Jaruzelski asked Soviets for assistance

thenews/national/artykul121537.html


thescotsman.scotsman/world/39Poland-sought-Soviet-aid-to.5894 564.jp

13 December - We Remember!

I'm surprised there aren't more threads about this.
Timely reminder of what happened in December 1970.

Is there accurate figures for how many people were killed ?

Actually, we're talking about Martial Law in 1981. There aren't more threads about this and other issues concerning communists controlling Polish politics and industry because most of the criticism is not translated into English. It is impossible to see the real situation in Poland without understanding Polish.

Sometimes, we get a glimps at Polish politics when documents are translated into English. Trust me, this issue has significance on how we view history, but leftist papers, like Gazeta Wyborcza ,will regurgitate the news for your consumption. Do I need to remind you of Michnik's words to keep away from the general(Jaruzelski)?

Most people think that Soviet communism somehow fell; that is the common view. Oh, yeah, it fell with the Berlin Wall, no doubt.

Until now, without documents proving it, people have been lead to believe that martial law was implemented to prevent a Soviet invasion.

In fact, Szkotja, there should be more threads on recent history of RP to see the left squirming.

Do people actually believe this?

As far as I can work out, Marital law was introduced to stabilise the country as it was in danger of completely collapsing as a society. Did Jaruzelski really have much other choice, given that he couldn't meet Solidarity's demands without coming into conflict with Moscow?

Timothy Garton Ash's excellent book on Solidarity gives a great narrative of what was going on in Poland at the time - and I think it's pretty clear that Jaruzelski was forced into a corner. History will not be kind to Jaruzelski, even though he does deserve a great deal of credit for successfully managing the transistion to democracy without the problems seen elsewhere - in fact, could the rest of Europe followed if he had adopted a hardline tone?

Having said all this, I think it's ridiculous for a taxpayer-sponsored witchhunt (the IPN) to embark on these crusades against certain individuals that are enemies of PiS - shouldn't these things be impartial and free of political interference? Walesa, uncharacteristically, seems to pointing this out in an unhysterical way.

Precisely.

But there's an important quote in the article which has not been posted here yet:


"Had not planned" is far from being the same as "would not have undertaken". I still hold the unpopular view that the General got most things right (but still did wrong).

My mistake - I have been reading about 1970 lately and it was on my mind.

That's strange... In the years 90, in Kaliningrad there were some discussion about those events.
The fact was that there were still some old german trains, that Urss preserved in Kaliningrad, because they fit for the western railroads. The reason was that the use of those trains to transport troops and tanks into Poland. There was told that in the beginning of 80, those trains waited only for the autorization from Moscow to cross the Polish border.

After perestrojka, some trains were abandoned, and finally sold for their metal...

Jaruzelwski was scared for his own ass...He was a high Communist, a politically trusted general, and he was afraid the pitchfork would be stuck in his back...However, he was realistic enough to know the signs of the times...He certainly co-operated with the Soviets, but perhaps he just felt the situation was out of control...In any event, at least we saw no wholesale slaughter of Poles.

And, BTW, while Russia may have been hesitant because of 'the West', you can bet they hesitated more for fear of Polish bullets in their heads.

I would say thay most people have no idea who Jaruzelski really worked for. His career took of when he became a captain in Millitary Intelligence. Schooled in the Soviet Union, he was groomed by GRU/SMERSH to replace Soviet NKVD commanders who were in charge of Soviet controlled Polish forces. His assignments were to eliminate AK and NSZ soldiers. That is what he did, as a member of counterintelligence, he eliminated Polish soldiers who fought for indepedent Poland. He was a traitor from the begining, a Soviet operative, working against the interests of Poland.

Soviet history may be kind to him as he was a Soviet patriot, but in the view of us Poles, he was a traitor of the worse kind.


This is correct; the Russians were poised in 1980; then Solidarity was legalized and the threat went away. In 1981, Jaruzelski asked the Soviets for help because he thought he might not be able to manage the situation. There were fourteen other lakeys who would have been happy to take care of the problem, but after Jaruzelski impossed martial law, he was the dictator in charge. BTW, impossing martial law was legally a coup d'etat. That alone, can land him in prison as it should.

Another irony, he bacame the first president of post-communist Poland and now declares himself a social democrat.

