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Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland’s Last Communist Leader, Dies at 90 Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland’s Last Communist Leader, Dies at 90
(about 1 hour later)
Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the last Communist leader of Poland, who sent tanks to crush Solidarity’s stirrings for democracy in 1981 and later went on to preside over the death of the system that nurtured him, died on Sunday in Warsaw. He was 90. Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the last Communist leader of Poland, who sent tanks to crush Solidarity’s stirrings for democracy in 1981 and went on to preside over the death of the system that had nurtured him, died on Sunday in Warsaw. He was 90.
The cause was complications of a stroke he suffered in early May, officials at the Military Medical Institute in Warsaw said in a statement. He had spent many of the last months at the institute, where he had also been treated for cancer. The cause was complications of a stroke he suffered in early May, officials at the Military Medical Institute in Warsaw said in a statement. He had spent many of his last months at the institute, where he had also been treated for cancer.
Gen. Jaruzelski led a government that was deeply unpopular in Poland through most of the 1980s. For decades before that, as a career officer and party official, he dutifully worked to entrench Soviet-directed Communism in Poland, an effort that even Stalin, its instigator, recognized as futile, likening it to “putting a saddle on a cow.” General Jaruzelski led a government that was deeply unpopular in Poland through most of the 198os. For decades before that, as a career officer and party official, he had dutifully worked to entrench Soviet-directed Communism in Poland, an effort that even Stalin, its instigator, recognized as futile, likening it to “putting a saddle on a cow.”
On Dec. 13, 1981, the dour general with the tinted glasses, weak jaw and ramrod posture set in motion events that would earn him a villainous place in history. On Dec. 13, 1981, the dour general with tinted glasses, a weak jaw and a ramrod posture set in motion events that would earn him a villainous place in history. On that night, as most Poles slept, he declared martial law and ordered troops to suppress the powerful Solidarity trade union movement, whose demands for greater freedoms were alarming politburos from East Berlin to Moscow.
On that night, as most Poles slept, he declared martial law and ordered troops to suppress the powerful Solidarity trade union movement, whose demands for greater freedoms were alarming politburos from East Berlin to Moscow. “Our country is on the edge of the abyss,” he proclaimed at 6 o’clock that Sunday morning in an address to the nation as soldiers fanned out. “Strikes, strike alerts, protests have become standard. Even students are dragged into it. There are more and more examples of terror, threats, mob trials and direct coercion. Crimes, robberies and break-ins are spreading like a wave through the country.”
“Our country is on the edge of the abyss,” he proclaimed at 6 a.m. that Sunday morning in an address to the nation as soldiers fanned out. “Strikes, strike alerts, protests have become standard. Even students are dragged into it. There are more and more examples of terror, threats, mob trials and direct coercion. Crimes, robberies and break-ins are spreading like a wave through the country.” General Jaruzelski (his full name is pronounced VOITS-yekh yaroo-ZELL-skee) complained that his government, which had recognized Solidarity, had shown the movement too much good will, tolerance and patience. He asked, “How long can one wait for a sobering up?”
Gen. Jaruzelski (his full name is pronounced VOITS-yekh yaroo-ZELL-skee) complained that his government had shown too much good will, tolerance and patience toward Solidarity. “How long can one wait for a sobering up?” he asked. He did not say, as he would later, that he had been under pressure from the Soviet general secretary, Leonid I. Brezhnev, to curb Solidarity and its threat to the Communist system, or that Gen. Viktor G. Kulikov, the Russian commanding officer of the Warsaw Pact forces, was in Warsaw at that very moment.
He did not say at the time, as he would later, that he had been under great pressure from the Soviet general secretary, Leonid I. Brezhnev, to curb Solidarity and its threat to the Communist system, nor that Gen. Viktor G. Kulikov, the Russian commanding officer of the Warsaw Pact forces, was in Warsaw that very moment. Under martial law, power was vested in the Military Council of National Salvation, led by General Jaruzelski. The operations of Solidarity were suspended and its leaders arrested. Public gatherings were forbidden, publications were subjected to censorship, thousands of people were detained and many schools and universities were closed. A strict curfew was imposed and Poland’s borders were sealed.
