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could be no major shakeup in either institution until the strikes were over. With their vast network of agents and informers around the country, the security chiefs were also best placed to manipulate the unrest to their own advantage.
    Kania seemed harmless enough. He was known to be fond of alcohol and was frequently incapable of serious work after lunch. In Communist Party circles such a weakness was not generally considered an obstacle to high office: It made a man more pliable, more dependent on his Politburo colleagues. Recently, however, Kania had been displaying some worrying signs of independence. Furthermore, he had a powerful ally in the defense minister, General Wojciech Jaruzelski. 82
    Like many high-ranking Polish Communists, Gierek could not understand why the security chiefs had allowed the labor unrest to grow and grow without taking elementary countermeasures. Had they wanted to put a stop to the strikes, he reasoned, it would have been a simple enough matter to isolate the principal troublemakers and prevent information reaching Western correspondents in Warsaw. But Kania had said repeatedly that the situation was under control and that Gierek should go ahead with his Crimean holiday. Now that the strikes were spreading along the Baltic coast, the task of restoring order was more difficult.
    Gierek’s first instinct was to counterattack. Obviously, he told the Politburo, the strikers were inspired by “outside forces.”
    “This is not something we need to discuss today, but we do need to think about it,” said Gierek, suggesting he might favor an armed crackdown. “Itis clear that this period of tension cannot go on indefinitely. It may take a more dangerous form—and that would compel us to use force.” 83
    Within hours of Gierek’s return to Warsaw, the machinery of repression had moved into high gear, and columns of riot troops were moving in the direction of Gdańsk. The Polish government placed three army regiments stationed in the Gdańsk region on a state of alert. Soviet naval ships appeared off the Baltic coast. Warsaw Pact troops in East Germany and the western Soviet Union were called up for what the Soviet news agency Tass euphemistically described as “routine maneuvers.” 84 Telephone communications with Gdańsk were cut. A task force was established in the Ministry of Interior to prepare a plan to crush the rebellion and normalize “the country’s social and political situation.” The plan, code-named Summer ’80, envisaged the storming of the Lenin Shipyard by helicopter, the arrest of Wałęsa and other strike leaders, and twenty-four-hour surveillance of “antisocialist forces.” 85
    The immediate priority was to contain the revolt within the Lenin Shipyard.
    W HILE G IEREK WAS DEMANDING a smothering of information about the unrest in Gdańsk, a balding man in a moth-eaten silk dressing gown was busy dispensing it as rapidly as possible. Jacek Kuroń lived in a three-room apartment on Adam Mickiewicz Street, a fifteen-minute tram ride from the Central Committee building. Over the last month he had slept no more than three or four hours a night. He spent his days and nights on the phone, relaying information from the strike committees springing up around Poland to Western news organizations in Warsaw.
    Kuroń’s address book contained the names and telephone numbers of hundreds of opposition activists in towns and villages all over Poland, from Arłamow to Zakopane. Western correspondents used to joke that it was the most subversive document in the Soviet empire. Its owner sat behind a large wooden desk, littered with half-drunk cups of coffee, discarded cigarette packages, old newspapers, hastily scribbled notes, and a battered orange phone. A human dynamo, he was seldom in repose. He would dial one number, listen for fifteen or twenty seconds, and bark out a few commands. Practically hoarse from a surfeit of talking, smoking, and drinking, he would pause only to dial a