An Independent Society: Poland under Martial Law (original) (raw)

Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, 1990

Abstract

On December 13, 1981, after sixteen months of an uneasy coexistence between the communist state and the Eastern bloc's firstever independent trade union, Solidarity, General Jaruzelski, as head of a self-appointed Military Council of National Salvation, imposed martial law ,on Poland. Thousands of militants and intellectuals were placed in administrative detention without a warrant; and thousands more were to be interned, arrested, and sentenced. All trade unions-and almost all student and professional associations-were suspended and later banned, newspapers were seized, and military censorship was imposedl A curfew was enforced, telephones switched off, and the borders sealed. Protest was met with violence and the first dead (although the coup itself was bIoodless) fell several days later. In all, martial law was to claim over the years a hundred dead and thousands wounded, over ten thousand jailed and a yet-undetermined number harassed, fired, and forced into emigration. For the Poles, martial law meant a brutal reimposition of the communist system the country had been resisting ever since the outcome of World War I1 had brought it under Soviet control. I shall relate the story of Polish civil resistance to military rule. Political opposition, under conditions of martial law, was not an option; and armed opposition had never been one. On these grounds, the authorities had presumably surmised that, .once their rule was firmly reestablished, the Poles would have no alternative but submission-and official propaganda said as much. What happened, in fact, was the exact opposite to their expectations: an entire society tried to go underground, as it were, there to continue its activity not so much against the regime as in spite of its presence and goals. One could see in this the realization of a slogan invented by leading oppositionist Jacek Kurd, who, mindful of the final defeat of the bloody riots of 1970, warned resistors, "Do not burn down [party] committees: set up your own." "

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