Under martial law, power was vested in a “military council for national salvation,” led by Gen. Jaruzelski. Solidarity’s operations were suspended and its leaders arrested. Public gatherings were forbidden, publications were subjected to censorship, thousands of people were detained and many schools and universities were closed. A strict curfew was imposed and Poland’s borders were sealed. Three days later, Polish troops fired at strikers occupying the Wujek coal mine shafts in southwestern Poland, killing nine workers. General Jaruzelski was reviled. In Western Europe, thousands turned out to protest. President Ronald Reagan moved to impose international economic sanctions against Poland.
Three days later, Polish troops fired on strikers occupying the shafts of the Wujek coal mine in southwestern Poland, killing nine workers. General Jaruzelski was reviled. In Western Europe, thousands turned out to protest and President Ronald Reagan moved to impose international economic sanctions against Poland. For the next seven years, Solidarity remained formally outlawed. The strikes subsided, but the union’s clandestine units generated an underground culture, challenging the Communist party’s monopolies with illicit newspapers, magazines, books and educational courses.
By the end of 1983, however, thousands of detainees were released, and many of the most repressive measures were eased.
As General Jaruzelski seemed intent on placating at least some Solidarity sympathizers, the Communist hard-liners struck out against him.
Late in 1984, members of the secret police killed a popular pro-Solidarity priest, the Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko. Much of the country interpreted the crime as a provocation organized by party hard-liners against the liberalizing policies of General Jaruzelski. He rose to the challenge by having the police officers tried in open court, something that had never happened in any Communist country. All four were sentenced to long prison terms, another precedent.
The Soviet Union itself was suffering a sustained vacuum of leadership as three leaders — Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov and Konstantin U. Chernenko — died within a period of 26 months. When Mikhail S. Gorbachev came to power in Moscow in 1985 pushing reformist policies, General Jaruzelski was quick to ally himself with him.
Mr. Gorbachev clearly found the general, at 62, more congenial than any of the 70- and 80-year-old party leaders in the Eastern bloc, like Nicolae Ceaucescu of Romania, Gustav Husak of Czechoslovakia and Erich Honecker of East Germany. Photographs of Warsaw Pact gatherings of the period show General Jaruzelski and Mr. Gorbachev in animated discussion while the others look on glumly.
By 1988, the atmosphere in Poland had changed even more. Opposition political groups, still technically illegal, were flourishing. And more strikes were called in Gdansk.
Over the objections of hard-line party figures, General Jaruzelski took the momentous step of opening talks with many of the Solidarity leaders he had once imprisoned.
After nine months, Solidarity gained the right to run candidates in parliamentary elections, the first truly free and democratic elections in any Communist state. They took place in June 1989 and resulted in the defeat of almost all the Communist candidates whose seats were contested.
A non-Communist majority formed a government. In August 1989, the Communists held their last Congress. And although General Jaruzelski was elected to the presidency, he refrained from using his considerable powers, deferring to Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki of Solidarity.
After serving only a year of his six-year term, the general resigned to open the way for a new and popular presidential election, which was won by the Solidarity leader Lech Walesa.
The same general who had crushed Solidarity had permitted Poland to shed Communism relatively bloodlessly, setting a pattern that was soon to be followed by the rest of the Warsaw Pact states. He had sawed off the branch that he had been standing on for so long.
Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski was born on July 6, 1923, on a large agricultural estate in eastern Poland near Lublin, where his father was the manager. The conservative, Roman Catholic family was of the old, largely impoverished nobility that identified with Poland’s struggles for independence.
Wojciech, an only son, was sent to a prominent boarding school outside Warsaw run by priests. On Sept. 1, 1939, when German forces invaded Poland and World War II began, Wojciech and his family joined hundreds of thousands of others who fled to the east, and found work as farm laborers in Lithuania.
That is where they were when Stalin, implementing his part of the deal he had struck with Hitler, took the eastern part of Poland and the Baltic States. Most of the displaced Poles, now seen by Stalin as a potential fifth column, were sent to labor camps and remote settlements in Russia.
