Andrew Nagorski is a former Newsweek foreign correspondent and editor, whose postings included Hong Kong, Warsaw and Moscow. He is the author of 1941: The Year Germany Lost the War.
As tensions continue to escalate in Hong Kong, especially after the police arrested two protest leaders on Friday in an attempt to discourage new mass rallies planned for this weekend, the greatest fear is that mainland China will intervene directly with overwhelming force. In that case, Hong Kong could become the scene of another crackdown on the scale of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989—or possibly even worse, given the widespread expectation that the Hong Kong protesters would fight back.
But this worst-case scenario may be less likely than another outcome based on a completely different analogy: Poland in 1981. In that fateful year, Poland’s Solidarity labor movement challenged the country’s—and the Kremlin’s—communist rulers as never before. What played out in the Gdansk shipyard and in factories and streets all across the country ended in a show of force by the Polish government. To Moscow’s relief, the power play temporarily protected Communist Party rule, thwarting the workers challenging the putative workers’ state. Ultimately, however, it only postponed the demise of a government that lost any remaining shred of legitimacy after the widely decried clampdown.
As in Hong Kong, democratic aspirations underpinned the Poles’ demands for an end to food shortages and the other egregious economic failings of the Soviet-imposed system. And, just like in Hong Kong and Beijing, the communist authorities were increasingly at a loss about how to handle the escalating demands of the protesters while maintaining their control of the levers of power.
China’s late leader Deng Xiaoping famously enunciated the concept of “one country, two systems” that was supposed to guarantee Hong Kong’s autonomy after British rule ended in 1997. This was meant to reassure Hong Kong’s inhabitants that they would enjoy a privileged position as compared with their compatriots on the mainland—although Beijing was now the ultimate authority.
While Soviet rulers preserved the fiction of Poland’s complete independence once they installed a communist government in Warsaw at the end of World War II, they operated on a similar principle. Call it “one empire, two systems.”
Within the Soviet bloc, Poles carved out a special place for themselves. Although communist apparatchiks called the political shots, they recognized quickly that they could not follow their usual pattern of collectivizing agriculture and cracking down on religion. Poland’s fiercely independent small farmers would not tolerate the former, and the Catholic Church commanded the allegiance of the overwhelming majority of the population, who would have revolted before tolerating the latter.
Nonetheless, Poles increasingly wanted much more than that. When the Communist Party chief Edward Gierek sharply raised meat prices in the summer of 1980, a wave of strikes culminated in the creation of Solidarity. Gierek gave in to pressure to legalize the new movement, but he was promptly replaced by Stanislaw Kania. The new leader was faced with the impossible challenge of both satisfying Solidarity and the Kremlin.
Like Carrie Lam, the Beijing-approved leader of Hong Kong, Kania claimed to support dialogue but warned protesters that their increasing militancy could end badly for everyone. Soviet forces were sent on maneuvers near Poland, and the Kremlin intoned that Solidarity was jeopardizing the “independent existence” of Poland, which could lead to “a confrontation threatening bloodshed.”
Similarly, Chinese troops and police have put on shows of force near Hong Kong. In case anyone missed the point, China’s Xinhua news agency recently declared that Beijing had a “responsibility to intervene when riots take place in Hong Kong.”
Impatient with Kania’s indecisive leadership and Solidarity’s calls for more sweeping freedoms throughout the Soviet bloc, Moscow engineered yet another shake-up in Warsaw, replacing him with General Wojciech Jaruzelski. The new communist boss immediately called for an end to all strikes, promising to take “extraordinary means of action” if he was disobeyed. On December 13, 1981, he did just that, declaring martial law, banning Solidarity and arresting many of its leaders and activists.
Jaruzelski argued that he chose the lesser of two evils: By orchestrating a crackdown with Polish troops and riot police, he maintained, he prevented a direct intervention by Soviet forces. The “purgatory” of martial law was absolutely necessary “to prevent us from ending in hell,” as he put it. To this day, Poles are split on whether they believe him.
Since it views direct intervention as a last resort, Beijing may be sorely tempted to follow the Polish example, pressuring the Hong Kong authorities to act like Jaruzelski. If they go that route, Lam and her subordinates would almost certainly borrow a page from his “lesser of two evils” script and insist that they acted to avert direct intervention by China.
But there is good reason to question Jaruzelski’s excuse for his actions in 1981—and there would be good reason to treat the rationale for a Hong Kong crackdown with similar skepticism.
After Solidarity triumphed and the Polish communist regime collapsed in 1989, triggering the chain of events that led to the implosion of the Soviet Union two years later, new evidence surfaced about what had really happened.
In 1992, Mikhail Gorbachev told the Polish Press Agency: “Soviet forces were not to intervene in Poland under any circumstances.” In a transcript of a Kremlin Politburo meeting on October 29, 1981 that was published in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, KGB chief Yuri Andropov was quoted as saying: “The Polish leaders sometimes talk of military aid from fraternal states. However, we should decisively carry out our own policy—not sending in our troops to Poland.” Defense Minister Dmitri Ustinov echoed that view. “Our troops should not be sent into Poland,” he declared.
At a time when Moscow was bogged down in its war in Afghanistan and beset with economic disarray, the last thing the enfeebled Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev wanted was to spark an all-out fight with the troublesome Poles. But his leadership team deliberately conveyed the impression that they were ready to strike. This gave Jaruzelski the excuse to do their dirty work and make their direct intervention unnecessary.
No two historical situations are ever exactly alike. But China’s leaders also want to avoid paying the price for a direct assault on Hong Kong’s protesters, jeopardizing their economic achievements and geopolitical ambitions. Beijing, like Moscow in 1981, would prefer a peaceful solution if possible—or a local crackdown if it feels there is no alternative. It sees direct intervention by its own forces as the last—and least desirable—outcome.
To that end, Beijing is warning that Big Brother is watching and ready to resort to force directly. But, in Poland’s case then and China’s case now, Big Brother did not and does not want that result. All of which offers a small window of opportunity for Hong Kong today.
The protesters should recognize that, like Solidarity in Poland, they risk a major defeat if their actions spark a violent crackdown, probably setting back their cause by at least several years. But the Communist authorities should recognize that, even if they prevail by the use of force in the short term, they may be inviting a far larger backlash in the future.
Poland’s declaration of martial law did nothing to address the long list of legitimate grievances of its people; in fact, it forced the Solidarity movement underground, only to resurface with unstoppable momentum in 1989.
Chinese leaders always claim to be able to take the long-term view. If they do so now, they should recognize that they desperately need to come up with a nonviolent settlement—for their own good. That will mean convincing the protesters that their aspirations will be treated seriously, with all the key players invited to participate in crafting a genuine Hong Kong solution.
If China and Hong Kong’s leaders fail to do so, Poland’s example may prove far more prophetic than they are willing to imagine now.
