Former Polish leader Wojciech Jaruzelski died on Sunday. Jaruzelski is not well remembered today, except among Poles, but in the early 1980s, he was one of the world’s most reviled men—the very picture of communist thuggishness. Was that unfair? Today’s (W)Archives document, brought to us courtesy of the Cold War International History Project, shows how hard life as a communist thug can be.
Jaruzelski rose up through the Polish military during the communist era. He became Prime Minister in early 1981 under Stanislaw Kania and then took over from Kania in mid-October that same year. Two months later, he ordered the imposition of martial law, crushing the independent Solidarity trade union led by electrician-cum-democratic activist Lech Walesa. Several thousand people were imprisoned, more than 100 people were killed, and many people fled the country. In the long run, of course, Solidarity would win out and Walesa would become the first president of a free Poland. But the early 1980s were pretty grim for freedom and Solidarity in Poland.
Jaruzelski always maintained that he was a “Polish patriot” who crushed Solidarity because doing so was less bad than the consequences of standing up to the Soviet Union. After all, the Soviets were ultimately in charge in Poland and could have imposed their own military crackdown which would have been much more brutal. As he put it years later, “I was pressured to do more.”
Today’s document gives us a peek inside the difficult situation that Jaruzelski faced. It is an April 1981 readout of a meeting between the Soviet Marshal Viktor Kulikov, Commander-in-Chief of the Warsaw Pact forces, and East German military commanders after a major Warsaw Pact Exercise “SOYUZ-81,” which had involved bringing substantial Soviet forces into Poland. During the exercise, it appeared that Poland could be on the verge of a Hungary- (1956) or Prague- (1968) style Soviet military crackdown aided by forces from East Germany and other Warsaw Pact countries.
According to the document, Kulikov said that Jaruzelski and Kania “explicitly” requested the prolongation of the exercise. He said “they wanted to utilize the exercises to strengthen their position” and they hoped that “a certain pressure should also be exerted upon the leadership of Solidarity.” In other words, Jaruzelski was cooperating with the Soviets in intimidating the democratic opposition in his country.
At the same time, the Soviets saw Jaruzelski as weak and thought he had dangerous sympathies for the protestors. Kulikov said that Jaruzelski and Kania incorrectly blamed the crisis in Poland and the rise of Solidarity on “mistakes that were made in the past” by the communist party. This, Kulikov told his East German colleagues, was utterly wrong. Rather, the Polish “counterrevolution” was the result of meddling by outsiders: Americans and West Germans. Indeed, Kulikov opined that “Comrade Jaruzelski is not the man who can turn the course of events [against the counterrevolutionaries]. Until now he has made great concessions in all areas.”
So, was Jaruzelski a hero who saved Poland from the Soviet Army or a traitor who was complicit in the Soviet Union’s oppression of the country he professed to love? The Poles have yet to decide. Some Poles make the argument that he chose the “lesser evil” to avoid adding to Poland’s long list of national tragedies. On the other hand, in 2006 he was charged with “directing a criminal organization,” i.e. the government that imposed martial law. He has also been denied the state funeral that would be normal for a former head of state. These Poles see him as fatally compromised by his lifelong association with communism and hence the Soviet Union.
This debate is just one of the wounds—albeit an intangible one—inflicted on Poland by decades of communist rule. It continues to fester 25 years after freedom came to that long-suffering country.
Mark Stout is a Senior Editor at War on the Rocks. He is the Director of the MA Program in Global Security Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Arts and Sciences in Washington, D.C.
Photo credit: colasito77
Chris Mewett 
Marcin S. 
Mark — This is an interesting note, and any thoughtful and remotely comprehensive response would probably fill a book. So I’ll just limit my comment to a few brief points:
1) The document in question poses some challenges of its own as an independent historical source, foremost among them that it recounts the details of a conversation between Soviet and East German officers concerning a number of interactions between the Soviets and the Poles. It’s explicitly the SOVIET account of what happened, no doubt shaped by the fact that the audience is another Warsaw Pact military. In other words, the only historical event we can be reasonably sure is being documented accurately is the CONVERSATION that’s recounted—NOT the events and impressions that were the subject of that conversation.
