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Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski - 06 Nov 1985 22 Dec 1990

Born on 6 July 1923 in Kurow near Pulawy in a family of landowners. After the outbreak of the Second World War he was in Lithuania and was then deported to Siberia. Jaruzelski did not find his way to the Polish Army in the USSR being formed by General Wladyslaw Anders; he enlisted with the forces being organised by the communist Union of Polish Patriots. He graduated from the Soviet Officers’ School in Riazan. He returned to Poland with the Army commended by General Zygmunt Berling.

In the years 1945-1947 he took part in combating the independence-oriented underground and Ukrainian nationalist guerrillas. In 1947 Jaruzelski joined the Polish Workers’ Party, which led to his rapid promotion in the ranks of the Polish Peoples’ Army. It is difficult to say whether this accelerated pramtion was accidental, as it was told at the time, or rather a result of specific preference which already then w8s being lavished upon JARUZELSI by the Soviet leadership of the Ministry of National Defense of the Polish Peoples' Republic.

The period of time in which this took place was one of the most gloomy in the postwar history of the Polish Peoples' Army. It was an era of a ruthless Russification of the armed forces of the Polish Peoples' Republic. It was the time of fabricated political trials which not infrequently ended in death sentences, and removal of the cadre of the prewar commanders and politically uncertain personalities on the one hand, and accelerated advancgnent and pushing ahead for responsible position of the hard-headed marxist-leninist doctrinaires and, before all, proven friends of the USSR, on the other hand.

In 1956 he became the youngest PPA General. In 1960-1965 he was Chief of Central Political Board of the Polish Military, Chief of General Staff in 1965-1968 and at the same time from 1962 until 1968 the Deputy Minister of National Defence. Member of the Polish United Workers’ Party Central Committee since 1964.

In 1968 Jaruzelski became Minister of National Defence; he was responsible for participation of the Polish Peoples’ Army in the invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968); accused of complicity in the bloody quashing of workers’ protests on the Coast (1970). During the 1970 Polish food riots in the Baltic ports, he showed an independent streak by holding back the armed forces. He was overruled by the politburo, which ordered the police and interior ministry security forces to put down the riots, which they did, shooting more than 40 protesters dead, and injuring more than 1,000. In the bitter aftermath, Jaruzelski was instrumental in forcing the resignation of the party leader, Wladyslaw Gomulka. After Edward Gierek assumed the function of First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party Central Committee Jaruzelski became a member of the Politburo.

Jaruzelski, while unusually eloquent, was a very withdrawn person who shut himself off from other people. He never acted spontaneously and all his important pronouncements were, as a rule, compsed, and thought through in advance, in the solitude of his study. At times, they were even rehearsed using a recorder, before they were officially pronounced. Of course, he did not avoid live statments, comments, thoughtful rermarks and discussions, but alawys, and in every situation, he never lost control over the real content of his pronouncements.

With the exception of very few who were loyal to him, people, behaved taward him in a negative fashion, disliked him or even held him in contempt, for a variety of reasons and views. His many negative features, among these, in the forefront, was a weakness of his character bordering on cawardice, and an artificial, po,pous way of life.

Jaruzelski was a towering personality, who clearly stood out fran his hopelessly primitive environment. Certain of his personal qualities indeed impressed many, especially in the moral and ethical sphere, in which there was a consistence between his words and deeds. Also inpressive were his exceptional attention to work coupled with an unusual intellectual receptivity (a continual hunger for knuwledge), a rarely encountered analytical and synthetical ability, originality of thought, a high degree of culture in his language, both oral and written, as well as the highest denands which he placed upon himelf and those in his imnediate entourage.

He had an inborn instinct for discipline and obedience combined within an instilled worship for power. Having a nearly maniacal respect for power, he never sought it through the "back door" via participation in political plays or "elbowing" himself forward. On the contrary, he was often reluctant to accept higher and higher government posts which were offered to him because of waves of changing developnent. One could not say, on the other hand, that he shied away fron power. Gradually, it became not only his all absorbing passion but also his first and only love. The cult of power and the ecstasy which he experienced in exercising it resulted in the situation in which once having achieved pomer he never shared it with anyone else.

He divided responsibility very precisely. He even reached a certain level of mastery in the exploitation of the typical forms of the democratic socialism, collectivism and all kinds of consultations for the absolute control of his sphere of power without revealing his awn views. He introduced a systen of a "carouse1 of positions", frequently rotating cadre personnel at the sm level of cammd, so that no one could feel too certain in his position. He manned the key positions of the armed forces with mediocre but loyal people, particularly favoring the so called "ax-men", i.e., those who were ruthless and despotic.