That's one view. Another is that he was a realist who look a practical view of Poland's postwar situation and did what he thought was best for Poland.

What do you know of and/or think about Operation Krkonose that the Czechs talk about?

Killing Polish soldiers after the war was best for Poland? Imposing Soviet rule was best for Poland?

A practical view for Poland? In the beginning, before they trusted traitors like Jaruzelski, printed instructions in units he worked in were in Russian. He made general at 33, and you didn't get there without Moscow's blessing.


Never heard about it.

One man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist. And Soviet occupation of Poland was a cold hard fact in 1945. There was no way the Poles were going to get the Red Army out.


I hadn't either until recently. Basically it is fairly good looking (as in reliability) evidence from the Czech that they were told to plan an operation inside Poland in December 1981 and told to remove the forces guarding the Warsaw pact's western border to have the maximum forces for that operation (the word 'exercise' is not used in any of the documentation, always 'operation').

Not a well publicized fact, but Jaruzelski demoted over a thousand officers to the rank of private, for...lack of moral fortitude. They were all Polish Jews. Some of them were his friends who helped him in his military career.

This is the caliber of man we are talking about.

Well this can’t be your view. In your previous posts you have taken the position of condemning Polish role in Czechoslovakia 1968. Serving his Moscow’s master he really did what he thought was best for Poland, a practical view to enhance his career. He led the Polish military participation in that invasion and here you are defending him as polish patriot. Hypocrisy, do you have a position that you strongly believe in or it’s all for the arguments sake taking the bits and pieces that suit you at the moment?

I utterly condemn his role in that invasion, just as I condemn Poland for taking part in the invasion. If anybody should be putting him on trial, it's the Czechs!

I'm glad you see it my way, trial it is.

For his actions in Czechoslovakia, most certainly (Nuremberg has proven that "I was only following orders" is not a valid defence). For his actions in Poland I think not.

Well...I wouldn't take Nuremberg as an example. Alot of crimes were invented especially for the trials in Nuremberg...also the "following orders crime".

What is especially mind boggling as ALL armies in the world depend on their soldiers following orders strictly and who punish not doing so severely, during wars with court martial and execution.

Lot's of experts say that this invented "crime" (only for german soldiers of course) never can hold up in reality, nowhere. No coincidence that nobody else got ever trialed for that elsewhere.

There were other such "crimes"....Nuremberg was in big parts a farce with faked evidence (Jew soap) and big ass criminals as judges (the Russians).

....okay...back to the topic... :)

There’s no crime that is grater than the one committed against your own people. So we have the dibs for his trial. There’s only one sentence for a traitor murdering civilians on behalf of his puppet masters in Moscow, which btw can never be viewed as for the greater good or be neither excused nor forgiven.

amen

A poster asked me for a translation of the digiart I posted. If you are in your thirties, then in 1981 you were a kid. Sunday morning, the 13th, kids woke up and "Teleranek" was a children's program which didn't happen that day as the martial law was impossed.

So, the poster says: You thug, give back the Teleranek! (rano, ranek, being morning). Of course, adults had much bigger problems, but the then kids remember it this way.

What else could the Polish communists do at the time? The country was breaking down, they had massive debt repayments to make to the West and the situation was spiralling out of control. Solidarity couldn't be trusted to cooperate - indeed, they wouldn't cooperate with the brutal economic programme that was needed. Look at the way that people were striking the second price rises were announced - the country was ungovernable.

I maintain that it was martial law or civil war - and let's not forget that both the Czechoslovaks and East Germans wouldn't have opposed the chance to give a black eye or two to the Poles.

I'd actually love to hear credible alternative scenarios to martial law.

Nonsense. What was needed was that they stop shipping most of our grain, meat, manufactured goods, and natural resources to the Soviet Union. The communists weren't willing to do that.


Since we know now that the Soviets had no intentions to invade in 1981, the communists could have reached an agreement with Solidarność, which was a peaceful movement. Ten years later they made such an agreement to share power. Solidarnosc was still a peaceful movement. The deterioriation of the economic situation was on-going with the idiotic policies the communists devised. They were the cause of a bad situation.

The bottom line is, they wanted to protect the totalitarian system, their huge privilages, nothing more, so from their point of view they did the right thing. From the point of view of the rest of the country, they were traitors, Moscow's puppets, and behaved just like criminals do - with violence.

