question raised by the Kukliński materials 

is whether martial law imposed by Polish forces with the 

assistance of Soviet and Warsaw Pact military units would 

have been successful. The conventional view — a view 

shared by U.S. intelligence analysts in 1981 — has been 

that the large-scale entry of Soviet and East European 

troops into Poland in support of martial law would have 

precipitated violent turmoil. In a highly classified study 

in mid-1981 of “the implications of a Soviet invasion 

of Poland,” the CIA stated that “the Soviet leadership 

would have to expect a degree of resistance to invasion 

far surpassing that encountered in Hungary in 1956 or 

Czechoslovakia in 1968.”46 Considering that more than 

2,500 Hungarians were killed and nearly 20,000 were 

wounded — and that 720 Soviet soldiers were killed and 

1,540 were wounded — in barely two weeks (mostly four 

days) of fighting in Hungary in 1956, the CIA’s predicion 

that the scale of resistance to the entry of Soviet troops into 

Poland would “far surpass” what happened in Hungary 

implies that armed opposition would have been extremely 

intense.

The Kukliński materials raise doubts about this proposition, 

particularly if Soviet/Warsaw Pact intervention had 

occurred under the guise of “exercises.” Both in December 

1980 and in subsequent months, Kukliński repeatedly 

made clear that no preparations at all for armed resistance 

had been undertaken by the Polish General Staff. Even the 

slightest hint of it was strictly forbidden. Kukliński often 

lamented that Jaruzelski had not considered —and could 

not even contemplate — taking steps to prepare to oppose 

Soviet intervention. On 5 December 1980, in a message 

not included in the CIA’s initial tranche of Kukliński 

materials, the colonel wrote that although the expected 

entry of Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces into Poland meant 

46 CIA, Implications of a Soviet Invasion of Poland, p. 1.

that “everyone [in the highest levels of the Polish Defense 

Ministry] is very depressed and crestfallen, no one is 

even contemplating putting up active resistance against 

the Warsaw Pact action. There are even those [in the 

ministry] who say that the very presence of such enormous 

military forces on the territory of Poland may calm the 

nation.”47 In late April 1981, Kukliński wrote that “in the 

event of Soviet aggression only uncoordinated defensive 

action of individual military units could take place.” He 

argued that pro-Soviet Polish generals like Molczyk would 

thwart any attempts at resistance and that “the pretext for 

Soviet intervention is easier to accomplish today than ever 

before.”48

Far from believing that armed resistance against Soviet/

Warsaw Pac military “exercises” in Poland would be more 

intense than the Hungarian revolution in 1956, Kukliński 

worried that targowica (treason — against Poland’s real 

interests, in Kukliński’s view) in the Polish army would 

keep resistance to a bare minimum and would permit 

a relatively swift pacification of the country. Although 

Kukliński did not diretly address the armed resistance 

that might be expected from ordinary Polish citizens, his 

reports implied that if the Polish army facilitated rather 

than opposed the entry of Soviet and Warsaw Pact troops 

for “exercises,” the level of resistance from society would 

be negligible, particularly if the Polish security forces 

took preventive measures envisaged under the martial law 

plans. These judgments are at variance with the CIA’s own 

prediction, in its analysis of the implications of a Soviet 

invasion of Poland, that the entry of Warsaw Pact troops 

into Poland would spark “significant and widespread 

resistance by civilians and possibly [by] some military units 

with much bloodshed.”49

Part of the reason for this discrepancy may be that 

Kukliński and the CIA analysts had different scenarios in 

mind. Whereas Kukliński was focusing on the scenarios 

that were actually being discussed by Soviet and East 

European military commanders from the fall of 1980 

through the summer of 1981, the CIA’s analysts gave short 

shrift to these ideas, arguing that “by now the Soviets, 

in contemplating military intervention, no longer see 

any viable alternative to an outright invasion” and “feel 

compelled to employ a large invasion force of at least 30, 

and perhaps as many as 45, divisions.”50 Although the 

evidence suggests that Soviet leaders had not ruled out a 

large-scale invasion of Poland if the martial law operation 

had gone disastrously awry and civil war had erupted, 

that was definitely not the scenario they were planning 

47 Kramer, “Colonel Kukliński and the Polish Crisis,” p. 54.

48 FIRDB-312/01362-81, TS #818124 (cited in note 29 supra), p. 6.

49 CIA, Implications of a Soviet Invasion of Poland, p. 2.

50 Ibid.

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26 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
to pursue in December 1980, April 1981, or June 1981.51 

When gauging the likelihood and possible scale of armed 

resistance, Kukliński was justified in using the scenarios 

that were actually under consideration.

Limited Leeway for Pushback

The newly released Kukliński materials confirm what 

has long been known about the tight control exercised by 

Soviet military and KGB officials over the planning for 

martial law. At the end of March 1981, Kukliński reported 

that “on the 28th of March, with the agreement of Kania 

and Jaruzelski, approximately 30 leading functionaries of 

the KGB, the Soviet Ministry of Defense, and Gosplan 

[the Soviet State Planning Commission] arrived in Warsaw 

to act as consultants on Martial Law.” The group, led 

by Marshal Kulikov and KGB First Deputy Chairman 

Semen Tsvigun, reviewed the planning and deemed it 

“unsatisfactory.” The Soviet officials “presented their own 

proposals regarding this matter” — proposals that called 

for a harsher approach and for Soviet advisers to “be 

introduced into the General Staff of the Polish Armed 

Forces, into military district commands, and into branches 

of the Polish Armed Forces.”52

This visit was neither the first nor the last time that Soviet 

military and KGB officers came to Poland to exert control 

over the martial law planning. The Kukliński materials 

reveal that Marshal Kulikov’s visits to Poland in 1981 often 

lasted for extended periods, in one case for more than two 

months. The same was true of General Gribkov, who not 

only led the delegation of 18 Soviet generals to Poland on 

3-8 February 1981 but also closely supervised the martial 

law planning during his many subsequent visits. Under 

Soviet pressure, Jaruzelski felt the need to be “in constant 

51 Kramer, Soviet Deliberations during the Polish Crisis, pp. 69-70, 95-97, and 119-

123; Mark Kramer, “‘In Case Military Assistance Is Provided to Poland’: Soviet 

Preparations for Military Contingencies, August 1980,” Cold War International 

History Project Bulletin, no. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 102-109 (available at www.

cwihp.org); and Kramer, “Colonel Kukliński and the Polish Crisis,” pp. 48-60.

52 “Soviet Reaction to Polish Proposals Regarding the Declaration of Martial Law,” 

CIA Memorandum summarizing information from Kukliński, 2 April 1981, 

FIRDB-312/01056-81, TS #818102, pp. 1-3.

contact with the Soviet Ministry of Defense” about the 

preparations for martial law. Kukliński’s reports show that 

the Soviet Union was intent on exploiting the Soyuz-81

maneuvers not only to set up a Warsaw Pact command 

center at Legnica, but also to establish direc contact 

with senior Polish officers and thereby foster a chain of 

command over the Polish military that would be fully 

“independent of the Polish General Staff.”53

Despite the pervasiveness of Soviet interference, Polish 

leaders occasionally had some leeway for pushback. When 

Kania was in power, the most important form of pushback 

was his continued deferral of any ation against Solidarity, 

despite the enormous Soviet pressure. Kania, as Kukliński 

often noted, was never willing to go along with the 

sweeping, forceful crackdown advocated by Soviet leaders. 

