Vladimir Kryuchkov diplomatic service, stationed in Hungary until 1959. He then worked for the Communist Party Central Committee for eight years, before joining the KGB in 1967 together with his patron Yuri Andropov. He was appointed head of the First Chief Directorate (FCD) in the summer of 1971 (upon the order of Andropov)(See Vladimir Kryuchkov, 1996) (the KGB Foreign Operations) and Deputy Chairman in 1978. In 1988, he was promoted to the rank of General of the Army and became KGB Chairman. In 1989–1990, he was a member of the Politburo. A political hard-liner, Kryuchkov was among the members of the Soviet
KGB forecast political instability consequent to the election of Archbishop of Kraków Karol Wojtyla as the first Polish Pope, John Paul II, whom they had categorised as "subversive" because of his anti-Communist sermons against the one-party PUWP régime. Despite its accurate forecast of crisis, the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) hindered the KGB's destroying the nascent Solidarity-backed political movement, fearing explosive civil violence if they imposed the KGB-recommended martial law. Aided by their Polish counterpart, the Służba Bezpieczeństwa (SB), the KGB successfully infiltrated spies to Solidarity and the Catholic Church, and in Operation X co-ordinated the declaration of martial law with