He took over the typical characteristic of the leadership of the system which attached much more attention to the declared content rather than to actual deeds. He believed in the mgic of words and even more in the causative power of various program, plans, directives and legally fomal, printed regulations. As the Chief of the General Staff, subsequently, as the Minister of Defense, and also already the Prime Minister, he directed all his unconsuned energy toward the shaping of the future, distinctly closing his eyes on reality. In general, he avoided locations where he could find the proverbial bottm. As the result he was poorly tnfolmed not only about the realities of the life in the country but also what really transpired in the armed forces. In this fashion, living in a fiction, he created new fiction.

In August of 1980, Polish workers began to strike in mines and shipyards along the Baltic coast, most notably at the Lenin Shipyards in Gdansk. While these strikes resembled earlier crises in 1956, 1970, and 1976, in which workers were reacting to food price increases, the Crisis of 1980 differed in that workers demanded expressly political as well as economic concessions. On August 31, 1980, Lech Walesa, an electrician active in the free trade union movement and lead representative for the striking workers, successfully negotiated with the party, leading to the Gdansk Accords. The agreement resulted in unprecedented political concessions, including independent trade unions, the right to strike without reprisals, the right to “freedom of expression,” pay increases, improved working conditions, Saturdays off, and Sunday Masses broadcast over loudspeakers. In mid-September of 1980, delegates from thirty regional Inter-Factory Strike Committees from throughout the country joined to establish a single, national union – the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union, referred to as “Solidarnose,” or Solidarity.

Throughout the crisis, the subtext of a possible Soviet-led military intervention dominated Polish-Soviet and intra-bloc relations, which led to the eventual imposition of martial law in Poland in December of 1981. Throughout that year, the Solidarity Movement continued to call for political and economic reforms. By the end of the year, however, it became clear that Walesa and his advisors were losing control of the movement. Localized strikes and work stoppages were occurring almost daily, and without any coordination with Solidarnose’s central leadership.

In 1981 he became Head of Government, and in October 1981, the Poland's Communist Party elected General Wojcicch Jaruzelski as First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party. Upon gaining leadership, Jaruzelski began taking steps toward declaring martial law, including extending the period of military service for conscripts and dispersing military operational groups around the country. Jaruzelski declared martial law on December 13, 1981, ending the sixteen-month period of openness, liberalization, freedom, and fluidity known as the “Polish Crisis.” Jaruzelski headed the Military Council for National Salvation. Jaruzelski always insisted that he ordered Polish tanks on to the streets of Warsaw on 13 December 1981 because he believed it was the only way to prevent a Soviet invasion to put an end to the Solidarity-led strikes and demands for democratic reforms.

In 1985 he resigned from the office of Prime Minister and assumed the function of Chairman of Council of State. In 1989 in result of changes occurring in the USSR and fearing an outbreak of public protests he decided to sit at the Roundtable talks where agreement was reached inter alia regarding restoration of the office of President. In 1989 he was elected President of the Republic of Poland (by a majority of one vote) by the National Assembly. He was the only candidate. He remained in office until December 1990, until election of Lech Walesa for President of the Republic of Poland.

In 2006 the National Remembrance Institute charged him with communist crimes in connection with declaration of martial law, but the proceedings came to nothing.

Living quietly in retirement from the end of 1990, Jaruzelski tried hard for the rest of his life to convince the world he had never been less than a Polish patriot, and that from 1989 he dismantled the apparatus of communist rule setting Poland firmly on the path to democracy and the free market. Opinion has swayed somewhat in his favour. Afterwards, he often spoke of his "deep regret" over the martial law era. "It was a nightmare. It is a great burden for me, and will be until the end of my days," he said in an interview. But he continued to believe that the danger of Soviet invasion in 1981 was real and that he could not have acted differently. But Jaruzelski remains an enigma and the debate over his actions is certain to continue.

Jaruzelski and his wife Barbara, a university lecturer whom he married in 1961, always lived modestly. He rarely travelled abroad. His public demeanour was stiff and formal in movement and speech. He was neither populist nor demagogue. He always wore signature dark glasses, not because he wanted to appear sinister or intimidating, but because of the snow blindness that had damaged his eyes during wartime imprisonment in a Soviet labour camp.

Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski, soldier and politician, born 06 July 1923; died 25 May 2014 aged 90.