Poland: Kremlin's Council of War

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Arguments continue among leaders of Poland's independent trade union, Solidarity, over the terms under which last week's General Strike call was lifted.

But it is becoming increasingly clear that this decision has served only to postpone a more direct reckoning between the militant Polish workers' movement and the bureaucratic rulers in Warsaw and Moscow.

Brezhnev

The threatening noises against the Polish unions being made by the Kremlin leaders reached a peak at the weekend with the sudden decision of Brezhney to go in person to attend the Czech party congress in Prague.

At the same time Warsaw Pact manoeuvres in and around Poland were stepped up and prolonged for an indefinite period. East German reinforcements were declared to have been informed "politically and militarily" about the "combat tasks" they would be called on to perform.

And Soviet troop movements on the Polish border were interpreted by the Reagan regime as a possibla prelude to a military intervention.

Certainly the propaganda war has reached fever pitch, with the official Soviet press churning, out political attacks on Solidarity and the reformist KOR dissident movement, branding them as "counter-revolutionaries" and "anti-Soviet"

and implicitly castigating the Polish regime for tolerating their existence.

Party congress

But what particularly concerns the Kremlin is the fact that, under huge mass pressure, the Polish Stalinists have been forced to convene a Party Congress for July 20, and to pledge that elections for a new central committee will be conducted by secret ballot with an unrestricted list of candidates.

The prospect of a wholesale overturn of Polish party bureaucrats by a radicalised membership alarms not only Brezhnev but also the most diehard elements in the Polish leadership.

One of their most voçal representatives, Stefan Olszowski, has been at the head of the Polish delegation to the Czech congress and no doubt deep in discussion with Brezhnev and top Stalinist brass in Prague in the last two days.

There is little doubt that Olszowski would be a leading candidate for a Moscow puppet replacement of Polish leader Kania in any moves to crack down on the Polish masses.

The danger remains very real and immediate. The Polish workers must be prepared to defend themselves and their organisations against a ruthless Stalinist And the workers of Eastern Europe must be mobilised not simply to defend the Polish workers but to take action to build their own Solidarity-type unions and overthrow their own parasitic Stalinist rulers.

Solidarity leaders have now revealed that they backed down from strike action under threat f martial law and bloodshed by representatives of the Polish bureaucracy.

"This time it looked as if it wasn't a bluff," declared the new Solidarity spokesman, Janusz Onyszkiewicz.

But this was not the unanimous view of Solidarity leaders. Gdanss shipyard worker Anna Wa'entynowicz a leading figure in last summer's sit-in struggles, was dismissed from he: post after urging the strike to go ahead irrespective of the 11th hour deal with the government.

And press spokesman Karol Modzelewski resigned in protest both at the deal and the way it had been agreed.

Brezhnev