Even though Kania himself hoped that the PZPR could 

gradually undermine Solidarity, he did not want to rely on 

violent mass repression. On other issues, too, Polish leaders 

were occasionally able to push back. In February 1981 

Kukliński reported that when the delegation of 18 Soviet 

generals led by Gribkov and Shcheglov (and accompanied 

by Siwicki) visited the Polish army’s 1st Mechanized 

Regiment at Wesoła (on the eastern outskirts of 

Warsaw) in early February, Shcheglov asked the regiment 

commander what he would do if ordered to remove striking 

workers from factories and take other measures to prevent 

“counterrevolution” in Poland. Upon hearing this question, 

Siwicki “reacted strongly” to what he saw as an attempt 

to bypass the Polish chain of command, and he ordered 

the commander not to respond. Siwicki then got into a 

“sharp exchange” with Shcheglov, telling him that all such 

queries “must be directed to the Polish General Staff, not to 

individual commanders.”54 In that same report, Kukliński 

noted that after Jaruzelski became prime minister on 11 

February 1981, he heeded the advice of the Polish General 

Staff and persuaded the Soviet Defense Ministry to “call 

off the visit of a [Soviet] naval squadron to [the Polish port 

of] Gdynia,” thus averting a possible catalyst of public 

resentment along Poland’s often volatile northern coast.55

Jaruzelski also tried to deflect the Soviet authorities’ 

repeated efforts to establish a much larger Soviet military 

presence in Poland and much tighter Soviet control over 

the Polish army and security forces. Kukliński often 

recounted Marshal Kulikov’s attempts to force Jaruzelski 

to “introduce Soviet military advisers into the Polish 

armed forces down to the military district level” who 

53 “Comments on the Military Aspects of the Current Crisis in Poland,” CIA 

Memorandum summarizing information from Kukliński, 30 March 1981, 

FIRDB-312/00985-81, TS #818093, pp. 2-3.

54 This account is compiled from “Relationship between the Soviet Military 

Representation to Poland and the Polish General Staff” (cited in note 16 supra), pp. 

4-5; and FIRDB-312/00679-81, TS #818061 (cited in note 28 supra), pp. 2-3.

55 FIRDB-312/00679-81, TS #818061 (cited in note 28 supra), p. 4.

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would work under the authority of the Warsaw Pact 

Joint Command’s chief military representative in Poland, 

General Shcheglov.56 The headquarters for Shcheglov and 

his staff was separate from the Polish Ministry of National 

Defense, but Kulikov wanted to bring in new “deputies” for 

Shcheglov who would be based in the Polish ministry, a 

practice that had ceased in 1957. Kukliński gave the CIA a 

copy of a letter Kulikov wrote to Jaruzelski on 24 June 1981 

proposing an additional ten Soviet “generals and admirals” 

and an additional five Soviet “deputy commanders” for 

Shcheglov’s staff.57 Kukliński noted that when Kulikov had 

held talks with Jaruzelski about this proposal, “the verbal 

exchange became so heated that allegedly Marshal Kulikov 

got up from the table without saying good-bye and left 

Jaruzelski’s office slamming the door.”58

Kukliński also noted that “Jaruzelski, in coordination with 

Kania,” tried to ward off Soviet pressure on this matter 

by first stalling and then offering only a token increase in 

the number of Soviet generals and admirals assigned to 

Shcheglov’s staff. Not until 28 August 1981, more than 

two months after Kulikov sent his letter, did Jaruzelski 

finally respond in writing. He politely but firmly rebuffed 

Kulikov’s proposal, saying that only three additional Soviet 

56 “New Draft Decree on Martial Law; Current Situation in Poland,” CIA 

Memorandum summarizing information from Kukliński, 9 September 1981, 

FIRDB-312/02823-81, TS #818215, p. 2; and “Relationship between the Soviet 

Military Representation to Poland and the Polish General Staff” (cited in note 16 

supra), p. 5.

57 “Kuklikov-Jaruzelski Exchange on Increasing CINCCAF Representation 

in Poland,” CIA Intelligence Information Special Report, 16 October 1981, 

FIRDB-312/03162-81, TS #818236, pp. 4-5.

58 FIRDB-312/02823-81, TS #818215 (cited in note 56 supra), p. 2. See also 

“Relationship between the Soviet Military Representation to Poland and the Polish 

General Staff,” p. 5.

military representatives would be appropriate in light of the 

“conditions bearing on the sociopolitical situation in our 

country.”59 In the end, Kulikov brought in more than three 

additional Soviet officers, but the efforts by Jaruzelski and 

Kania to parry his request delayed the increase and kept 

it smaller than it otherwise would have been. Kukliński 

wrote in 1983 that Jaruzelski “was upset by the treatment 

of Poland by the second echelon leadership of the USSR 

(senior generals and marshals) as if Poland were one of 

their own republics.” But Kukliński added that Jaruzelski’s 

devotion to the Soviet Union and his deference to Soviet 

leaders “nearly paralyzed him and he never [attempted] 

to stand up against them.”60 This latter characterization 

is partly justified but is too sweeping. Indeed, Kukliński 

himself acknowledged two pages later that Jaruzelski 

“undertook various steps to reduce Soviet penetration of 

the Polish Armed Forces” and “effetively opposed the 

reintroduction of Soviet military advisers to various 

echelons of the Polish military under a variety of covers 

as representatives of the Supreme Commander of the 

Combined Armed Forces.”61 In these instances, Jaruzelski 

was indeed willing to “stand up against” the USSR, despite 

his unswerving loyalty overall.

In a broader sense, though, Kukliński was right. On the 

basic question of whether to avoid a compromise and get 

rid of Solidarity forcibly through a martial-law crackdown, 

Jaruzelski ultimately adopted the Soviet approach and 

complied with Soviet wishes. Right after Soviet military 

and KGB officials came to Poland at the end of March 

1981 and gave detailed martial-law guidelines to the 

Polish authorities, Kukliński reported that the harshness 

of the documents shocked Jaruzelski, who at that point 

had “no intention of introducing a state of Martial Law.”62 

According to Kukliński, Jaruzelski “stated that in the 

darkest recesses of his mind he could find no place for the 

thought that they could introduce such a thing as Martial 

Law in Poland. He further stated that he did not wish to 

be Prime Minister when it became necessary to sign the 

documentation for the implementation of Martial Law.” 63

Initially, Polish officials tried to keep from making more 

than cosmetic changes in the martial law planning, and 

even as late as July 1981 Jaruzelski still held out some hope 

that “implementing extreme measures (i..e., Martial Law) 

will not be necessary.”64 But eventually the overwhelming 

pressure from the Soviet Union took its toll.

59 “Kuklikov-Jaruzelski Exchange on Increasing CINCCAF Representation in 

Poland,” pp. 6-7.

60 “Jaruzelski’s Attitude, Behavior and Style,” p. 40.

61 Ibid., p. 42. See also “Relationship between the Polish Ministry of National 

Defense and the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” CIA Intelligence Information Cable, 

29 January 1982, FIRDB-315/01802-82, p. 4.

62 FIRDB-312/01056-81, TS #818102 (cited in note 52 supra), p. 3.

63 FIRDB-312/01362-81, TS #818124 (cited in note 29 supra), p. 3.

64 FIRDB-312/02264-81, TS #818185 (cited in note 27 supra), p. 5.

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By the latter half of August, after Kania and Jaruzelski met 

with the CPSU General Secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, and 

other high-ranking Soviet officials in the Crimea, Jaruzelski 

increasingly fell into line.65 At his behest, the Polish 

General Staff and Ministry of Internal Affairs thoroughly 

revised all the martial law plans and “coordinated these 

plans with representatives of the Soviet General Staff 

who accompanied Marshal Kulikov to Poland” as well 

as with senior KGB “advisers” in Poland. A text of the 

announcement about the introduction of martial law was 

drafted, “including a Russian-language version.”66 To avoid 

any public disclosure, both the Polish and the Russian 

versions of the announcement were published in the Soviet 

Union and brought into Poland. After a decisive meeting of 

Poland’s Homeland Defense Committee (Komitet Obrony 

Kraju, or KOK) on 13 September, and after Jaruzelski 

replaced Kania as PZPR First Secretary on 18 October, 

the die was cast for the imposition of martial law in Poland.

The large-scale operation that was implemented on 12-13 

December 1981 was fully in accord with the proposals 

advanced by Soviet military and KGB officials in the spring 

and summer of 1981 — proposals that had initially seemed 

repugnant to Jaruzelski. The martial law decree was 

adopted through extra-constitutional means (via the State 

Council rather than the parliament); special motorized 

security forces cracked down hard on opposition groups 

throughout the country; and power was consolidated in a 

Military Council of National Salvation, with the PZPR in 

a subordinate role. Shortly after martial law was imposed, 

Kukliński described it as “a surrender to Moscow that 

has resulted in substantially greater influence/control 

by the Soviets over Polish affairs.”67 He argued that the 

65 On the meetings in the Crimea, see Kramer, Soviet Deliberations during the 

Polish Crisis, pp. 125-136.

