Soviet Domination - A Red Dawn story

(40)

June 1980:

Somoza’s sudden departure had left a power vacuum in Nicaragua where the Sandinistas were fast to take advantage. There had been an attempt by the National Guard to form an emergency government but Cuban-supplied vehicles allowed Sandinista guerrillas to fast get into Managua in number and they took over the capital city. The ranks of the military no longer had the heart in them and there were plenty more mid-ranking officers who declared their neutrality. The high-ranking National Guard officers had no one to fight for them. They tried to flee like Somoza had. A few got away, most didn’t. Nicaragua was now in the hands of the former rebels… who didn’t wish to see new rebels rise-up.

The Sandinista fighters were part of the wider FSLN movement, which had started out as an opposition umbrella group. Many of the leading members, especially the political figures, had lost their lives in recent years when CIA advisers had pushed National Guard gunmen – or maybe US Green Berets if the rumours were true – towards them with assassinations undertaken. The FSLN was no government-in-waiting nor was it no longer a grouping of many voices all united in opposition to Somoza as it had once been. There were three key people at the top, all hard-core ideological figures who had extensive ties to Cuba and an obsessive hatred of the United States after all that it had done in their country. The brothers Daniel and Humberto Ortega Saavedra were joined by Tomás Borge Martínez in a power-sharing troika. Everyone else – Cruz, Pastora, Ramírez and Wheelock the better known of so many more – were dead. The Ortegas and Borge found the switchover from being guerrillas to running a government difficult. Thankfully, they had friends and allies who were willing to step in and help. Those friends being the Cubans, and also the Soviets too though acting from afar.

The Nicaraguan Revolution commenced. Daniel Ortega was heading the government as president with Humberto the defence minister; Borge was tasked with interior affairs. Those ‘interior affairs’ were the killings which became the Red Terror. The revolution demanded blood, Borge declared, and there was plenty of that spilt. Enemies of the people were murdered with abandon. These enemies came in all forms. Borge was able to root them out and defend the Nicaraguan Revolution with all of the killings that took place. Former figures connected to the Somoza regime were first on the list (including those fools waiting at Mateare for Somoza to send them an aircraft to join him) though right behind them were many connected with other aspects of opposition within Nicaragua which had no real allegiance to what was left of the FSLN leadership. Guerrilla gunmen were busy with executions. Soon enough, joining the mass of growing corpses, were military officers from the National Guard. The top-level officers had been dealt with early on but now the shooting moved to the mid-ranking ones who had declared their neutrality in the final stage of the fighting. The Sandinistas shot them too with the troika in power ignoring Cuban advice when it came to keeping them around to build a new army with their experience. Their experience was that of killing Sandinista fighters and oftentimes their families too; it didn’t matter if individually some were technically innocent of that, they were part of the Somoza regime and the Sandinistas were having their revenge.

On that issue, Cuban concerns were brushed aside though with other matters, the troika needed their help. Nicaragua was dirt-poor after years of civil war and Somoza wasn’t the only one who’d fled with what little wealth there had been left. Basic human needs needed attending too if the Sandinistas weren’t to face resistance. Moreover, despite the bloodlust against enemies, there was still plenty of ideological commitment to the cause which they had all joined to begin this: they were rebels with a cause. The Nicaraguan Revolution was more than the Red Terror. Cuban advisers – backed by Soviet financing – would help provide healthcare and education across the country. Food was needed and so too immediate land reform. More Cubans would show up soon enough to bring all this about while Nicaragua got back up on its feet. Fraternal assistance it would be. Fraternal assistance came in other forms as well. The Cubans would help the Nicaraguans build themselves a new army in the future while in the meantime, the Cubans helped the Sandinistas with foreign relations. Countries across the world started recognising the new government and there was sponsorship for entry requirements into international organisations that the Cubans themselves were part of. In addition, there was the issue of addressing Sandinista anger towards what was going on at the United States embassy in Managua. Borge spoke of ‘taking over’ the facility and ‘making the blood run’ there as well. Raúl Castro came himself to Nicaragua and told Borge and the Ortegas that that couldn’t happen. American diplomats & citizens who were crowded in there along with Nicaraguans seeking refuge were to be unmolested. That would bring down on Nicaragua what Somoza had been unable to get: United States military intervention. The embassy situation would be addressed with diplomacy. If the opponents of the new regime who’d managed to get in there (which was causing political problems in Washington) had to be allowed to leave, then they could do so as well. The troika were pretty miffed at this bossing of them around by Cuba’s #2 strongman yet eventually backed down. Cuba was giving them everything else they needed. Fidel Castro had also promised them Somoza too.

