U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland, 1980–1981

4 Filling Out the Picture

Chapter 4: Filling Out the Picture In mid-December the weather conditions that had been impeding assessment of the status of most of the Soviet forces in the western USSR dissipated . Imagery obtained at that time showed that only three regular ground force divisions in the western USSR were fully mobilized—one each in the Baltic region, Belorussia, and the Carpathian area of Ukraine.1 These were the same three divisions that had been observed mobilizing in the latter half of November. The airborne division in the Baltic region that had been seen in early December preparing for movement had stood down. (Airborne divisions were normally maintained at or near full manning and thus would not have required a notable influx of reservists.) The heightened alert conditions that had been observed in many of the military installations in the area in late November and early December had ended, and most components were in normal peacetime posture. The CIA concluded that most of the Soviet divisions and support units in the western USSR had not undergone the mobilization required to bring them to full readiness for movement into Poland. The military preparations that had been observed over the preceding months were judged to have been contingency measures, undertaken in case it became necessary to carry out a full mobilization in response to a political decision to introduce forces into Poland. Standard Soviet military procedures called for units facing the prospect of being ordered to full combat readiness to take preparatory steps to reduce the time required to complete the process if the orders were issued. These steps included establishment of command and communications centers, reconnaissance of dispersal areas, and in some cases partial mobilization. Such intermediate measures were particularly important for divisions 63 1. Except where otherwise noted, the intelligence described in this portion of the chapter is drawn from “Approaching the Brink: Moscow and the Polish Crisis, November–December 1980,” dec. Intelligence Memorandum, December 1980. Another, less detailed presentation, is in “Poland’s Prospects Over the Next Six Months,” dec. National Intelligence Estimate, 12.6–81, January 1981, Document 38 in Poland, 1980–82: Compendium. 64 U.S. Intelligence and the Confrontation in Poland normally kept at low peacetime manning levels. Most of the activities observed in Soviet units in the western USSR in October and November fell into this category of “intermediate” steps, and most of the divisions reported as taking such steps were in the category maintained at lowest peacetime manning. In the CIA’s view these preparatory steps had brought overall military readiness to the point where a force of as many as twenty Warsaw Pact divisions could have been deployed into Poland within about a week of receiving a full mobilization order. The evidence also showed, however, that except for the three divisions previously identified, the order for full combat readiness—which would have entailed extensive activation of reservists— had not been given. Skeptics could posit that the reservists and vehicles necessary to bring the Soviet intervention forces to full readiness had actually been called up, but had been returned to the civilian sector by the time the weather cleared (i.e., after only a week or so of active duty). The CIA acknowledged that this was physically possible but judged it as highly improbable, and it still seems so. As the CIA’s analysis at the time pointed out, once a brink was reached at which Soviet leaders were willing to bear the cost of such a large mobilization, there would have been strong resistance to immediately reversing it. At a minimum, having already borne the main cost of the call-up itself, it seemed implausible that the personnel would not have been kept at least through the normal reservist training period. Supporting this conclusion was the fact that the three divisions that had been seen mobilizing in late November were the same three that still had their reservists in the third week of December, when the rest of the forces in the western USSR were clearly not in a mobilized status. All of which led CIA analysts to conclude that Soviet force preparations had not approached what would have been required if Moscow had been seriously preparing for the prospect of military intervention carried out without Polish cooperation. The CIA continued to hold the judgment that such an intervention would require a force of some thirty divisions. For this, even preparatory measures well short of full mobilization would still have greatly exceeded what had...