Edward Luce (“Biden should use the cold war handbook to stop Putin”, Opinion, February 12) draws a parallel between the present Russian military build-up and the Soviet one on Poland’s borders in December 1980.
In the latter case “Moscow gave the wobbly Polish communists a window in which to crack down or risk an invasion. Warsaw continued to prevaricate.”
But General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the president, did ultimately crack down on the Polish independent trade union movement. Some have argued he did so because the Soviets had threatened to go ahead with an invasion. Soviet troops were put on alert.
In any case, as the US historian Vojtech Mastny has pointed out, at the Politburo meeting on December 11, 1981, Yuri Andropov, who was then second secretary of the Communist party, ruled out a Soviet intervention in Poland.
So the lessons to be drawn from the Soviet “non-invasion” of Poland in 1980-1981 are somewhat mixed.
Guido Franzinetti
Department of Humanistic Studies
University of Eastern Piedmont
Vercelli, Italy
Letter: Soviet threat to invade Poland is inexact parallel
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