Mr. Jaruzelski’s official biography had barely any details about his life in Russia, and even in his later years he spoke and wrote sparingly about that period. But his only sister, Teresa, who was 11 when the war began, recalled in a private memoir cited by several Polish writers that their father had been sent to a labor camp in western Siberia while she, her mother and her brother were put in a settlement further to the east.
Their father was eventually freed and managed to find the family but, weak and ill, he died soon afterward.
Mr. Jaruzelski’s survivors include his wife, Barbara, whom he married in 1961, and his daughter, Monika. After Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and attacked eastward, Mr. Jaruzelski was sent to a Soviet officer candidate school and was made an infantry officer in the Soviet-sponsored Polish force, which fought alongside the Red Army in the liberation of Warsaw, the Oder and Elbe campaigns, and the Soviet conquest of Berlin.
Mr. Jaruzelski was wounded and decorated several times for bravery. When the war ended, he remained in uniform, fighting anti-Communist guerrillas.
He joined the Communist Party, advanced in the ranks and at 33 became the youngest general in the Polish Army. In 1960, he was appointed political commissar of the Army, a post that would have needed approval by the Kremlin.
General Jaruzelski was elected to the Polish parliament in 1961 and was named minister of defense in 1968. In 1970, when workers in the Baltic ports, including Mr. Walesa, took to the streets, troops shot and killed at least 44 of them. A year after this violence, he became a full member of the Politburo, and in 1973, he was promoted to four-star general. Three years later, when workers again demonstrated in protests that paved the way for the rise of Solidarity, General Jaruzelski bucked party hard-liners by proclaiming, “Polish troops will not fire on Polish workers.”
Five years later, however, on his watch, that is what happened.
Polish society was at boiling point. The economy remained in a shambles, dissident intellectuals were forging links with workers, and Poland’s overwhelmingly Catholic population was growing increasingly heartened by a Polish pope, John Paul II, who had challenged Soviet rule.
Edward Gierek, Poland’s leader beginning in 1970, resigned as first secretary in September 1980 after he was unable to control the labor unrest. He was replaced by Stanislaw Kania, who tried to walk the thin line of appeasing Solidarity while warning that Poland must remain in the Soviet orbit.
The clamor persisted. A group called Rural Solidarity began organizing farmers. Students demanded more liberalization of their curriculum. In Moscow, Brezhnev was not happy. On Feb. 11, 1981, General Jaruzelski was named prime minister as Mr. Kania withdrew, saying of his successor, “Now, as black clouds hang over Poland, he is the best man to whom the helm could be offered.”
General Jaruzelski tried to reach accommodations with Solidarity’s leaders, with the students and farmers, and with the Catholic Church. But textile workers in Lodz staged a strike, and the economy continued to stagnate. After the Soviet Union stepped up pressure, General Jaruzelski began warning that he would order the police and army to suppress “deepening anarchist tendencies.”
Later that year, Mr. Kania resigned as head of the party, and that post, too, went to General Jaruzelski. He now held unprecedented power as head of the government, the Communist Party and the military, and was poised to call out his troops.
In his later years, General Jaruzelski was severely injured when a farmer, blaming him for his bankruptcy, hit him with a brick during a book signing. But he recovered and resumed efforts to redeem his reputation.
In 1996 he told an audience at Kansas State University, “The structures of the state were paralyzed” and “a general strike was imminent.
“We were staring hunger, cold, and blackout in the face,” he said, adding. “I spent the week prior to taking the decision on martial law as in some horrible nightmare. I entertained thoughts of suicide. So what held me back? The sense of responsibility for my family, friends and country.”
In 1992, a polling firm in Warsaw reported that 56 percent of those surveyed regarded his decision on martial law to have been justified. Some former Solidarity dissidents even began to speak well of him.
Court cases from the Communist era dogged General Jaruzelski in his final years, however.
In April 2007, he was charged with violating the Constitution by imposing martial law in 1981, with penalties of up to 10 years in prison. Separately, he faced charges stemming from the shooting of the shipyard workers in 1970.
General Jaruzelski was consoled by the idea that his reputation would improve.
In 1994, while taking part in a seminar on the democratization of Eastern Europe, he declared: “I am absolutely sure that the best opinion is expressed about anyone after his death. Because I am past 70, probably in the near future they will talk about me even better, when I will be in the cemetery.”