43 years ago, there were no smartphones, and the few computers already in operation in Poland at the time were like a large wardrobe. But everyone had a radio in their home, and almost everyone had a television. And with their help, on the morning of December 13, 1981, millions of Poles learned about the introduction of martial law from General Wojciech Jaruzelski's speech.
But some people knew about it hours beforehand. These were local commanders of citizen militias who, in the early afternoon of December 12th, received a coded text from the Ministry of Interior signed by General Czesław Kiszczak ordering them to launch an operation codenamed “Brzoza-81.'' After receiving it, they opened the safe and took out a package of documents that had been deposited there several months earlier. It contained detailed instructions regarding the actions that the commanding officers were to carry out as part of the operation to introduce martial law.
These include martial law and other legal decrees and instructions previously printed in the Soviet Union, most of which were created in the early spring of 1981. After that, the list of people scheduled for internment was mainly updated.
Over the next few hours, the commanders signed separate decisions on internment, and before midnight a group of militia and security service personnel headed to the house, where they met with members of “Solidarity” and other groups deemed to be rebels. I expected to find an activist. More than 3,000 people were interned on the first night of martial law as part of the operation, code-named “Clone,” and another 6,000 in the weeks and months that followed. Although mainly men, a thousand women were also sent to concentration camps, including the most famous concentration camp at Gowdap.
At the same time, 70,000 soldiers, equipped with hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles, were mobilized along with militia and intelligence services. Most of them were deployed to the centers of large cities for the next few weeks, where their main task was to reinforce the people's belief that resistance was futile.
WRON and Directorate
Martial law was formally introduced by the Council of State, a bizarre body of more than a dozen members that replaced the abolished presidential office in the People's Republic of Poland. In fact, those who were sitting there were taken to the Belvedere Palace shortly after midnight on December 13th, where a group of military officers initiated a huge legal process for the adoption, including the above-mentioned martial law. presented to them. The only member of the State Council who dared to protest its adoption was Ryshard Reif, president of the PAX Association. But his protest was more than just symbolic.
It also did not matter that the State Council did not have the right to issue laws because the Seim was in session at the time. The Constitution of the People's Republic of Poland stipulates that the Council of State can only issue decrees during recesses of parliament. Jaruzelski and his colleagues realized that the most important factor for a successful operation was not constitutional compliance, but the element of surprise.
But this issue bothered Jaruzelski, and also the fact that he had to call the attack on “Solidarity” martial law rather than a state of emergency, which made people immediately talk about the Polish-Jaruzelski war. , meant to start writing. However, this had to be done because until 1983, the Polish legal system had no concept of a state of emergency.
In a speech on the morning of December 13th, Jaruzelski announced the establishment of the Military Council for National Salvation, which would serve as the “administrator of martial law,” and quickly became the subject of outspoken remarks, his most famous being: That's right. A red crow cannot defeat a white eagle. ” However, the actual decision-making center was the WRON, which was composed of 17 generals and 5 colonels, similar to military regimes in Latin America.
Jaruzelski liked to create different facade bodies to camouflage his personal rules, but in fact he made all the most important decisions alone. However, he had to take into account individual comrades in the military and Communist Party institutions who had as good a reputation as him within the Kremlin, so he sometimes invited some of them to meetings, during which It consults on various decisions and at the same time entrusts individual participants to oversee the implementation of those decisions.
Over time, the participants in these informal meetings (including Kazimierz Barczykowski, Mirosław Milewski, Czesław Kiszczak, and Florian Świcki) came to be known as the Directorate General. But Jaruzelski always had the last word, deciding who would be invited and who would drop out of the board's membership over time, such as Mieczysław Rakowski and Stefan Olszowski.
joy of the kremlin
On Monday, December 14th, more than 200 factories went on strike against the introduction of martial law, and the operation proved to be a success. Most Poles, tired of the months-long crisis and frightened by the prospect of impending Soviet military intervention, quickly agreed to a curfew and restrictions on internal movement rights.
Most painfully, telephone communications were cut off as part of Operation Codenamed Azaria. It can last several weeks, and in some parts of Poland it can last up to a dozen weeks. It will never be possible to count how many people died during this time simply because medical help could not be called quickly enough. The few who dared to protest were sent to prison. The maximum sentence handed down in a court for organizing a strike after December 13 was 10 years in prison.
The miners of the “Uzek” mine paid an even higher price, nine of them being shot dead during the December 16 pacification. News of this crime had a paralyzing effect on the leaders of other strikes still in progress at the time.
In Moscow, martial law was considered a great success. Because the existence of Solidarity, a genuine workers' movement of millions of people, posed a dangerous challenge to the ideological legitimation of the Soviet system, which supposedly pursued the interests of the proletariat. . First and foremost. The symbolic meaning of this “solidarity” was far more important than the real threat the movement posed to Soviet rule in Poland.
For this reason, in 1984 Jaruzelsky was awarded the Soviet Union's highest decoration, the Order of Lenin. This was also the second time in his career that he successfully dispatched the Polish People's Army to suppress a rebellious population in Czechoslovakia in 1968.
However, while martial law was certainly beneficial for the Kremlin in the short term, it backfired in the long term. The events in Poland helped the new US president, Ronald Reagan, strengthen the camp of Western European countries, which, under pressure from Washington, joined the US economic sanctions. Sanctions targeted not only the authorities of the Polish People's Republic, but also the authorities of the Soviet Union.
The Reagan administration failed to persuade its Western European allies to withdraw from the Yamal gas pipeline construction project negotiated in 1981, but the gains there were offset by the ever-growing crisis of the 1980s. It was not possible to save the Soviet economy from falling into a crisis. But Western sanctions dealt an even bigger blow to Poland's economy, which became heavily dependent on supplies of raw materials and components from behind the Iron Curtain during Gierek's modernization era.
Therefore, after martial law was finally abolished in July 1983, Jaruzelski sought to soften its severity by granting further amnesties to political prisoners. Although he was only able to achieve this gradually in the second half of the decade, the overall consequences of the 1980s “war economy” were dramatic.
Dispute over martial law
In the decades that followed, Poles were deeply divided in their assessment of martial law. Although the proportion of his supporters slowly decreased, for many years there were more supporters than opponents of Jaruzelski's operation.
Based on the results of the CBOS analysis, which began studying Poles' attitudes towards martial law in the 1980s, it was not until 2021, the 40th anniversary of the introduction of martial law, that more people thought that the introduction of martial law was unjustified. The percentage was 37%. %) were found to be higher than those who wanted to justify it (30%).
What about the rest of the majority of respondents? They chose the answer: “It's hard to say.” The latter proportion has clearly increased in recent years, which may lead to the sad conclusion that for many of us it is no longer important. This is not good news for everyone who opposes the use of force to resolve social conflicts.
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