66 “The Current Political Situation in Poland; Polish Ministry of Defense Plans 

for the Possible Introduction of Martial Law,” CIA Memorandum summarizing 

information from Kukliński, 14 August 1981, FIRDB-312/02530-81, TS #818201, 

p. 2.

67 “Background to Present Situation in Poland and Possible Soviet Role,” p. 2.

crackdown was “directly attributable to pressure brought 

personally [to bear] on Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski 

by Soviet leaders, including Brezhnev.”68 Kukliński 

contrasted Jaruzelski’s behavior with that of Kania, who 

consistently “rejected the possibility of introducing Martial 

Law as a means of eliminating Solidarność.”69 Kukliński 

stressed that even before “a complete split between Kania 

and Jaruzelski” had emerged over this issue in the fall 

of 1981, Soviet leaders had concluded that Kania would 

never fulfill their demands. They viewed “the reelection of 

Kania to the position of the First Secretary of the Polish 

United Workers’ Party” at the Ninth PZPR Congress in 

July 1981 as “a great disaster.”70 Hence, they pushed harder 

to ensure that he would be removed by the PZPR Central 

Committee at a plenum held in mid-October. Kania had 

been able to hold out against Soviet pressure for more than 

a year, but the leeway for pushback was over.

Soviet Opposition to the Polish 

Church

One of the themes that emerge from the newly released 

Kukliński materials is the hostility that Soviet leaders 

felt toward the Catholic Church in Poland. In the 1990s 

scholars were able to confirm, from documents in the 

Russian archives, that high-ranking Soviet officials were 

alarmed in 1980-1981 by the growing political influence 

of Poland’s Catholic Church, which they regarded as “one 

of the most dangerous forces in Polish society” and a fount 

of “anti-socialist,” “hostile,” and “reactionary” elements.71 

Kukliński’s reports underscore the depth of this animosity 

and provide some telling illustrations. He recounts, for 

example, that when Marshal Kulikov was in Poland in 

1981, he “asked to see a film of the pope’s visit” to Poland 

in mid-1979. “During the viewing,” Kukliński recalls, 

“Kulikov behaved as if he attended a boxing match, loudly 

expressing his disapproval during nearly every sequence.” 

Kulikov “railed about how unthinkable it was that a church 

68 FIRDB-315/22625-81 (cited in note 23 supra), p. 3.

69 “Current Political/Military Situation in Poland,” CIA Memorandum 

summarizing information from Kukliński, 13 October 1981, 

FIRDB-312/03245-81, TS #818246, p. 2. See also “Agenda for the Meeting of the 

National Defense Committee on 14 September; Current Positions of the Political 

and Military Leadership Regarding the Introduction of Martial Law; Comments 

on Exercise ‘Zapad-81,’” CIA Memorandum summarizing information from 

Kukliński, 18 September 1981, FIRDB-312/02950-81, TS #818224, p. 2.

70 FIRDB-312/02823-81, TS #818215 (cited in note 56 supra), p. 2.

71 “O prazdnovanii pervogo maya i godovshchiny so dnya prinyatiya konstitutsii 

3 maya (Politicheskaya zapiska),” Cable No. 68 (Secret), from N. P. Ponomarev, 

Soviet consul-general in Szczecin, 4 May 1981, in Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi 

Arkhiv Noveishei Istorii (RGANI), Fond (F.) 5, Opis’ (Op.) 84, Delo (D.) 597, 

Listy (Ll.) 6-12; “Vneshnyaya politika PNR na nyneshnem etape (Politpis’mo),” 

Cable No. 595 (Top Secret) from B. I. Aristov, Soviet ambassador in Poland, 9 July 

1981, in RGANI, F. 5, Op. 84, D. 596, Ll. 21-34; and “Ob ideino-politicheskikh 

kontseptsiyakh ‘reformatorskogo kryla’ v PORP (Spravka),” Cable No. 531 (Secret) 

from V. Mutskii, first counselor at the Soviet embassy in Poland, 22 June 1981, in 

RGANI, F. 5, Op. 84, D. 598, Ll. 116-121.

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leader could get such a reception in a Communist country.” 

Faced with Kulikov’s withering criticism, “Jaruzelski was 

visibly dejected and was unable to retort.”72

Kukliński cited numerous other instances in which 

the Soviet Union had exerted “very strong pressure on 

Jaruzelski to limit the influence of the Church in Polish 

society.” According to Kukliński, Kulikov and other 

leading Soviet officials were so conspicuous in their “hatred 

for the pope” that it led him to suspect that the Soviet 

Union was behind the attempted assassination of John Paul 

II in May 1981:

It is not excluded that the Soviets would try to 

assassinate the pope. At a July 1981 meeting within 

the General Staff, General Władysław Hermaszewski, 

who is close to the Soviets, repeated the Soviet line 

that all the problems began with the election of the 

pope. He said that at that time there were many Poles 

who would do “the same thing as the Turk,” that is, try 

to assassinate the pope. . . . [T]he Soviets obviously 

had a hand in the assassination attempt of the pope 

as they are the only ones who would benefit from such 

an action. The Soviets have stated and strongly believe 

that so long as there is a Polish pope, Communism will 

not take root in Poland.73

The materials released thus far from the Kukliński files 

do not shed any further light on this matter. Kukliński’s 

observations here are important, and the comment he 

cites by General Hermaszewski (the commander of the 

1st Air Defense Corps in Warsaw, whose brother was 

appointed a member of Poland’s ruling Military Council 

of National Salvation when martial law was imposed in 

72 The quotations here come from two documents in which Kukliński described 

the same episode. See “Jaruzelski’s Attitude, Behavior and Style,” p. 38; and 

“Soviet Pressure on Polish Government to Act against the Polish Church,” CIA 

Intelligence Information Cable, FIRDB-315/23025-81, 24 December 1981, pp. 

2-3. The only difference between the two accounts is the date Kukliński gives of 

Kulikov’s viewing of the film. In the 1983 document, he says that it occurred on 

12 January 1981. In the December 1981 memorandum, he says that it took place 

sometime in the summer of 1981.

73 “Soviet Pressure on Polish Government to Act against the Polish Church,” p. 3.

December 1981) is intriguing, but his testimony on this 

issue is only one of many pieces of circumstantial evidence 

pointing in various directions. Although Kukliński’s 

remarks contribute to the long-standing and contentious 

debate about the attempted assassination of the pope, 

they certainly do not resolve it. But on the larger topic of 

Soviet opposition to the Catholic Church’s role in Poland, 

Kukliński’s reports are exceedingly valuable.

Elaborateness of Martial Law Preparations

The dozens of documents turned over by Kukliński to the 

CIA, as well as his reports and commentaries, attest to the 

elaborate nature of the martial law planning. Almost every 

aspect of life under martial law was planned in advance, 

sometimes to an unrealistically elaborate level of detail. 

The documents allow scholars to see how the planning 

evolved, as it increasingly shifted toward the Soviet Union’s 

preferred version of martial law, with a ruling military body 

set up outside existing constitutional norms, mass arrests 

of opposition activists, and a comprehensive crackdown on 

all protests against martial law.

Obviously, a gap in the documentation comes in the five 

weeks after Kukliński had to flee from Poland. Polish and 

Soviet officials hurriedly made some revisions in the plans 

after they realized that Kukliński had been a spy, but the 

newly released documents make clear that there was only so 

much they could do in the limited time between his escape 

from Poland and the imposition of martial law. The martial 

law operation that was implemented in December 1981 

closely followed the plans that were in the CIA’s possession. 

A CIA memorandum of 25 August 1981 briefly discussed 

the Polish government’s “extensive contingency planning for 

the imposition of a severe martial law program,” but the CIA 

analysts underestimated the extensive preparations that 

were being made to transform this planning into action.74

Kukliński’s reports from the summer and early fall of 

1981 (until the time he had to leave Poland) underscore 

the far-reaching preparations that were under way to 

neutralize and crush Solidarity. Soviet pressure and 

“advice” shaped much of the planning and preparations, but 

the Polish Ministries of National Defense and Internal 

Affairs played crucial roles of their own. The memoranda 

summarizing Kukliński’s reports add to and enrich what 

scholars have already learned about this matter from 

declassified documents in the Polish archives. In a report in 

September 1981, Kukliński confirmed that “the Ministry 

of Internal Affairs has infiltrated the leadership elements of 

Solidarność and has a good grasp of what their plans are.”75 

74 “Martial Law in Poland,” CIA Memorandum, 25 August 1981, TS #815501, pp. 1-5.

