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appeared to enjoy the confidence of the Kremlin.
    It had not been a restful vacation. Shortly after his arrival in the Crimea, at the end of July, Gierek had had an unpleasant interview with Brezhnev.The gensek was greatly alarmed by a strike in the eastern Polish city of Lublin that had paralyzed the main Moscow-Berlin railway line. 76 For four days the Soviet Union had been without rail communications with its frontline troops in East Germany. Such a state of affairs was intolerable, Brezhnev made clear. Gierek had tried to reassure the old man. For a few days the strike wave appeared to subside. Then came the shattering news from Gdańsk.
    A special plane was dispatched from Warsaw to bring the first secretary back home. From the airport he drove to Communist Party headquarters. As he walked through the oak doors of the Politburo conference room, his colleagues rose respectfully from their seats. 77
    The Politburo had been in emergency sessions since the previous day, when the Lenin Shipyard had gone on strike. The party secretary responsible for national security, Stanislaw Kania, reported that the strike had already paralyzed most of the Gdańsk region. A wave of panic buying had been observed along the Baltic coast. There were signs of trouble spreading to other parts of the country. A state of alert had been ordered in the armed forces, and army and police reserves dispatched to Gdańsk.
    “And where are all the party members?” demanded Gierek, seated at the head of the oval conference table, in the place of honor, directly beneath an oil portrait of Lenin. 78
    The question was directed at Kania, a thick-jowled apparatchik with a square peasant’s face. During Gierek’s absence in the Crimea he had been left in charge in Warsaw. He had paid a series of visits to trouble spots around the country, including Gdańsk, and understood something that Gierek had not yet grasped: The party had lost its authority.
    “The party members are not strong enough to oppose what is now going on,” he replied. “There were no signals that a strike was about to start in the shipyard. They were taken unawares. There is now a real danger that the situation could get out of control.” 79
    Other Politburo members supported Kania. During the two weeks Gierek had been away, not a single day had gone by without a strike. Deteriorating standards of living had left rank-and-file party members demoralized. “Antisocialist elements” were exploiting the legitimate discontent of the workers. Economic demands were being transformed into political demands, including the establishment of free trade unions. Despite rigid censorship and the resolutely upbeat tone of the official media, news about fresh outbreaks of labor unrest traveled fast. Foreign radio stations, particularly Radio Free Europe, were devoting blanket coverage to the crisis.
    The news from Gdańsk was politically devastating for Gierek. A former coal miner with a reputation for caring about workers, he had come to power on the wave of labor unrest in December 1970 that had sealed the fate of his predecessor, the autocratic Władysław Gomułka. Several weeks after his appointment, Gierek had visited the Lenin Shipyard to appeal to the workers for their “help.” “We will help you, Comrade Gierek,” the workers had shouted back. “ Pomożemy, Towarysz Gierek.” Pomożemy had become the slogan of the Gierek regime. 80
    The first secretary understood the cutthroat world of party politics better than anyone else in the room. He suspected that his enemies in the Politburo were exploiting the latest outbreak of strikes to move against him. 81 He asked himself the question that Communist Party bosses usually ask themselves in such circumstances: Who stood to gain from his overthrow?
    The answer seemed obvious: the security apparatus. During a period of social upheaval the armed forces and the Interior Ministry became the guarantors of political stability in the country. There