Word: crackdowns
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...least a fortnight earlier. When authorities published a list of 57 dissidents who had been "detained," it was plain that the list had been drawn up in advance: three people on it were out of the country. (Not on the list but determined to protest the "flagrant and brutal" crackdown and to express his "solidarity" with Walesa: Poland's Ambassador to the U.S., Romuald Spasowski, who sought and was swiftly granted asylum along with his wife, daughter and son-in-law.) Last week, after the sudden crackdown, a Gdansk doctor said he realized at last why so many extra beds...
Many Poles had been fearing a violent reaction to Solidarity's growing militancy. "Operation Birdcage" is what they called the anticipated crackdown, in which the union's freer spirits would presumably be caged. Even Walesa, upon learning the crackdown had begun, angrily told Solidarity leaders in Gdansk: "Now you've got what you've been looking...
Partly because of the prevailing uncertainty and partly because of the communications blackout, public response to the crackdown seemed muted. The population was depressed and weary from the crises that had beset the country in recent months. Poles were also disillusioned by the disunity within Solidarity, traumatized by the newly imposed military rule, anxious over the lingering possibility of Soviet intervention and fearful for the fate of their national hero, Lech Walesa...
...that the Polish party was no longer in control, that the Sejm (parliament) was running wild, and that if he did not act to restore order, the Warsaw Pact would do it for him. Though Jaruzelski emphasized last week that Poland remained a sovereign state, many people regarded the crackdown as a Soviet invasion by proxy. On Tuesday, some 30 ranking Soviet officers were observed disembarking from a military plane. Nonetheless, insofar as Western journalists could tell, the two Soviet armored divisions based in Poland were not involved and remained in their garrisons...
...anomalies of the situation in Poland is that the crackdown was a purely military operation. Jaruzelski is the leader of the Polish Communist Party as well as the armed forces and the government, but in his speech to the nation last week he chose to call himself "a soldier and chief of government." There was no mention of the Communist Party. Politburo members were reportedly not told that martial law was being declared until two hours before the troops began to move. The Polish party is deeply demoralized after losing an estimated one-third of its 3 million members during...