The sense of that aphorism, of course, was willfully misconstrued at the time by people who knew better, and the spurious sense attributed to the utterance eagerly lapped up by a populace primed to believe the worst of a reformist on whom the domestic press had draped the mantle of Stalin. It is a great shame that K's handlers couldn't have dismissed it as "locker room talk."
(and who among us has not had occasion to feel, in President Carter's immortal [translated] words, "great lust for the Polish people?" Why I remember this one girl...but I digress.)
cordially,