SITUATION REPORT: POLAND

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP84B00049R000200340010-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: T
• Document Page Count: 3
• Document Creation Date: December 20, 2016
• Sequence Number: 10
• Content Type: REPORT

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
NATIONAL FOREIGN ASSESSMENT CENTER
23 December 1981
Information as of 0730,
SITUATION REPORT: POLAND
We have no information overnight to update the strike
situation. The party is concerned that continuing scarcity of
consumer goods is denying the military council the public support
it is so desperately seeking? The party Central Committee
reported to local party organizations yesterday that "many
members" believe the martial law regime would have enjoyed "full
support" if it had improved consumer supplies. The regime has
set up a special network to distribute aid from Poland's
Conmunist allies. Provincial military leaders apparently will
oversee distribution, and priority will be given to children; the
sick, disabled and homeless; and industrial workers and their
families.
More reports are circulating in the West European press that
some internees are being held in outdoor camps and are suffering
considerably, but we cannot confirm them. West German television
claimed yesterday that film director Andrzej Wajda has been
detained after refusing to sign the obligatory loyalty oath.
Wajda directed "Man of Iron", an award-winning film about the
birth of Solidarity. Wajda's detention, if true, could mobilize
West European intellectuals and could thereby put new pressure on
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West European governments.
The regime is screening journalists closely in order to
maintain its control over the press. Newspapers not currently
being distributed may begin to reappear as early as next
Monday. The Embassy has learned that all newspaper people are
undergoing a "verification" process in which journalists are
interrogated by a government board for as long as 70 minutes. At
one paper, the board was compromised of two men from the
military, one from the Communist party, and one from the allied
Democratic party. Journalists are then classified as "safe"
(allowed to write), "not entirely safe," (permitted to correct
copy), or "unsafe" (and dismissed).
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The Embassy reports that the clandestine flying
universities, which proliferated in the last years of the Gierek
regime, are beginning to spring up again. Faculty members of
Warsaw University are holding informal "consultations" in private
apartments on a range of subjects. If the universities are
closed down indefinitely, the practice could proliferate and give
impetus to passive resistance in other segments of the society.
The regime's more stringent rules governing the operation of
schools and universities--released yesterday to lower level party
organizations--may further spur the creation of flying.
universities. The rules call for increased actions to prevent
"illegal behavior," tighter controls on copying equipment, and
allows (but does not obligate) directors to change teaching
plans.
The British press reports that the British Broadcasting
Corporation is increasing its broadcasts to Poland by five hours
a week to a weekly total of 26 hours. The Polish party reports
that the populace is following Western radio broadcasts "with
great interest" and lamants that their "uncritical acceptance" is
having a "negative impact" on the public mood. Several
provincial party leaders have proposed increased jarrrning.
Pravda today ran a report from Warsaw again stressing that
the situation in Poland was returning to normal. The article
highlighted the party's role and cautioned "where the party is
passive, a vacuum develops which the enemy immediately fills."
Moscow may be reminding Jaruzelski that it is sensitive to the
military pushing the party into the shadows. Soviet ideologists,
like Suslov, are probably not pleased at the military and
nationalist cast of the current martial law regime.
On 13 December, the day that Jaruzelski's declaration of
martial law was announced in the USSR, the KGB and police broke
up a demonstration at Moscow State University, arresting 60
students and dispersing an equal number. In 1968, students and
intellectuals did protest the Soviet invasion of
Czechoslovakia. The event was probably not a protest over events
in Poland--most Russians have been largely unsympathetic to
Solidarity and more concerned about bread and butter issues at
home. But disturbances of this sort probably fortify the
Politburo's fear that Solidarity's successful. challenge of the
Polish regime could encourage unrest among the Soviet public.
Soviet military forces in and around Poland continue to show
no signs of unusual movements.
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