It should come as no surprise that the regime was alarmed by the developments in Poland and the rise of the Solidarity movement. The Czechoslovak government tightened border controls with their northern neighbors, in fact making travel between the two countries outright impossible at times, and heavily censored whatever already meager information flow there was, painting a picture of disgruntled people striking for basically no valid reason.

Perhaps the best example of official reaction is the "Krkonoše" military exercise by the Czechoslovak People's Army, named after the mountain chain that comprises a part of the border between present day Czech Republic and Poland.

Following a meeting of Warsaw Pact military leadership in Moscow, two Czechoslovak tank divisions with mechanized infantry support were activated in early December 1980 and deployed to the north of the country to be at hand for "joint maneuvers" in Poland – a military intervention by Pact forces not unlike the one from 1968 Czechoslovakia, should the country fail to rein in the opposition. Although the order to stand down was given shortly, the requisition of water cannons and riot gear by the army only serves to further underline the true purpose of this supposed exercise.

However, while the government was on high alert, by and large the Czechoslovak people did not really care. In the eighties, an easy comparison could be made between the conditions in Czechoslovakia and those of Hungary with its brand of "Goulash Communism" that resulted in a largely content people with a higher standard of living than in Poland, where fairly severe economic measures were implemented from the 1970s onwards and contributed greatly to the strikes and revolutionary events in the following years.

Of some interest might be the Polish reaction to the initial lack of overt or large scale sympathy or support from other socialist countries – apparently it was rather mild or not even all that negative. Both Jacek Kuron, one of the leaders of the Polish democratic movement, and historian Norman Davies noted and explained this understanding by the fact that the normalization process hit countries like Czechoslovakia with stricter measures, whereas in Poland the authorities were at least initially less severe.

That being said, local underground movements – Charter 77 of course the most prominent example – did support their Polish counterparts from Solidarity or KSS KOR. The dissidents held meetings in the Krkonoše mountains, tried to disseminate information about the events in Poland, and even established the "Solidarność Polsko-Czechosłowacka" or "Polish-Czech Solidarity" initiative. Cooperation was not limited to the two countries, with expats in the West such as Jan Kavan and Eugeniusz Smolar working together on various projects like the East European Reporter magazine.

Ultimately the Czechoslovak reaction to the events of early eighties Poland is exactly what one might expect or simply guess at a glance. A government worried by potentially dangerous developments and acting just how an authoritarian regime would, a largely pacified populace filled with apathy not really doing anything, and the anti-communist movements trying to spread the news and lend a hand.