Secret Service Missions in Poland

In 1981, several hundred agents of the former Czech secret police, the StB, volunteered to go to Poland on a secret mission to counteract the forces of democracy unleashed by the independent trade union, Solidarnosc. "With this mission, the regime in Prague hoped to prevent the spread of ideas about freedom from Poland to Czechoslovakia", the newspaper reports. "Historian Petr Blazek, who discovered the documents which include lists of names of the StB agents recounts: 'The mission was to run parallel to an invasion of Poland. The volunteer aspect is interesting when you bear in mind that not much time had passed since August 1968 (when the Prague reforms were prevented by tanks under the Warsaw Pact). All the StB people had witnessed the occupation of Czechoslovakia and knew that they weren't going to Poland on a holiday.'" The mission was called off because the Polish communist leadership took matters into its own hands and imposed martial law on the country.

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