75 FIRDB-312/02950-81, TS #818224 (cited in note 69 supra), pp. 6-7.

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He returned to this point a few months later, just after 

the martial law clampdown, when he again emphasized 

that Solidarity “was infiltrated by security agents from 

the beginning” and that the “security forces had very good 

information on Solidarity.” Starting in October 1981 “the 

top levels of the [Polish] government received daily reports 

consisting of 25-30 pages on the internal situation. . . . 

The sources of information were so good that the reports 

provided advance information on all Solidarity activities.”76

The success of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MSW) 

in infiltrating Solidarity was a great boon not only for 

the MSW itself but also for the Soviet KGB, which was 

involved in “all phases of MSW operations” and was given 

“direct access” to all information flowing into the Polish 

ministry.77 Unlike Soviet military “representatives” in 

Poland, who had not had full-time offices in the Polish 

Ministry of National Defense since 1957, KGB “advisers” 

were present at all levels of the MSW and in regional 

commands of the Polish security forces. Kukliński revealed 

that at one point the MSW even “transferred several 

thousand files on Polish citizens to the Soviet Union” — a 

concession that annoyed Jaruzelski when he learned of it 

and that eventually “led to some difficult conversations 

with the Soviets.”78 Ties with the KGB were especially 

close when Milewski headed the MSW, but the ministry’s 

relationship with the KGB changed little after Czesław 

Kiszczak took over the MSW in July 1981. Kukliński 

confirmed that “Kiszczak continued to accept the presence 

of Soviet security officers in the MSW, with his principal 

Soviet adviser in an office adjacent to his own.”79 The 

immense volume of information at the KGB’s disposal gave 

Soviet leaders a high level of confidence that the martial law 

operation would succeed, provided that Jaruzelski steeled 

himself and issued the necessary authorization to the 

MSW and army.

The only aspect of the martial law planning that became 

murkier rather than clearer in the final few months 

before the operation was carried out was the question of 

foreign military support for Polish forces. Declassified 

documents from the former East-bloc archives and the 

newly released Kukliński materials show that if Kania 

and Jaruzelski had been willing to impose martial law 

in the period from late 1980 through the summer of 

1981, they would have been assisted by Soviet and East 

European troops. Kukliński recounted the steps that 

Soviet and Warsaw Pact commanders took to be ready for 

76 “Possible Polish Strategy during the Present Phase,” CIA Intelligence Information 

Cable, 24 December 1981, FIRDB-315/23014-81, pp. 6-7.

77 “Relationship between the Polish Ministry of National Defense and the Ministry 

of Internal Affairs,” p. 2.

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid., p. 3.

this contingency in November-December 1980.80 They 

undertook additional measures a few months later under 

the guise of preparations for the Soyuz-81 exercises, 

without the knowledge or consent of the Polish authorities: 

the deployment of a Soviet armored unit around Warsaw 

within easy reach of all central state and party buildings; 

the designation of a Soviet airborne unit for the rapid 

seizure of the Radio-Television Center; the establishment 

of a wide-ranging, secure military communications network 

to coordinate and oversee Warsaw Pact operations; a 

large-scale airlift of Soviet troops and equipment to various 

regions of Poland; the commandeering of the Polish Civil 

Aviation Service to facilitate the airlift and the landing of 

300 Soviet military transport aircraft on Polish territory; 

and the allocation to Soviet commanders in the western 

USSR of the specific buildings and strategic areas that their 

forces would be responsible for occupying.81

These preparations were by no means purely for show. 

The intervention of Soviet and East European troops in 

support of the Polish authorities remained a key part 

of martial law scenarios through mid-1981. But when 

Jaruzelski, under Soviet pressure, ordered the plans for 

martial law to be reworked in the late summer of 1981, the 

idea was to design an operation that Polish forces could 

implement on their own. Although Soviet and Warsaw 

Pact military forces would still provide an implicit safety 

net if something unexpected happened and the operation 

collapsed amid widespread chaotic violence, the planning 

no longer incorporated the earlier notion that Warsaw Pact 

forces must support the imposition of martial law from the 

outset. Kukliński’s reports reveal that some in the Polish 

General Staff were no longer sure “whether they would 

receive help” from the Soviet Union, short of some utter 

80 Kramer, “Colonel Kukliński and the Polish Crisis,” pp. 49-61.

81 “Jaruzelski’s Attitude, Behavior and Style,” p. 44. See also Kramer, Soviet 

Deliberations during the Polish Crisis.

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SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 31
catastrophe.82 Kukliński did believe, however, that the 

martial law planning still held out the possibility of early 

Soviet and Warsaw Pact military intervention in Poland 

if the clampdown led to “serious incidents of bloodshed” 

and the Polish army began to disintegrate. “It is at this 

point,” he argued, that “Soviet (Warsaw Pact) intervention 

would come.” But he stressed that the “purpose [of the 

intervention] would not be to replace Polish troops in their 

current role, but . . . to stiffen their resolve.” The entry of 

the foreign soldiers “would be intended to bolster Polish 

forces and intimidate the Polish populace.”83 Kukliński 

emphasized that “this sort of intervention [would] not 

[be] the same as the intervention in Czechoslovakia in 

1968.” Instead, the “intervention would take place with 

the foreknowledge of the Polish leadership, and with the 

cooperation of the Polish military.” No troops would enter 

unless the Polish authorities “asked for Soviet help.”84

Ironically, when Jaruzelski did make a last-minute request 

in December 1981 for the Soviet Union to send troops 

into Poland to help with the introduction of martial law, 

the CPSU Politburo turned him down.85 But this does 

not mean that Kukliński was wrong. On the contrary, 

the sequence he laid out was correct. By December 1981 

the only scenario in which Soviet leaders would have 

contemplated military intervention was if martial law had 

been implemented and a calamity had ensued. They were 

definitely not willing to send troops to Poland prior to or 

at the start of the operation. The reason was simple. They 

feared that if they promised direct assistance to Jaruzelski 

before the operation began, it might give him an excuse to 

avoid acting as forcefully and swiftly as he needed to. They, 

unlike Jaruzelski, were fully confident that the elaborately 

planned martial law operation would be successful so long 

as Jaruzelski implemented it without letting up. The last 

thing they wanted to do was to give him a crutch that might 

cause him, if only subconsciously, to refrain from cracking 

down as fully and ruthlessly as possible.

When the appointed hour came on 12-13 December 1981, 

the Polish army and security forces did in fact crack down 

vigorously, arresting nearly 6,000 leading opposition 

activists within a few hours and completing a swift 

transition to military rule. The motorized internal security 

police quickly suppressed the main pockets of resistance, 

and the newly formed Military Council of National 

82 “Current Plans for the Introduction of Martial Law in Poland,” CIA 

Memorandum summarizing information from Kukliński, 11 September 1981, 

FIRDB-312/02880, TS #818218, p. 1.

83 “Background to Present Situation in Poland and Possible Soviet Role,’ pp. 3-4.

84 “Background to the Polish Imposition of Martial Law,” p. 3.

85 Mark Kramer, “Jaruzelski, the Soviet Union, and the Imposition of Martial Law in 

Poland: New Light on the Mystery of December 1981,” Cold War International 

History Project Bulletin, Issue No. 11 (Winter 1998), pp. 5-31. See also Kramer, 

Soviet Deliberations during the Polish Crisis.

Salvation drew on the elaborate planning of the previous 

several months to issue decrees and enforce the new rules of 

martial law. With brutal efficiency and minimal bloodshed, 

the Polish authorities managed to crush Solidarity, a 

broad-based social movement that had seemed invincible. 

The imposition of martial law in Poland was a textbook 

case of how to bring a rebellious society to heel. The 

elaborate planning by the MSW and the Polish General 

Staff from October 1980 through the fall of 1981 — under 

the constant supervision of Soviet/Warsaw Pact military 

commanders and the Soviet KGB — largely accounted for 

the success of the operation.

