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Wojciech Jaruzelski
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Wojciech Jaruzelski | |
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| In office October, 1981 – August 1989 |
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| Preceded by | Stanisław Kania |
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| Succeeded by | Mieczysław Rakowski |
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| In office July 19, 1989 – December 22, 1990 |
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| Succeeded by | Lech Wałęsa |
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| Born | July 6, 1923 (age 83) Kurów near Puławy, Poland |
| Political party | Polish United Workers' Party |
| Spouse | Barbara Jaruzelska |
| Profession | Officer |
| Religion | atheist |
Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski (pronounced: 
/'vɔjʨɛx jaru'zɛlski/) (born July 6, 1923) was a communist Polish political and military leader, Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985, head of the Polish Council of State from 1985 to 1989 and President from 1989 to 1990.
Jaruzelski was born into a family of Polish gentry. He was raised on the family estate near Wysokie (in the vicinity of Białystok) and later in the Warsaw Catholic boarding school of Bielany. Following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact when he was a teenager, his family fled to Lithuania. Later they were deported to the Asian part of the Soviet Union, where his father died at Biysk of lack of medical treatment.
When the Soviets began building up Polish army units, Jaruzelski was among the first to join. At the end of World War II he participated at the conquest of Berlin. An officer of the Polish Army, he was trained at the Polish Higher Infantry School and the General Staff Academy, and joined the Polish United Workers' Party (the former Polish Communist Party). In the first post-war years, he was among the military repressing anti-communist guerrilla insurgents, e.g. in the Świętokrzyskie region. He quickly rose in military and party, becoming a member of the Central Committee in 1964. In 1968, he was named the minister of defense.
In the same year, he was heavily involved in the "cleansing" of the Polish army as part of Mieczysław Moczar's anti-semitic campaign. In fact, he had close links to Moczar (the fact that e.g. he was best man at Moczar's second marriage does not appear in Jaruzelski's autobiographical works).
In 1968, during the Prague Spring, he led the Polish military participation in the invasion of Czechoslovakia. Then in 1970, he was involved in the plot against Władysław Gomułka, which led to the appointment of Edward Gierek as communist party secretary. He took part in the organization of the execution of striking workers, which led to a massacre in the coastal cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia, Elbląg and Szczecin.
Jaruzelski became the party's national secretary and prime minister in 1981, when Lech Wałęsa's Solidarity movement was starting to gain popularity, both within Poland and abroad. On 13th December 1981 Jaruzelski imposed martial law, actually called in Polish stan wojenny literally translated as 'state of war'. This led many to say that General Jaruzelski had declared war on the nation.
According to his explanation, this action was intended to prevent a Soviet invasion. Lawyers hold that the circumstances of the martial law were even in violation of the communist constitution. Most former opposition members argue that it was merely an action by the Polish communist regime organized in order to retain power and strangle the newly born and developing civil society. Moreover, historical evidence released under President Yeltsin has been brought to light indicating that the Soviet Union did not plan to invade Poland; in fact, the Soviets strictly rejected Jaruzelski's request for military help in 1981, leaving the Solidarity "problem" to be sorted out by the Polish government. This question, as well as many other facts about Poland 1945-1989, are presently under the investigation of independent historians grouped in Institute of National Remembrance (Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, IPN), whose publications reveal facts from communist archives.
The policies of Mikhail Gorbachev also stipulated political reform in Poland. By the close of the tenth plenary session in December 1988, the Communist Party were forced, after strikes, to approach leaders of Solidarity for talks. From February 6 to April 15, talks of 13 working groups in 94 sessions, which became known as the Round-Table negotiations, radically altered the shape of the Polish government and society. The talks resulted in an agreement to vest political power in a newly created bicameral legislature and in a president who would be the chief executive. Solidarity was legalized. After the elections, the Communists, who were guaranteed 65 percent of the seats in the Sejm (The lower house), did not win a majority, and Solidarity-backed candidates won 99 out of 100 freely contested seats in the Senate. Jaruzelski, whose name was the only one the Communist Party allowed on the ballot for the presidency, won by just one vote in the National Assembly.
Although Jaruzelski tried to persuade Solidarity to join the Communists in a "grand coalition," Wałęsa refused, saying the latter's goal was to liberate Poland from communist-Soviet oppression. Jaruzelski resigned as general secretary of the Communist Party but found he was forced to come to terms with a government formed by Solidarity. In 1990 Jaruzelski resigned as Poland's leader and was succeeded by Wałęsa in December. Subsequently, Jaruzelski has faced charges for a number of actions such as murder that he committed while he was defense minister during the communist period.
In May 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded a commemorative medal to Jaruzelski in Moscow. Czech President Václav Klaus criticized this step, claiming that Jaruzelski is a symbol of the Warsaw Pact troops' invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Jaruzelski said that he had apologised and that the decision on the August 1968 invasion had been a great "political and moral mistake".[1].
On March 28, 2006, Jaruzelski was awarded a Siberian Exiles cross by Polish President Lech Kaczyński. However, after making this fact public Kaczyński claimed that this was a mistake and blamed the bureaucracy for giving him a document containing 1293 names without notifying him of Jaruzelski's presence within it. After this statement Jaruzelski returned the cross on March 30, 2006.
On March 31, 2006 the Polish IPN (Institute of National Remembrance) charged him with committing communist crimes, mainly the creation of a criminal military organisation with the aim of conducting crimes (mostly concerned with the illegal imprisonment of people). The second charge involves the incitement of state ministers to make acts beyond their competence.
The original documentation published recently also revealed that Jaruzelski had been a secret communist agent (a rezident of the GRU) spying for the Soviet Union in the Polish military since 1946 [2] [3]. The Polish Ministry of Defence currently is engaged in a process that would allow it to deny to Jaruzelski any military pension he currently receives [4].
- History of Poland (1945-1989)
- Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany
- Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union
- Recovered Territories
| Preceded by Józef Pińkowski |
Prime Minister of Poland 1981–1985 |
Succeeded by Zbigniew Messner |
| Preceded by Stanisław Kania |
General Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party 1981–1989 |
Succeeded by Mieczysław Rakowski |
| Preceded by Henryk Jabłoński |
Chairman of the Council of State 1985–1989 |
Succeeded by became President |
| Preceded by Council of State |
President of Poland 1989–1990 |
Succeeded by Lech Wałęsa |
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| Chairmen of the Polish Council of State |
| Bolesław Bierut • Aleksander Zawadzki • Edward Ochab • Marian Spychalski • Józef Cyrankiewicz • Henryk Jabłoński • Wojciech Jaruzelski |
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| First Secretaries of the Central Committee of the PUWP |
| Bolesław Bierut • Edward Ochab • Władysław Gomułka • Edward Gierek • Stanisław Kania • Wojciech Jaruzelski • Mieczysław Rakowski |
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| Republic of Poland | Gabriel Narutowicz · Maciej Rataj (acting) · Stanisław Wojciechowski · Maciej Rataj (acting) · Ignacy Mościcki |
| Government in Exile | Bolesław Wieniawa-Długoszowski · Władysław Raczkiewicz · August Zaleski · Council of Three · Stanisław Ostrowski · Edward Raczyński · Kazimierz Sabbat · Ryszard Kaczorowski |
| People's Republic of Poland | Bolesław Bierut · office superseded · Wojciech Jaruzelski |
| Republic of Poland | Wojciech Jaruzelski · Lech Wałęsa · Aleksander Kwaśniewski · Lech Kaczyński |