I'm from Poland, and one of the controversial topics here is "lustration" - determining which people from the opposition were agents of the secret police. Some historians for example claim that Lech Wałęsa was a communist spy. I don't have enough evidence to form a consistent theory, but I read an interview with a professor at the University of Warsaw, Paweł Wieczorkiewicz, and I wanted to ask you what do you think about it (here's my translation):
(...) It's possible that all of the so called events which happened in communist Poland were actually secret police provocations. The Poznań 1956 protests, the December of 1970, the June of 1976, and finally, the strikes of 1980. In all of those cases it's very likely. We now build patriotic altars around those events, but the reality could be very different. Similarly we could theorize that the November Uprising was a provocation, and I would say the January Uprising surely was one.
Is there any proof of that?
There are plenty of clues. For example, let's consider the protests of 1976 in Radom. I've recently talked to one of the high-ranked communist party members from Radom back then. He asked me a question: haven't you noticed that the most of the protesters were from a factory producing military hardware, where 25% of people were on the counter-intelligence's payroll, and the rest was practically militarized? All the personnel of those plants, including the average workers, were the most trusted people! And they would suddenly revolt? My interlocutor then browsed the photos of these riots with policemen from Radom, and it turned out that the most aggressive mob leaders were people who have never been seen in Radom before. The same happened in Gdańsk.
I assume you think that the fall of communism was an operation of the communist secret police?
Yes. Plenty of sources indicate that it was a gigantic, deliberate, controlled operation. It could've gotten out of control in some details, because every such operation has its own dynamic. But in the end they succeeded. The goal of the secret services was to keep control of the finances during the transformation. And then, thanks to this money, connections and experience to take control of the states of the former empire and the newly established Russia.
Why would the communist secret police do something like that?
KGB concluded that they needed to end the existence of the parasite which was the communist party. After all, this organization became a completely unnecessary factor. The secret services where so powerful that with behind-the-scenes games they could themselves control the empire, have power and earn money. But in order achieve it, they needed to remove the communists. People who controlled the secret police - Yezhov, Beria and others - have tried to do such thing before. However Stalin, and then Khrushchov, were able to defend themselves.
If we assume this theory is true, then how did this operation proceed in Poland?
The resident of the soviet intelligence in Poland, general Pavlov - one of the smartest people in the KGB by the way - wrote in his memoirs that halfway through the 70's he received an order from Moscow not to plant soviet agents in the ruling party. There was no point anymore. They told him to start infiltrating the opposition, which might take over the power in the future. The agents inside "Solidarity" were appropriately instructed, the secret services then played their game. And then the same happens: the Round Table negotiations, elections, shutdown of the communist party and the creation of the new system. With secret police people at the top, or actually in the shadow. This is what I was talking about: the facade version of history and the real decision-makers, about which the average mortal doesn't know. Today's political parties might not only be infiltrated, but also created by the soviet, and then the Russian intelligence. And they don't have to be left-wing parties.
So our eastern neighbor's intelligence is still highly active in our country?
They were the best, the most capable intelligence services in the world. They combine ruthlessness with huge ideas and they can look far ahead. Like Bulgakov wrote: documents don't burn. All burning of files is pure theatre. You only destroy some duplicates, worthless administrative bills and similar things. The most important documents, those which are really important, are always kept. In case of communist Poland - in Moscow. It's not a secret that the copies of the Polish intelligence's documents went to Moscow. They have everything and that's why they control plenty of agents. We won't discover them soon. Just now, after 60 - 70 years we are able with difficulty to reach the truth about the soviet intelligence activities in the interwar Poland. But it's worth to be aware that such people are active here now, on the highest levels of government.
What's your opinion on this theory?
I don't know in Poland, but the KGB -did- launch a coup in the USSR in response to Gorbachev's new union treaty, which would have devolved almost all authority to individual Soviet Republics. The August coup wanted to preserve centralized authority in the Soviet Union and viewed Gorbachev as destroying the country.
The problem was that by 1991, the KGB was neither competent nor ruthless enough to carry through with the coup, and the plotters gave themselves up once it became clear that the Moscow crowd was firmly against them and stood with Russian president Boris Yeltsin. One of the coup leaders actually ended up shooting himself and his wife in the aftermath.
So basically the KGB stood -for- the preservation of the union in 1991 (which is different, btw, from the Communist Party), but they failed to achieve it.
The goal of the secret services was to keep control of the finances during the transformation.
Again, I"m talking about Russia because that's what I know best.
While it's true that a lot of security forces retain a large degree of control over the country if you look at the actual list of oligarchs in Russia, with the exception of Putin himself, does not line up with ex-security service agents very well. Most of them are in fact technocrats with high degree of technical education who were connected enough to benefit from the privatization of the Yeltsin-Putin era. They are basically engineering managerial types rather than secret policemen.
The fall of communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1989 started after a Czechoslovak secret police agent pretended to be beaten to death by riot police. This news woken up a rather lethargic nation and within a week the regime all but collapsed.
The agent refuses to talk about his role until this day and AFAIK historians didn't dare to stirr up the subject. What was the goal of secret service (possibly only the removal of the old and inept political elite), whether foreign secret services knew and participated and which individuals exactly orchestrated it was and still is topic of speculations. A popular theory on the internet is that secret police analysts and collaborators smelled the end of political regime and organized the event to be able to plunder the Czech and Slovak economies.