The Martial Law Planning as Reflected 

in Siwicki’s Speech

The changing nature of the martial law planning is well 

illustrated by the successive drafts of General Siwicki’s 

speech at the landmark session of Poland’s Homeland 

Defense Committee on 13 September 1981. The meeting, 

which was convened by Jaruzelski in his capacity as 

chairman of the KOK, happened to come a day after the 

Soviet Union had completed its huge Zapad-81 military 

exercises along Poland’s northern coast and eastern 

border. At the session, the KOK reached a final decision 

to introduce martial law.86 This decision was promptly 

conveyed to the CPSU Politburo by Soviet KGB and 

military officials. Although the KOK did not set a precise 

date for the operation, the decision signaled a commitment 

86 For a summary record of the KOK meeting on 13 September 1981, see the 

handwritten notes by General Tadeusz Tuczapski, the secretary of KOK, 

“Protokół No. 002/81 posiedzenia Komitetu Obrony Kraju z dnia wrzesnia 1981 

r.,” 13 September 1981, now stored in Centralne Archywum Wojskowe (CAW), 

Materialy z posiedzeń KOK, Teczka Sygnatura 48. Tuczapski was the only one 

at the meeting who was permitted to take notes. The importance of this KOK 

meeting was first disclosed in 1986 by Kukliński in his earliest public interview, 

“Wojna z narodem widziana od środka,” Kultura (Paris), No. 4/475 (April 1987), 

pp. 32-33. Several years after this interview appeared, Kania briefly discussed the 

KOK meeting in his memoirs (after being asked about it by the interviewer who 

compiled the book). See Stanisław Kania, Zatrzymać konfrontację (Warsaw: 

Polska Oficyna Wydawnicza BGW, 1991), pp. 110-111. Subsequently, evidence 

emerged that Kukliński had sent a long message to the CIA on 15 September 1981 

— two days after the KOK meeting — recapitulating the proceedings and warning 

that Operation “Wiosna” (the codename of the martial law crackdown) would soon 

follow. See Kramer, “Colonel Kukliński and the Polish Crisis of 1980-1981,” pp. 

48-59.

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32 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
to act. So long as Kania retained the top leadership post, 

the Soviet Politburo could not truly be confident that 

the KOK decision would actually be implemented in the 

end, but senior officials in Moscow were definitely more 

optimistic after 13 September that a crackdown in Poland 

was finally in the offing.

The newly released Kukliński materials include translations 

of two drafts of Siwicki’s speech for the KOK meeting,. 

The first translation is of an early draft, which Kukliński 

helped to write. This document mistakenly gives the date 

of the speech as 14 September, presumably because the 

date of the KOK meeting had not yet been set when the 

drafters were working on the text.87 (The 13th was a Sunday, 

and the drafters may have assumed that the KOK would 

not meet on a weekend.) Kukliński gave a photographed 

copy of this early draft to the CIA on the evening of 13 

September via a dead drop, with the words “B. Pilne” (short 

for bardzo pilne — very urgent) scrawled on the outside 

of the film packet.88 The draft was promptly translated 

and distributed to senior U.S. national security officials 

on 25 September. The second translation, clearly done by 

a different translator, is of a later draft that includes the 

correct date of 13 September. Kukliński transferred film 

of this later draft to the CIA via a car pass on 9 October, 

well after the KOK meeting.89 The translation of it was 

prepared at a more leisurely pace – presumably because 

U.S. officials had already gotten the gist of the speech 

from the earlier draft — and was not distributed to top 

U.S. intelligence officials until 23 November.90 This 

later draft still contains optional language in the opening 

paragraph that suggests it is a draft and not a transcript 

(the precise phrasing to be used by Siwicki was dependent 

on what the speaker immediately preceding him, Czesław 

Kiszczak, would say), but the rest of the document is, by 

all indications, the text of what Siwicki actually said at the 

meeting.

Because different translators were used and because the 

CIA did not release the original Polish texts, a comparison 

of the two drafts is not as straightforward as it might 

seem. The phrasing used by the translators often diverges 

87 “Report of General Siwicki at the Meeting of the National Defense Committee on 

14 September 1981,” CIA Intelligence Information Special Report, 25 September 

1981, FIRDB-312/02927-81, TS #818223, pp. 1-12. One of Kukliński’s reports 

indicates that originally the Military Council of the Ministry of National Defense 

was to meet on 13 September, followed by a meeting of the KOK the next day. See 

FIRDB-312/02880, TS #818218 (cited in note 82 supra), pp. 1-2. The scheduling 

evidently was changed at the last minute on the 12th.

88 The date of this dead drop is given in Weiser, A Secret Life, p. 255.

89 “Possible Radical Military Measures against Polish Strikes and Protests,” 

CIA Intelligence Information Special Report, 23 November 1981, 

FIRDB-312/03453-81, TS #818264, pp. 1-12. The date of the car pass is given in 

Weiser, A Secret Life, p. 263.

90 The fact that the secretary of state and secretary of defense were not included on 

the distribution sheet for this translation also suggests that it was treated with less 

urgency than the previous translation. It is unclear whether CIA analysts ever 

compared the two drafts.

markedly, but fortunately it is similar enough to indicate 

that the drafts contain a great deal of overlap. Some minor 

differences crop up toward the beginning (mostly in the 

second paragraph), and a proposal to restrict “withdrawals 

from saving accounts by the public” is omitted in the later 

draft. A brief paragraph that was apparently superseded by 

Kiszczak’s remarks was also omitted in the later draft. The 

only major substantive differences come at the end, where 

the early draft contains a long final paragraph that includes 

three crucial sentences that are omitted from the same 

paragraph in the later draft. In addition, the later draft 

ends with a short paragraph that does not appear in the 

early draft. The inclusion of that paragraph is noteworthy, 

but the exclusion of the three sentences is of far greater 

importance.

In the translation of the early draft, Siwicki concludes 

his lengthy remarks by saying that he has “presented only 

an outline of possible action by the state in the event of 

the necessity to introduce martial law.” He warns that 

“such a means of defense” will be “extremely difficult and 

complicated” and might “cause various unknown reactions 

by the population.” But he expresses confidence that “only a 

small number of extremists” will “actively come out against 

the decision of the authorities” and that “the majority 

of society” will act with “restraint and then support the 

authorities.”91 The translation of the later draft uses 

different phrasing, but clearly the original Polish versions 

of the two drafts up to this point were identical.

The divergence comes with the next three sentences in the 

early draft, which are omitted in the later draft:

91 FIRDB-312/02927-81, TS #818223 (cited in note 87 supra), p. 12.

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In addition we must consider the fact that we are not 

alone. In the event of unfavorable development of the 

situation we can always depend on assistance from our 

reliable friends. Hence there is a need for still closer 

cooperation with the Soviet Union and the remaining 

countries of the Warsaw Pact.92

The drafts then resume their overlap. In the translation 

of the early draft, Siwicki goes on to say: “In the opinion 

of the Polish Armed Forces General Staff there still is [a] 

great prospect of settling the problem with our own forces. 

To reach this goal, the decisive, offensive, and precise 

synchronization of activities of all forces remaining at the 

disposal of the state is essential.” The translation of the 

later draft uses different phrasing, but the point is the same. 

This 2-sentence passage in the two Polish drafts was clearly 

identical.

The omission, in the later draft, of the three sentences 

regarding the Polish authorities’ ability to “depend on 

assistance from our reliable friends” suggests that Siwicki 

(perhaps in consultation with Jaruzelski) wanted to 

emphasize the “great prospect of settling the problem with 

our own forces.” This phrasing, of course, did not mean 

that he was saying that “we have no choice but to settle 

the problem with our own forces.” On the contrary, his 

retention of the qualified wording “great prospect” (or 

“great chance”) suggested that there was at least a small 

chance that they would not be able to “settle the problem 

with our own forces.” The implication was that if things 

went gravely awry, they would have to seek “assistance from 

our reliable friends.” However, the omission of any explicit 

references to Soviet/Warsaw Pact military support made 

clearer that the goal was to impose martial law without 

external military help if at all possible. This goal is precisely 

what Jaruzelski had in mind in late August when he asked 

the General Staff and the MSW to rework and get ready to 

implement the plans for martial law.

