Report on Poland

On October 30, 1980, two Polish officials, Stanislaw Kania (first secretary of the Communist Party) and Josef Pinkowski (prime minister), visited the Soviet Union to engage in discussions with the Soviet leadership about the ongoing critical situation in Poland. The next day, at a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in the Soviet Union (CPSU), Soviet leaders met to talk about Kania and Pinkowski's visit. In his summary about the previous day's proceedings, Leonid Brezhnev, first secretary of the CPSU, expressed his continued deep concern over the strength of the opposition in Poland and the inaction and hesitation of the Polish leadership. This document points to the involvement of Soviet leaders in handling the crisis in Poland, and it shows the pressure that Polish officials received from the Soviet Union behind closed doors.