I haven't said there will be four hundred million Chinese dead.
This is a new story. I'm sorry that the old story on another board didn't meet your expectations. Alas, that's the way of things especially as it wasn’t finished with regards to China.

Never said that didn't meet expectations, merely that part don't cliked for me...and the chinese deathtool it's from the movie (even if you can change it)

Is tension not already high between them.

(41)

July 1980:

Romania was the Soviet Union’s most difficult ally within Eastern Europe. Their position in that was secure with Ceauşescu building his dynasty there. Right behind though were the Poles. The Polish government in Warsaw often refused to listen to Soviet demands dressed up as advice and through 1980, as Poland was hit with economic woes, there were increasing displeasure shown in Moscow by the Soviet government at the Poles. The East Germans, the Czechoslovaks, the Hungarians and the Bulgarians (Romania did its own thing) all followed Soviet advice in dealing with unhappy workers when it came to price increases and wages stagnation. Yet, the Poles wanted to do things their own way. Trouble was coming in Poland due to this, the Politburo was informed, and that was a perfectly correct prediction in terms of occurrence though not in the manner in which that trouble came to Poland.

It begun in the industrial town of Lublin, down in southeastern Poland near to the Soviet border. The price of meat for lunch at one of the many factories there overnight came with an immense increase. The worker’s wages hadn’t gone up in a long time and there were other price rises elsewhere, but nothing like this. Objections were voiced and the workers told there was nothing that could be done. They decided that there was. In one part of that factory, workers stood idle next to their machines. Throughout the rest of the afternoon, word spread across that one factory and everyone else did the same. There was no protest in the streets, no demands for political freedom or anything else like that which might have been expected. Instead, the workers refused to work. Over the next few days, the strike spread throughout Lublin. All of the other factories and then the transport network came to a halt too. Again, it was a simple strike with workers showing up for work but refusing to do their work. There was organisation with spokesmen nominated yet apart from that, the acts and demands were simple: bring those prices back down and increase our wages. Sympathy strikes popped up in nearby smaller towns too despite efforts by the government to keep the news contained of what was happening in Lublin. Polish security forces were all over the town and standing ready for riots to erupt. There was none of that though, even when pressure was exerted. The striking workers stuck to their non-violent approach and waited for the government to blink.

Warsaw did blink in the end. The striker’s demands were met. The price of food would come down and there would be an increase in wages. The terms of the settlement from the government were quite generous too. There were multiple reasons for the concession. First, Warsaw believed that the problem would go away with Lublin settled rather than spread elsewhere across the country. The strikers were being – sort of – reasonable as well in their demands as they hadn’t moved to political issues. Further than these two domestic reasons, there was the intervention of the Soviets too behind the scenes. When the strikes went beyond Lublin itself, one of those sympathy strikes hit the nearby town of Deblin. This was a military town for the Poles and a major rail transport link for the Soviets between their western military districts and the Group of Soviet Forces in East Germany. Those links were shut down only for a short while but bit hard. The Politburo feared a spread elsewhere and were concerned over nationwide rail strikes that would isolate East Germany and effectively Czechoslovakia too if all of Poland’s rail workers went out on strike. The news would travel if the strikes continued, Moscow foresaw, even beyond Poland. Both the Polish and Soviet governments weren’t happy with the concessions made but they were given to the Lublin strikers with the intention of nipping this all in the bud. That was a forlorn hope.