92 Ibid.

A readiness to proceed with martial law was also 

underscored in the short final paragraph that was added to 

the later draft. In it, Siwicki stressed that the General Staff 

“unequivocally condemns the irresponsible, hostile actions 

of political opponents,” whom he branded “enemies of our 

country.” The “antisocialist” actions of Solidarity, he argued, 

“should be taken into consideration when . . . making the 

decision concerning the introduction of martial law.” He 

warned that the army must not “allow the force[s[ at our 

disposal to lose the momentum for a fight with the enemy.”93 

This paragraph was fully consonant with Jaruzelski’s own 

shift toward a harder line, and it signaled the authorities’ 

growing belief that the chances of a political solution were 

almost nil and that the use of force could probably no 

longer be avoided.

Kukliński’s Information and U.S. Policy

In addition to what the Kukliński materials reveal about 

Poland and Soviet-Polish relations, they also highlight some 

important questions about the Reagan administration’s 

policy during the crisis. Who in the government actually 

saw the materials, and how was the information used? To 

what extent did these documents influence U.S. policy 

in 1981? At what junctures did this intelligence have a 

particular impact on U.S. policy? In light of the detailed 

information provided to the CIA about the martial law 

planning and the major shift in Jaruzelski’s position by 

September 1981, why did the U.S. government not take 

steps in late 1981 (after Kukliński was safely out of Poland) 

to try to thwart the planned martial law operation — for 

example, by making the plans public and giving copies to 

Western newspapers? At a minimum, why did the United 

States not warn the leaders of Solidarity in November or 

early December 1981 that a crackdown was imminent? 

Did senior U.S. officials contemplate providing a warning, 

and, if so, how did they weigh the pros and cons? What 

ultimately caused them not to proceed? (It is interesting to 

note that Soviet leaders were fully convinced that the U.S. 

government would warn Solidarity about the plans.94 )

Similar types of questions were addressed with great 

cogency nearly a decade ago in a book by Douglas 

MacEachin that examined the quality of U.S. intelligence 

and its impact on policymaking during the Polish crisis.95 

MacEachin, the former CIA deputy director for intelligence, 

had access to the Kukliński materials and other highly 

classified documents during the 1980-1981 crisis. Because 

93 FIRDB-312/03453-81, TS #818264 (cited in note 89 supra), p. 12.

94 See Kramer, Soviet Deliberations during the Polish Crisis, p. 162.

95 Douglas J. MacEachin, U.S. Intelligence and the Polish Crisis, 1980-1981 

(Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2000). A slightly expanded 

edition of the book was published two years later under a slightly different title,

U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland, 1980-1981 (University Park, 

PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002).

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34 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
his book was intended for a wide audience in unclassified 

form, he was constrained in what he could include. He 

quoted directly from CIA documents that were declassified 

for his research (especially items that appeared in the 

National Intelligence Daily), but he was much more limited 

in what he could use from the Kukliński files, which 

the CIA director in the late 1990s (George Tenet) was 

unwilling to declassify. MacEachin had to eschew any direct 

quotations from the Kukliński materials other than the 

three reports I published in 1998. Researchers interested 

in the CIA’s performance during the Polish crisis should 

read MacEachin’s book and the relevant portion of Robert 

Gates’s memoir before perusing the newly declassified 

Kukliński materials.96 Those two books, especially 

MacEachin’s, are of enormous help in assessing the impact 

of specific intelligence products, including information from 

Kukliński, on U.S. policymaking vis-à-vis Poland in 1980-

1981. By the same token, the newly released memoranda 

and translations of documents from Kukliński’s files enable 

scholars to evaluate MacEachin’s account more thoroughly 

and to fill in information he had to leave out because it was 

still classified at the time he was writing.

The questions about U.S. policymaking that were raised 

above can be only partly answered at this stage. Some 

of the information needed to answer them more fully 

is still classified or is simply unavailable. The CIA’s 

unwillingness to release a larger volume of relevant materials 

from the Kukliński files poses a particular hindrance. 

Nonetheless, the newly declassified documents, combined 

with information from other sources, allow us to go a 

considerable way in assessing the impact of Kukliński’s work.

With regard to the question of who in the U.S. government 

saw the summaries of Kukliński’s reports and the 

translations of documents he supplied, the distribution 

sheets indicate the minimum number of officials who 

received them on a regular basis. The summaries of reports 

were sent by the head of the CIA’s operations directorate to 

the secretary of state, the secretary of defense, the national 

security adviser, the director of central intelligence (DCI), 

the deputy DCI, the director of the CIA’s National Foreign 

Assessment Center, the director of the State Department’s 

Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the director of 

the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), and the director 

of the National Security Agency (NSA). The translated 

documents were sent by the head of the CIA’s operations 

directorate to the DCI, the deputy DCI, the director 

of the CIA’s National Foreign Assessment Center, the 

director of INR at the State Department, the director of 

DIA, and the director of NSA. The intelligence chiefs for 

96 Ibid.; and Robert M. Gates, From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of 

Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 

1996), pp. 226-236.

the three military services — the Army assistant chief of 

staff for intelligence, the commander of the Office of Naval 

Intelligence (ONI), and the Air Force assistant chief of 

staff for intelligence — were on the distribution sheets 

for almost all of the translations. (One assumes that their 

omission from a few of the distribution sheets was an 

oversight and that they did in fact receive all of them.) The 

secretary of state and the secretary of defense were included 

on the distribution sheets for the most important of the 

translations.97

The distribution sheet for a translation of one of the 

short background reports that Kukliński wrote in the 

spring of 1982 includes all the intelligence officials already 

mentioned plus four additional senior CIA analysts: the 

national intelligence officer (NIO) for the USSR and 

Eastern Europe, the director of the Office of European 

Analysis, the director of the Office of Soviet Analysis 

(SOVA), and the director of the Office of Scientific and 

Weapons Research.98 Presumably, these officials had 

been receiving the other Kukliński materials as well. The 

distribution sheet for a translation of an earlier background 

report by Kukliński lists those four CIA officials plus two 

others — the NIO for General Purpose Forces and the 

director of SOVA’s Theater Force Division.99 Those two 

officials, too, had probably been receiving other Kuklińskisupplied materials for which they had “a clearly evident 

need to know.”100

The distribution sheets, of course, tell only part of the 

story. Numerous sources, including MacEachin’s book, 

Weiser’s A Secret Life, Gates’s memoir, and Zbigniew 

Brzezinski’s diary, among others, indicate that information 

from Kukliński’s reports was given promptly and directly 

to the president (Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan). 

Sometimes this was done via the Presidential Daily 

Brief (PDB) and in other cases it was done through alert 

memoranda or other special communications. If all the 

relevant materials from the Kukliński files (including 

case officer communications to Kukliński, intra-CIA 

correspondence, and PDB selections) were released, scholars 

could gain a more complete sense of how much of the detail 

was conveyed directly to the president; but the sources now 

available are sufficient to show that key information from 

Kukliński routinely reached the president. MacEachin notes 

that the vice president, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs 

of Staff, and roughly fifteen other top officials outside the 

intelligence community (in addition to the secretary of state, 

97 The secretary of state and secretary of defense appeared on the distribution sheets 

of 19 of the 44 translations that were released.

98 “Relationship between the Soviet Military Representation to Poland and the Polish 

General Staff” (cited in note 16 supra), pp. 1-6.

99 “The Polish National Defense Committee,” CIA Intelligence Information Report, 

5 April 1982, FIRDB-312/00640-82, pp. 1-4.

100 This phrase comes from the cover sheets on the translations. 

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the secretary of defense, and the national security adviser, 

who were all on the distribution list) also regularly received 

information from Kukliński.101

Within the intelligence community, the circulation of 

documents connected with Kukliński had to be extremely 

limited because of the great sensitivity of his position. Any 

inadvertent disclosure could literally have proven fatal. As 

MacEachin notes, “it is a simple fact that the wider the 

dissemination of a parcel of information the greater the 

risk of its disclosure. . . . The more special the information, 

the more vulnerable the source. And the more vulnerable 

the source, the tighter the circle of recipients of the 

information obtained.”102 The Kukliński materials were 

assigned a codeword classification indicating that they were 

“the product of certain extremely sensitive agent sources 

of CIA’s Operations Directorate,” and the recipients 

were routinely warned that they could not reproduce 

the documents or circulate them to anyone who was not 

“authorized to read and handle this material.” Officials who 

received summaries of Kukliński’s reports were warned 

that “this information is extremely source sensitive” and 

must be held “very closely.”103 MacEachin notes that “even 

tighter controls were placed on [Kukliński’s] information 

after he reported in mid-September [1981] that he was in 

serious jeopardy” of being apprehended by the MSW.104

Nonetheless, the severe restrictions on the dissemination 

of Kukliński’s materials did not mean that key analysts 

in the U.S. intelligence community were unable to make 

thorough use of them. On the contrary, as mentioned above, 

numerous senior analysts within the CIA were privy to the 

information from Kukliński and were able to reflect it in 

the memoranda and reports they produced in 1981. The 

information could be incorporated directly into reports 

for the president and other top officials and could be used 

indirectly (especially as a checkpoint for accuracy) in 

documents intended for wider distribution. The influence 

101 MacEachin, U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland, pp. 226.

102 Ibid., pp. 10-11.

103 The language here comes from the cover sheets of the newly released documents, 

report summaries, and memoranda.