BTW, they planned martial law for a year in advance.

Understandable, given that they were totally reliant on the Soviet Union - let's not forget, a Soviet Union that was unpredictable, ran by a Kremlin full of spoiled old men completely out of touch with reality. I don't think it was an option to simply say "no".


Peaceful in what sense? Their strikes were paralysing the country, and their leaders wanted more than the Communists could offer. Power sharing wasn't on offer, nor was it available in 1981 - would Brezhnev have accepted the loss of total Communist control in Poland? More than likely - no.

They didn't intend to invade because the Polish communists had no intention of letting Solidarity share political power. I don't think the Soviet Union was particularly interested in what went on economically as long as Communist rule was intact.


You can't compare the 1989 agreement with 1981 - the political climate had changed dramatically in Moscow to the point where their leader had openly announced that countries in the Warsaw Pact were free to go their own way. Compare that to 1981, where no-one knew what the Soviet Union was thinking - and Brezhnev had a long history of using force!

As I said - credible alternatives to Martial law? There really isn't any - every time the Communists gave an inch, Solidarity wanted more.

A curious choice of words for a largest and the most lethal criminal enterprise the world had known.


Faithful servants never say no, and that is what Jaruzelski was. Looking at his biography, and I don't mean on wikipedia, you have to admit he was a Soviet operative from the begining. Tito said no and they left him alone.


From CIA released documents:



What were the unacceptable demands then?

We know that how?

You can keep insisting all you want that the Soviets had no intentions of invading Poland in 1981 but the fact is that there are more than a few people in the Czech army who disagree with you about it. And those people have no reason to lie.

The IPN are clearly nothing now more than Kaczynski’s historical attack dogs and specialise in releasing documents which are as questionable as the Hitler diaries, do you really trust a word they say? The Russians have every reason to lie: make themselves look good and make a long-discarded ally look bad. What reason do the Czechs have for lying about being told to prepare for an invasion operation? I can't think of any reason why they would want to help the man who led the Polish invasion of their country, can you?

First of all, Kaczynski is the only President in post-communist Poland that was not a registered agent of communist security services. The first one, Jaruzelski (TW"Wolski"), was indeed trained in the Soviet Union by GRU to aid the Soviets to establish their rule in Poland. The next president was TW "Bolek" - the later "hero" of Solidarity, registered in 1970, and then TW "Alek" or Kwasniewski. All these say what you say - it's a witch hunt.

You are clearly not aware that what IPN is and what it does. Which documents are questionable, Harry? The ones Yelstsin handed over in 1992?

Apologists for communist crimes against Polish nationals would like IPN disolved, but what is your interest in defending the criminals? Your hate for Poland?

Interesting that you view Jaruzelski as a hero who saved Poland from a Soviet invasion.

Also interesting that there are no guilty for any communist crimes. Maybe none happened?

I have not and would not use the word "hero" to describe him. But it is interesting that you don't have even a word to say about the content of my previous post about the Czechs disagreeing with you about the planned invasion and them having some pretty damn good evidence too. Have you read that article I sent you?


I think I'll wait for the court case (Walesa vs Kaczynski) before I condemn the man who is, in the eyes of the world outside Poland, the greatest living Pole.


At this point most of the documents are questionable. After 20 years to remove and add documents, there's little that can be relied on completely.


Yes I hate Poland so much that I signed up to invade her. Oh, wait a minute, that was somebody else.

Walesa made a contribution, but he was a SB snitch in the seventies. We know this for sure.


Describe Jaruzelski then. A Soviet yesman perhaps? A traitor? A Soviet patriot?


I'll get back on that as the doc you sent me is 230 pages long. Interesting though.

Great new documetary ( in Polish so far) on Jaruzelski:
...

Anyone with half a brain, or even less can clearly see this. Why is it that the SB never used these 'documents' against Walesa to destroy any credibility he had as a leader of Solidarity? Could it be because the documents are at best, a falsification by the SB and at worst, fabricated by Kaczynski-fans?


If the IPN was a tool of the SLD, I have the utmost faith that Kaczynski would be 'found' to be a registered agent. Given that the IPN has proved itself time and time again to be politically biased and wrapped up in politics, how can you trust a word they say?