U.S. and Harvard analysts reacted with dismay and pessimism to reports early this morning that Poland's Communist leaders had declared martial law and initiated a long-awaited crackdown on the country's Solidarity free trade union movement.

Hampered by sketchy information because of a near-total communications blackout, the analysts cited three key unknowns that should emerge: the scope and harshness of the crackdown on the ten-million member union; the reaction of the Catholic church and the Polish masses; and the extent, if any, of Soviet involvement in triggering the Warsaw government's move.

Despite these imponderables, observers contacted by The Crimson today agreed that a decisive moment had been reached in Poland's 15-month labor crisis and that the government--now military government--of Communist party chief and Prime Minister Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski decided it could no longer tolerate Solidarity's unprecedented and increasingly bold challenge to Communist rule amid widespread economic distress and persistent demands from the Soviet Union to firm up the "weak link" in the Warsaw Pact chain.

Good Idea

Solidarity's response to the crackdown came quickly today, in the form, as predicted, of a call for a general strike and apparently scattered street demonstrations. The general strike, in all probability, does not mean that workers will stay home tomorrow, observers said; rather, Solidarity plans a call for workers to seize their workplaces--factories, shipyards, coal mines--and barricade themselves inside.

Speculation differed on whether the expected protests would stay peaceful or spill over into an all-out confrontation between union and government. In any case, Poland's leaders were expected to do everything possible to handle the crisis themselves before they would resort to calling on the Soviet Union or other Warsaw Pact allies to provide "fraternal assistance."

A senior White House aide associated with Soviet affairs this morning called the situation "very serious" and estimated that there was a "50-50" chance that it would escalate into full-scale fighting.

Too

Tadeusz Walendowski, director of the Washington-based Poland Watch Committee, predicted violence--rioting today and a general strike tomorrow, aiming toward an overthrow of the Jaruzelski government.

But a Solidarity member who left Poland last spring to teach at Harvard retained hope that the union could effectively counter the government thrust without bloodshed. "I can only hope that the people will react peacefully to this...but in a decisive way," Stanislaw Baranczak, associate professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, said.

Marshall I. Goldman, associate director of the Russian Research Center, expressed surprise that the Polish government chose to move now but said he had expected such a move "sooner or later."

Calling the Soviets "very smart" for not intervening directly and allowing "the Poles to do it themselves," Goldman said Moscow would back up the Polish government militarily only if it could not control the situation alone.

Michael Chechinski, a researcher at the Russian Research Center, noted that in recent months Jaruzelski has consolidated the military's position in the government, elevating several key generals and retaining for himself the defense ministry, thus laying the groundwork for the shift to military rule.

A former Polish military leader who is now a vocal anti-Communist, Chechinski added: "The Soviets will wait until that day when there will be a civil war or chaos in the country. Until then Jaruzelski and his generals will want to do their own dirty work."

For now, government officials said, the action appeared to be a "purely Polish" move, although clearly one that met approval from the Soviets. If Soviet involvement were deteccted by the U.S., the Reagan administration has said, it would have a chilling effect on East-West relations and possibly endanger the bilateral nuclear arms talks begun this month in Geneva.

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger '38 said in a Crimson interview last March that "if the Soviets went into Poland, either directly or indirectly, it would be a perfectly clear statement...that they didn't want any further peace or disarmament or arms limitation talks. These would be completely futile."

Asked what the U.S. would do "if the crackdown came from Polish internal security forces," rather than Soviet troops Weinberger replied:

"Well, I used the words 'directly or indirectly' before when talking about an invasion. There might be a fine line which might be difficult to determine, whether the Soviets had actually invaded or not, but I think we'd be able to tell pretty well one way or another."