104 MacEachin, U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland, p. 225.

of Kukliński’s information is evident to anyone who looks 

at relevant items in the large collection of declassified CIA 

documents stored at NARA. Moreover, the CIA was not 

the only agency that was able to use the information both 

directly and indirectly to shape its reporting. Declassified 

DIA documents reveal that senior DIA analysts who had 

“a clearly evident need to know” were regularly apprised of 

information from Kukliński and were able to reflect it in 

the reports they produced. Indeed, a DIA “Intelligence 

Appraisal” of 4 November 1981, which reflects information 

from Kukliński (though without directly adverting to it), 

is one of the most astute analyses produced by the U.S. 

intelligence community in the months leading up to martial 

law.105 The DIA analysts took seriously the prospect that 

the Polish authorities in the wake of Kania’s ouster were 

moving steadily toward the imposition of martial law.

Thus, it is simply not true, as a few Western journalists 

have claimed, that the distribution of Kukliński’s reports 

and documents within the intelligence community was 

too limited and that the information was thereby rendered 

“useless.”106 The problem, in reality, was not that the 

information was too tightly held but that analysts at the 

CIA and the State Department did not make better use 

of it. MacEachin persuasively argues that “the central 

factor impeding the kind of intelligence product that could 

have made a difference was the skepticism on the part of 

both intelligence analysts and policy officials [about] the 

willingness and ability of the Polish regime to impose 

martial law. . . . [T]here is nothing in the daily intelligence 

reporting to convey a sense of a potential for the sudden 

crackdown that occurred.”107 Even though Kukliński’s 

reports in September and October 1981 unmistakably 

highlighted the steady progress toward martial law, and 

even though a long series of conspicuous events in Poland 

during that time pointed in the same direction, analysts 

at both the CIA and the State Department remained 

skeptical that Polish officials would actually pursue 

this option. By the late fall of 1981 the CIA had ample 

information at its disposal about the Polish regime’s 

intentions, but the information went for naught because 

analysts (and policymakers) were convinced that there was 

a “serious risk” that “the plans [for martial law] would fail” 

and that the Polish authorities, being aware of this, would 

refrain from acting.108

105 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, “Poland: Martial Law,” Intelligence Appraisal 

9313609/B299, 4 November 1981, 6 pp.

106 Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europe’s Ghosts after Communism 

(New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 205-207. Similarly, Michael Dobbs, in 

Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire (New York: Alfred A. 

Knopf, 1997), p. 463, has claimed that “even Secretary of State Alexander Haig 

was unaware of Kukliński’s existence.” The newly released documents make clear 

that this could not possibly be true.

107 MacEachin, U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland, p. 230.

108 CIA, Office of Soviet Analysis (SOVA), “Polish Preparations for Martial Law,” 7 

December 1981, pp. 1-7. This newly released memorandum, which was completed 

less than a week before martial law was introduced, brings together a good deal 

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MacEachin, who writes with admirable candor about the 

CIA’s lapses, believes that the agency might have done 

a better job in late 1981 if it had compiled and regularly 

discussed a “chronological summary of information” 

obtained from various sources, including Kukliński.109 

MacEachin lays out an “evidential record” himself and 

argues that if something similar had been compiled in 

1981, it would have provided “a significant analytical 

check” on the CIA’s work. This may well be the case, but 

MacEachin’s own listing of key events and their significance 

suggests that the idea is not as straightforward as he 

implies. Analysts and policymakers are bound to differ 

in their appraisals of the significance of particular events. 

For example, MacEachin argues that the second half of 

Solidarity’s national congress, from 26 September through 

7 October 1981, demonstrated that “what had begun as 

a national labor movement was . . . now a rival political 

force,” thereby increasing the pressure on the authorities 

to proceed with martial law.110 By contrast, Kukliński, in 

a report shortly after the congress ended, described the 

outcome as more “moderate” than expected and suggested 

that it might have briefly delayed the plans for martial law 

by denying the regime a clear pretext.111 The point here 

is not to suggest that either interpretation is better than 

the other, but merely to stress that such differences are 

bound to arise. Hence, even if the CIA had tried in 1981 to 

compile a “chronological summary of information” along 

the lines MacEachin proposes, cognitive biases might still 

have prevented analysts from giving due weight to the 

martial law scenario.

Because CIA analysts as late as December 1981 were 

still inclined to believe that the Polish regime was led by 

“moderates” who were seeking “to find political solutions to 

contentious issues,” the impact of the Kukliński materials 

on U.S. policy was much less than it might have been.112 In 

December 1980 and the spring of 1981, when Kukliński’s 

reports and other evidence were pointing to the threat of 

Soviet/Warsaw Pact military intervention in Poland, highlevel U.S. officials warned the Soviet Union both privately 

and publicly that an invasion of Poland would lead to 

major political and economic consequences for the USSR. 

These warnings probably had only a minuscule impact at 

most on Soviet calculations, but in such circumstances 

even a tiny difference can be important. The prospect of 

Soviet military intervention in Poland continued to loom 

of Kukliński’s information about the martial law planning, but the analysts’ 

conclusions — that “the [Polish] regime views martial law as risky and continues 

to pursue political solutions” and that Jaruzelski “prefers a course of political 

accommodation” — proved erroneous.

109 MacEachin, U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland, pp. 216-

225.

110 Ibid., p. 221.

111 FIRDB-312/03245-81, TS #818246 (cited in note 69 supra), p. 2.

112 The quoted passages are from CIA, “Polish Preparations for Martial Law,” p. 

1.

large in the U.S. government’s deliberations about Poland 

in the last few months of 1981, despite the information 

in Kukliński’s reports underscoring a shift toward an 

operation that would rely solely on Polish military and 

security forces. The CIA’s continued dominant focus on 

Soviet military intentions vis-à-vis Poland was another 

reason that agency analysts were wont to downplay the 

likelihood that the Polish authorities would proceed on 

their own with martial law.

The lack of warning to President Reagan and other 

policymakers in the fall of 1981 about the strong 

momentum behind the Polish regime’s plans and 

preparations for martial law meant that the U.S. 

administration, far from taking steps to try to thwart 

the pending operation, may have inadvertently done the 

opposite. Even before Kukliński left Poland, the Soviet 

KGB had learned from its sources in the Vatican that the 

CIA had acquired the Polish plans for martial law. After 

Kukliński fled to the United States, any lingering doubts 

in Moscow about this matter were obviously dispelled. 

In the five weeks before martial law was introduced, the 

Soviet and Polish authorities were fully aware that the U.S. 

government had learned what was being planned in Poland, 

and they also were aware that U.S. officials knew that they 

knew. Because the Reagan administration neither publicly 

exposed the plans nor even privately warned Polish leaders 

that the imposition of martial law would result in grave 

damage to Poland’s relations with the West, Jaruzelski and 

other senior Polish officials might easily have construed the 

U.S. silence as a tacit “green light.” Even though Jaruzelski 

undoubtedly realized that the United States would not 

welcome the introduction of martial law, he might have 

interpreted the five weeks of conspicuous inaction as 

acquiescence in a “lesser evil’ (versus the “greater evil” of a 

Soviet invasion). Jaruzelski claims as much in his memoirs, 

and he repeated this assertion at a conference in Jachranka, 

Poland in November 1997. 113 There is no evidence that 

anyone in the U.S. government actually meant to convey 

such an impression, but a misperception of this sort in such 

a stressful situation would hardly be surprising.

