Word: jaruzelski
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...charismatic electrician Lech Walesa, had gained international sympathy after the 1980 shipyard strikes in Gdansk. It would eventually gain huge popular support; 1.5 million Poles would claim membership in April 1989. However, the Communist regime felt threatened by the union and responded with force. In 1981, Wojciech Jaruzelski, the secretary of the Polish Communist Party, declared martial law, criminalized Solidarity, and imprisoned much of its leadership. For two years, Poland suffered under military rule...
...decade, however, the situation had become all but untenable for the autocratic government in Warsaw. As complete economic chaos threatened to overwhelm Poland, the Jaruzelski clique was forced to moderate its views toward Solidarity. In September 1988, Minister of Interior Czeslaw Kiszczak had approached Walesa and made the unprecedented move of inviting Solidarity to political talks intended to fix the country’s worsening political and economic situation...
...everyone feels the same. Speaker of the Senate Bogdan Borusewicz calls the takeover a "classic Latin-style military putsch" and says the trial may be Poland's last chance for justice. "Jaruzelski defended the communist system, not Poland," Borusewicz says. "He defended the communist dictatorship, not the state." Marek Krasko, a Warsaw accountant, remembers that as a 13-year-old, he welcomed martial law--because the schools were closed--until he saw his grandmother in tears at the prospect of civil war. "Martial law was a hard blow for Solidarity, and it pushed the country back," he says...
...remember the crackdown have changed over time," says Barbara Szacka, a sociology professor at Warsaw's Academy of Social Psychology. The generational split is visible at the trial. A dozen mostly elderly men go regularly to the courthouse, a monumental prewar edifice in downtown Warsaw, to show support for Jaruzelski, while young activists picket outside with banners reading WHEN WILL WE SEE JUSTICE...
...trial is happening at all. Recent governments, largely made up of Solidarity moderates and holdovers from the communist era, were in no hurry to pursue the case; it wasn't until the right-wing Law and Justice party came to power in 2005 that prosecutors pushed to bring Jaruzelski to trial. Still, it's not clear when, if ever, the court will reach a decision. Some lawyers say the declaration of martial law was legal, and documentary evidence from the period is spotty at best. With Poles still divided, the judgment of General Jaruzelski may yet be left to history...