Today’s post ends the story, spread over several episodes, about the foreign policy doctrines of the countries of the Soviet bloc. The end of the block is commonly associated with the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev’s power. His name bears also the doctrine which proclaimed the consent of the USSR to the emancipation of the states of the bloc and their liberation from the socialist system.

The world learned about the Gorbachev doctrine from a phrase spoken by Gennady Gerasimov, spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the USSR, who on October 25, 1989 in an interview with reporters in Helsinki explained the meaning of Shevardnadze’s speech from 2 days before. Shevardnadze stated that the USSR respected the freedom of choice of all states, especially other states of the Warsaw Pact. The world continued to speculate on what his thesis would mean in practice.

And it was supposed to be like in a song by Sinatra who sang “I did it my way”. Each socialist state was to decide for itself which path to follow. At that time, Poland already enjoyed the first (almost) non-communist government in the bloc. Hungary was still ruled by the communists, but already under the new social democratic banner and with technocratic ministers. In the GDR, street protests were gathering momentum. Emotions grew in Czechoslovakia.
 
Socialism was collapsing, and with it the whole community. The USSR began to implode. And all the other ex-satellite states have refocused westwards (towards Brussels) their aspirations. The first step in their march back to the West had to be the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact.

I had a modest share in the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. In July 1990, a special group of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Temporary Commission of Government Plenipotentiaries) commenced its work, whose task was to prepare the reform of the Warsaw Pact. I was included in the work on the Polish position. There was no doubt in the leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that the reform should logically lead to the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. It had to be done in such a way as not to provoke an overly aggressive reaction from the USSR. 

In the draft of the Polish position for the first meeting of the group, on which I was working, the starting point was the thesis that the first stage of the reform should be the dissolution of the military structures of the Pact and the reduction of the Warsaw Treaty to the format of loose political consultations. At the same time, the Ministry of National Defense worked on its position. At that time, it was the advisor to Deputy Minister Janusz Onyszkiewicz, and later Deputy Minister of National Defense and Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Przemysław Grudziński who played there a leading conceptual role. A more cautious approach prevailed there. The Ministry of National Defense wanted (in the summer of 1990) to maintain some form of military consultations as well. However, we managed to establish a joint position of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of National Defense for the first meeting of the “reform” group. 

For our generals (from the General Staff), it was, however, too radical even in such a milder form. They ran with an alarm signal to President Jaruzelski. The General invited Minister Skubiszewski for a meeting and relayed the concerns. The special representative of Poland for the reform of the Warsaw Pact and the head of the Polish delegation to the meeting in Celakovice, Czech Republic (and not in Prague, as some studies indicate) was director Jerzy M. Nowak. However, he had some important foreign obligations which meant that he could only come to the meeting on the last day. Until his arrival, I was to temporarily lead the delegation (which included also military staff headed by general Marian Robełek). 

Minister Skubiszewski decided to give me personal instructions by phone before our departure. He asked to be connected to me by phone (I was freshly promoted to the position of head of department). He did not know that I lived in the dormitory of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (the end of the Polish People’s Republic found my family of four living together on 21 square meters). And there was only one telephone: in the apartment of the concierge. When the concierge ran to our upstairs room and knocked on the door, he was terrified and pale. The minister himself had never called the dormitory with an urgent matter for its tenant. Minister Skubiszewski talked with me for a long time. He laid out the details of the instructions for me. 

It was not the last time when he called in the evening from his room in Foksal to my dormitory (I don’t have to mention how his calls built my position in the eyes of other tenants, and most of all the concierge).

I was to be prudent and cautious in Celakovice. But, unfortunately, at the very beginning I played a “trick” that was not practiced in the Warsaw Pact. The delegation of the USSR proposed that the starting positions of the parties should be expressed in alphabetical order (according to the names of the countries in Russian). This would mean that the Soviets would be the last to speak (not counting the Czecho-Slovaks who presided over the deliberations and expressed their views at the outset). 

I decided that because of our position (quite radical at the background of other positions) it would be better to find out first what the USSR itself thinks before we express our views. So when our turn came, I passed. But I asked for the floor after the last speech, i.e. after the USSR. The head of the USSR delegation, Gorald Gorinovich, almost went ballistic after my statement. It turned out that our position was too provocative for him. Fortunately, his deputy, ambassador Valery Popov must have understood our arguments well. For, when director Nowak came to soothe Gorinovich’s emotions, Popov helped him considerably. 

In October, I went to my first diplomatic post in Vienna, and in December, Jerzy M. Nowak became the ambassador to the CSCE and the UN there. It was director Andrzej Towpik who was responsible on behalf of Poland for bringing the “Warsaw Pact reform” to the end. Due to the internal (Polish United Workers’ Party ministers’ departure from the government) and geopolitical conditions (the reunification of Germany, the withdrawal of Soviet troops), indeed, as predicted by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the beginning of the process, the military structures of the University of Warsaw were completely disbanded in the fall of 1990, and in the summer of 1991 the whole alliance ceased to exist.