I can't begin to guess who'll win the election. BTW, the Soviets and Poles only fed the workers' movement in Poland by agreeing to the demand...

Waiting for more...

(42)

August 1980:

The Poles were given an inch and they took a mile: such was the view in Moscow. Suslov was at the head of the condemnation among his Politburo colleagues on what the workers in Poland had done after they had been given those concessions. The next round of strikes were treated as an insult, as a direct challenge to not only the Polish government but to their fraternal allies in the Soviet Union. Such a viewpoint came about because of how fast the Poles organised and their outrageous demands. Miners in Silesia had gone on strike straight after Lublin had been resolved and then there had come strikes on the Baltic coast starting with the Lenin Shipyard. From there in Gdansk, those strikes among workers in the shipbuilding industry spread. The Politburo was given a full breakdown of the exact reasons as supplied by the Poles and confirmed by the KGB with their independent sources (what was causing the strikes plus how the actions of Western banks were behind the economic problems Poland was having) but that really didn’t matter to those who again listened to Polish complaints. These strikers wanted and did more than those in Lublin too. There were demands for their own trade unions, freedom for so-called political prisoners and for a role to be granted in government policy-making: the 21 Demands were an affront to Moscow. They protested in the streets rather than standing idle in factories and other places of work; in addition, they were actively spreading the word of their strikes as far afield as they could. Poland’s leader, General Secretary Gierek, wanted to give into some of the demands and thus mollify the strikers somewhat so that they would go back to work.

From the Politburo, the response was nyet.


The Soviet Union had just hosted the very successful Moscow Olympics. The games had been an immense propaganda coup for the country and the benefits of the socialist system of government. One only had to look at the medals won by Soviet athletes and those from other socialist nations who attended. The games had been well-organised and the security had been excellent at the event & elsewhere throughout Moscow. What visitors hadn’t seen was the ‘cleansing of vermin’ beforehand with vagrants & petty street criminals either arrested or expelled from the Moscow Oblast during the games. Cultural events had taken place in addition to the sport and there were ambitions for some of those as well as the sport to bring about diplomatic advances from them. No one had been talking about Poland during the Olympics and there had only been a few voices with complaints about the fighting in Afghanistan & Iran.

The second round of internal Polish troubles came on the back of all of this success which the Politburo, naturally, congratulated themselves upon bringing about. The actions from the Polish workers were unwelcome. Their strikes had attracted the attention of the West and their demands were made in a manner which reflected badly on the Polish government (who didn’t need much help with that), socialist systems of government in the Marxist-Leninist model and thus the Soviet government. Poland’s strikes were seen as having the potential to destroy the goodwill given to the Soviet Union with the Olympics. However, the plan by Geirek to cave once again to his people and therefore bring them to an end wasn’t what Moscow wanted to see. Concessions would only bring further demands – that had just been proved – and show the world that there was something wrong that needed correcting. Taking the opposite approach, cracking down hard upon the strikers, was discounted too though by the Politburo. Andropov and his colleagues debated both courses of action and didn’t want either. They instead pushed for Warsaw to take a third option, that being to not give in nor move against the strikers but to wait them out. Geirek was told to do just this when Gromyko went to Warsaw along with Marshal Ustinov as well. The visit by the Soviet defence minister wasn’t done for no reason at all.

Behind the scenes, the Politburo agreed to act in different ways that the Polish government wouldn’t be told about. There would be alternatives looked for to replace Geirek and other identified weaklings in Warsaw. Furthermore, the KGB would be allowed to undertake certain ‘actions’ in Poland with Chebrikov given full support from Andropov plus Suslov as well to do these. Those actions were to smash the troublemakers in a clandestine manner.