2) You’re right to point out that Jaruzelski has a complicated legacy in Poland, and that Poles have divided opinions about him. (This was evident in the public reaction to his funeral today in Warsaw.) It’s also worth pointing out that most Poles don’t have all the facts—just the ones that matter to them. In other words, the protestor may not know what happened in meetings between Jaruzelski and Kulikov, but they know their family member was arrested during the martial law period, and that settles their impression of Jaruzelski as a traitor and a criminal. Meanwhile Leszek Miller and Aleksander Kwaśniewski likely don’t know much about whether or not Jaruzelski was a true Polish patriot in his heart of hearts, but they DO know that they’re former communists and it doesn’t do them any good for former functionaries of the PZPR to be painted as Soviet stooges.
3) As you obviously know, it’s impossible to answer one way or the other whether Jaruzelski was Poland’s protector or the Soviets’ tool, because the answer is almost certainly that he was a little bit of both. If you dig into the available record on this, you’ll find that Jaruzelski probably did have serious fears that the Soviets would intervene if he did not declare martial law. (This despite the statements of Andropov and Kulikov, who had their own reasons to pretend like this was never a possibility.) As the subject document shows, the Soviets were annoyed with Kania and Jaruzelski’s supposed foot-dragging and weakness in early 1981 and wanted them to do more to put down the unrest. Jaruzelski was reluctant to use force, and yet within seven months he’d declared martial law and arrested 3,000 members of Solidarity. There’s a reasonable case to be made that he put the Soviets off as long as possible, resisted their harsher demands, tried to find a way to avoid using force, and ultimately caved when he could hold out no longer without inviting a more aggressive Soviet intervention. So yes, it’s certainly true that Jaruzelski was “cooperating with the Soviets in intimidating the democratic opposition in his country.” Should we be surprised? He essentially served at the pleasure of the Soviets, had Soviet forces permanently stationed on his territory, had senior Soviet officers regularly “visiting” to “advise” him on his political problems, and had information that suggested the Soviets were building up their forces and equipment on Polish territory without telling the Polish government (not to mention that Kulikov was cultivating a direct relationship with some of Jaruzelski’s more radical and presumably dependable subordinates).
4) The most interesting thing about this document (and it’s consistent with things I’ve seen in translated North Vietnamese and Viet Cong documents, both official and unofficial, as well) is the ludicrous and patently false ideological prism through which Kulikov interprets and explains Solidarity’s rise. Despite being told by two senior Polish communists that it’s a response to conditions in the country, that the movement has broad popular appeal, that its growth had been exacerbated by clumsy government response, and so on, Kulikov insists that it’s a capitalist plot and that the Poles simply don’t understand the world-historical class struggle. Never change, Soviets!
5) In the end, the Polish transition to democracy happened without significant bloodshed and without a Soviet invasion. Jaruzelski ended up as something like a Polish Gorbachev: he wasn’t TRYING to dismantle communist power in his country, but it ended up happening that way. It could’ve been bloodier and more complicated, and the fact that it wasn’t is due in some part to Jaruzelski’s maneuvering when he was in a really tough spot. Whatever his ultimate priorities or his personal values, I think we ought to acknowledge that fact. (Poland might be a different country today if Molczyk, Urbanowicz, or Milewski had been in charge instead of Jaruzelski.)
Mark/Chris, You both sadly fall into a simple, yet effective trap of evaluating Jaruzelski’s legacy only in terms of judging the reasoning and/or outcome tied to introducing the martial law. That way You miss the whole picture. A picture of Soviet patriot, devout communist and a thug. He climbed his way up the ranks by hunting down polish underground soldiers; by denouncing fellow officers; by leading tanks all through to Prague; by heading an anti-semitic purge in the army; by not hesitating in giving orders to shoot down protesting workers in 1970. That’s not a life of doubt, that’s a clear path of a ruthless apparatchik, proving his Kremlin loyalty all the way. You also seem to forget about a handful of priests tortured and/or murdered between 1981 and 1989 under continuing Jaruzelski’s oversight. So, even if I would not know the documents released throughout last decade which confirm his treacherous attitude in 1981, I wouldn’t have any doubt regarding the dictator. The disgrace of soldiers forced into giving him an honorary march during the futeral się going to hunting them for a long time. Otherwise, this is a great place and I enjoy following WOTR a lot. Regards from Poland