A major part of the problem, as MacEachin points out, 

is that “the operational handlers of Kukliński’s escape” 

failed to “spotlight the potential implications of the escape 

itself within the larger political context.”114 The defection 

did not take place in a vacuum. CIA officials must have 

been aware that the Polish authorities would assume that 

Kukliński was telling the agency everything he could 

about the planning and preparations for martial law; yet, 

113 Wojciech Jaruzelski, Stan wojenny: Dlaczego (Warsaw: Polska Oficyna 

Wydawnicza BGW, 1992), pp. 356-358; and Smolar, ed., Wewnętrzny kryzys, 

międzynarodowe uwarunkowania, pp. 282-283.

114 MacEachin, U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland, p. 227. 

THE KUKLINSKI FILES AND THE POLISH CRISIS OF 1980 - 1981

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 37
as MacEachin notes, “no one [at Langley] seems to have 

called attention” to the likelihood that “Polish leaders 

would be watching and interpreting U.S. reactions” to 

the information from Kukliński about the impending 

crackdown in Poland.115 What was true of the CIA was 

also true of the small number of policymakers who knew 

about Kukliński’s defection. In part because they had not 

been clearly warned by the CIA about the rapid approach 

of martial law, they did not grasp the political implications 

of Kukliński’s flight to the West. MacEachin contends, 

plausibly, that if policymakers had received a stark warning 

about the situation in Poland, it is “certainly likely” 

that they would have made a “significant effort” to foil 

Jaruzelski’s plans.116 Even if that is not the case, there is no 

doubt that the CIA unwittingly contributed to the Reagan 

administration’s failure to take any urgent action.

If the United States had tried to thwart the martial law 

operation, would such an effort have had a meaningful 

effect? There seems little doubt that if the Reagan 

administration had promptly given copies of the plans 

to leading Western newspapers and had broadcast them 

on television and Radio Free Europe, this would have 

embarrassed and discredited the Polish regime both 

at home and abroad. Even if the Polish authorities had 

responded by proceeding right away with the crackdown, 

they would have been deprived of the element of surprise. 

The leaders of Solidarity would have known not to 

congregate in a single place, as they did on that fateful 

weekend of 12-13 December 1981. If the Polish security 

forces had been unable to arrest the main opposition 

activists in one fell swoop, the martial law operation would 

have been much more complicated. The likelihood of such 

complications might well have had a deterrent effect.

Another possibility is that the Polish government would 

have reacted by claiming that the U.S. documents were 

forgeries. A reaction of this sort would have thrown the 

martial law planning into disarray. Even though the plans 

for martial law were reworked somewhat after Kukliński 

fled, the essentials of the operation remained largely intact. 

If the Polish government had suddenly been forced to start 

from scratch, months of delay would likely have ensued. 

In the meantime, Solidarity could have strengthened its 

position internally and could have taken safeguards against 

a possible revival of martial law planning.

One could argue that if the whole martial law operation 

had been derailed indefinitely, the Soviet Union might 

have resorted to a large-scale invasion of Poland, with dire 

consequences for everyone involved. This is certainly a 

possibility, but no one can say for sure. On the one hand, 

115 Ibid.

116 Ibid., p. 234

the mobilization of the requisite Soviet forces would have 

taken a while, but it could eventually have been done. On 

the other hand, Soviet leaders were ardently hoping to rely 

on an “internal solution” in Poland, and they might well 

have been willing — if only reluctantly — to give the Polish 

authorities the time they needed. They also might have 

sought to cope with the situation by bringing in a Polish 

hardliner like Molczyk to crack down as ruthlessly and 

as soon as possible. Whatever the case may be, the public 

disclosure of the martial law plans clearly would have 

left both the Polish regime and the Soviet Union with an 

unpalatable choice.

Making the plans public undoubtedly would have had the 

greatest impact on the situation in Poland, but the Reagan 

administration might also have considered giving a private 

warning to the leaders of Solidarity and the Catholic 

Church in late November or early December 1981. This 

option would have encountered practical difficulties — for 

example, how to convey the warning (in written form? 

orally?) and how to determine precisely who should receive 

it. Solidarity by late 1981 was increasingly split, and Lech 

Wałęsa was no longer the dominant figure he had been. 

These problems undoubtedly could have been surmounted, 

but it is not clear why a private warning would have been 

deemed preferable to a highly public warning. Either option 

would have entailed risks, but the risks of a private warning 

seem greater and the benefits less clear-cut. In any case, a 

private warning would not have remained private for very 

long.

In the end, U.S. policy was simply one of doing nothing. 

If senior U.S. officials had been clearly warned by the 

CIA that Jaruzelski was intent on imposing martial law, 

they undoubtedly would have tried to undercut his plans, 

not least because they feared that a crackdown would 

ultimately bring in the Soviet Union. At a minimum, a 

high-level intra-administration debate about the matter 

would have ensued. But the CIA’s deficient analysis of 

crucial intelligence from Kukliński and other sources 

precluded any action or debate.

THE KUKLINSKI FILES AND THE POLISH CRISIS OF 1980 - 1981

38 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
Comment on Dr. Kramer

by Aris Pappas

I’ve been asked to comment on the differences that I perceive between my recollections of our efforts with the Kuklinski material and 

the approach represented in Dr. Kramer’s article. 

Dr. Kramer’s work is efficient and rigorously academic, reflecting an ability to carefully and precisely stitch together the whole body 

of material matching words and phrases. Regrettably, that was not the way it worked when the documents were arriving sequentially, 

over time and in no discernable order. Whatever the benefit would have been of retrospectively seeking consistency or inconsistency, 

we were more often than not forced by events to take the latest information and focus forward from that reality.

Dr. Kramer also, accurately, points out various inconsistencies in the various Agency appraisals. These resulted, however, not from 

any particular confusion, but from important differences of perspective concerning the value and accuracy of Kuklinski’s reporting as 

it related to efforts by Polish Party and political officials to deal with the crisis. The net result of those analytical conflicts, absent the 

benefit of hindsight, were nuanced judgments that sometimes reflected simple compromise in language. In short, different parts of 

the CIA believed different things.

Finally, there is the stress of who saw what, when and in what order. Although it is perfectly reasonable to assume that these highly 

classified documents were quite literally handed to the named principals and only the named principals, the reality was usually quite 

different. Having “Secretary of Defense” or “Secretary of State” on the address list didn’t necessarily mean that the document went 

to that individual, but more often meant that it was delivered to that individual’s office or appropriately cleared staff. Some were read 

directly, some were briefed, and others were merely summarized or otherwise incorporated in other updates. 

I don’t make these points to pick an intellectual fight with Dr. Kramer, whose work is highly and deservedly respected. It is simply to 

differentiate between the approaches represented by academe and intelligence analysts working under wholly different circumstances 

and dramatically different time schedules. With great respect for the former, I recognize that it is the duty of serious academics 

to account for every discoverable detail. But in the case of broad sweeps of history such as the changes in Poland unfolding in the 

Kuklinski documents, I'm not sure that path leads directly or indirectly to enlightenment. Sometimes greater understanding results 

from taking a step back and recognizing the general direction and ferocity of the oncoming storm, rather than trying to chart the 

speed and velocity of the raindrops.

COMMENTS

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 39
General

Date: Thursday 11/12/2009

Time: 4:15 pm - 6:00 pm

Organizer: Davis Center Staff (mailto:pskalnik@fas.harvard.edu)

Notes: Speakers:

A. Ross Johnson, Senior Fellow, Woodrow Wilson 

Center; Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford 

University

Mark Kramer, Director, Cold War Studies Project, 

Harvard University 

Deborah Lebo, Program Manager, CIA 

Vojtech Mastny, Coordinator, Parallel History Project 

Aris Pappas, Deputy Director, Microsoft Institute for 

Advanced Technology in Governments

Vladislav Zubok, Professor of History, Temple 

University

Location

Location: CGIS South, Room S354

Address: Davis Center, 1730 Cambridge Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

Phone: 617-495-4037

The Warsaw Pact Calender Note

40 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
Notes:

SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 41
Notes:

42 | the warsaw pact - Treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance
SOVIET East european military relations in historical perspective sources and reassessments | 43
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