ANALYSIS: Poland 20 years after martial law (12/23/01)

ANALYSIS

Poland 20 years after martial law

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Newsline

Twenty years ago, on the morning of December 13, 1981, all of Poland was shocked by the sight of tanks, armored personnel carriers, and police and military units armed with Kalashnikov machine guns patrolling the streets. And quite suddenly, there were no radio or television programs on the air. Instead, TV every half hour broadcast images of Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, who, sporting his now famous junta-style black glasses, told the country that "our fatherland has found itself on the edge of an abyss" and announced the introduction of martial law.

The highest authority body in the country turned out to be the Jaruzelski-led Military Council of National Salvation (WRON), which was set up shortly after midnight on December 13. The WRON ordered some 10,000 Solidarity activists interned until the council was dissolved in July 1983; more than 3,000 were arrested in the wee hours of the first day of martial law.

The acronym WRON - which was only one letter short of "wrona" (crow in Polish) - immediately inspired a popular anti-Communist slogan of that period: "orla wrona nie pokona" ("the crow won't beat the eagle" - the eagle stood for both Poland's national emblem and, figuratively, Poland's strivings for independence).

The WRON introduced the censorship of correspondence and telephone calls, as well as curfews. Major Polish plants and factories received new managers - military commissars. All the Polish periodicals - apart from the party's two countrywide dailies (Trybuna Ludu and Zolnierz Wolnosci) and 16 regional dailies - were suspended. All the universities were closed and all the students, including this author, were told to go home and watch television for an official announcement on when to return to their studies.

The general atmosphere in the first days of martial law was surreal and absurd. Whom did the Commies want to fight? But then came terse official reports - read by television news presenters in military uniforms - about the bloody pacification of strikes in the Wujek and Manifest Lipcowy mines, and it was suddenly chillingly clear for everyone that the communist regime would do anything imaginable to remain true to former Polish Communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka's pledge that "We won't give up the power we once won."

Martial law was called off in mid-1983, but the general perception is that it lasted until 1989, when Solidarity took over in a peaceful transition from totalitarianism to democracy. Gen. Jaruzelski's rule in the 1980s was a bleak period in Poland, both because of economic hardships and the general feeling of hopelessness among younger generations: three-quarters of a million Poles emigrated during that time, most of them young, which led to a brain drain from which the country has yet to recover.

Twenty years later, Poles remain bitterly divided as regards political and moral assessments of the 1981 martial law. Solidarity's first leader, Lech Walesa, has recently commented that Jaruzelski's crackdown on Solidarity in 1981 "destroyed Poland's hope" and that it was "an unpardonable mistake." According to Mr. Walesa, if it were not for martial law, Poland would already be part of the European Union.

Gen. Jaruzelski's self-advocacy boils down to the tenet that his crackdown on Solidarity saved Poland from Soviet invasion and a much bloodier scenario, resembling that of Hungary's anti-Communist uprising in 1956.

Polish historians have yet to find documentary evidence that Poland was threatened in 1981 by an imminent intervention of Soviet forces. However, Gen. Jaruzelski seems to have won over the public in Poland to his reasons for imposing martial law. Poland's three polling centers have concurrently found that some 50 percent of respondents now believe that the imposition of martial law was justified, and only some 20 percent think otherwise.

It is also notable that some 30 percent of Poles have no clear opinion about December 13, 1981. Ironically, this group is made up primarily of a "martial-law baby boom" - young people who were born during the martial law years when annual births topped 700,000 - nearly double the current levels. One is almost compelled to say that Poles "made love not war" at that time in the literal sense. For these baby boomers, among whom unemployment currently reaches 40 percent - the historical disputes of their parents about the Solidarity-Communist standoff in the 1980s seem to have no urgency or even seem to be completely irrelevant to their lives.

Adam Michnik, who was arrested and interned on December 13, 1981, wrote in his Gazeta Wyborcza on December 12 that "after 20 years, Poland deserves peace and reconciliation." Michnik appealed to President Aleksander Kwasniewski and the Parliament to find a "legal formula" in order to free Gen. Jaruzelski from all court trials he is currently undergoing. According to Michnik, Jaruzelski deserves the Poles' gratitude in no lesser degree than Walesa for "paving the way toward freedom without blood and barricades, without executions and scaffolds" in 1989.

While it is not ruled out that President Kwasniewski and the current leftist-dominated Parliament may lend an ear to Mr. Michnik's appeal, it is hardly conceivable that the postulated "peace and reconciliation" over Poland's contemporary history will reign supreme any time soon.

But Mr. Michnik's appeal, as well as the above-mentioned polls on martial law, reflect an evident shift in historical thinking of the Poles from traditionally romantic and emotional, to more temperate and detached assessments. This may also be a sign of Poland's ongoing transformation, in which collective myths of both the anti-Communist tradition and Communist historiography are gradually replaced by more individualist visions of history and life in general.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus, Ukraine and Poland specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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