In the evening of Saturday 12 December 1981, the Polish Council of State, very roughly equivalent of the Presidential office decided to introduce martial law throughout the country. In this video I am going to show background video of Poland today as well as contemporary photographs although unfortunately I do not have any photographs with me that I took but perhaps some time in the future I will be able to show them too.
At around 22:30 or thereabouts, the regime went about shutting down telecommunications and the television broadcasting stations. All of these went dead at midnight and the paramilitary police took over their buildings.
In what was clearly a carefully planned operation, at midnight on Saturday, 12 December to Sunday, 13 December units of the Polish paramilitary police, ZOMO, set out to arrest around 10,000 opposition activists. At that moment the Polish communists organised some 70,000 people to subjugate the Solidarity trade union involving not only the Ministry of the Interior but also the army with its 1,750 tanks, 1,400 armored vehicles, 500 armoured personnel carriers, 9,000 other vehicles together with helicopters and transport planes. One quarter of the entire force was concentrated in and around Warsaw.
At six in the morning, Polish Radio and television broadcast a speech from General Wojciech Jaruzelski in which he announced the state of martial law claiming that this was to avoid a nationwide catastrophe and that he had formed a Military Council of National Salvation. Although his actions had been somewhat similar to those of General Pinochet in Chile only eight years earlier, he claimed that this was not a military coup leading to a military dictatorship and recognised that force would not resolve the matter. He appealed for people to protect the state from the enemy, and working people from lawlessness and violence. Except for those that had been arrested, this was the first most people knew of martial law. This happened during a hard winter, people did not go out at night like they do now, there was no 24 hour television.
Reservists were called up and they were directed to take over some institutions and strategic sectors of the economy, such as certain factories, communications, telecommunications, energy, mining and ports. Strikes were forbidden and the activity of the independent trade union Solidarity was outlawed.
A curfew was introduced as from 19:00 in the evening. Telephone communications were turned off. Only two newspapers were permitted, the communist party organs "Trybuna Ludu" and " „Żołnierz Wolności” . Travel in and out of the country was banned except for repatriation purposes. Schools and universities were closed.
The leader of the Solidarity trade union, Lech Wałęsa was arrested at home and brought to the Warsaw region where he was allowed to speak to Archbishop Bronisław Dąbrowski and priest Father Alojzy Orszulik .Then he was imprisoned in a property belonging to the Ministry of the Interior in Skolimów near Warsaw.
Primate Jozef Glemp, head of the Catholic Church in Poland since July 1981 and who was to become a cardinal in 1983 had been informed by the communist authorities of martial law. He delivered a sermon in Częstochowa in which he called for peace. In the evening, during his next sermon in Warsaw, he appealed for realism and the pointlessness of fighting against martial law. He wanted to avoid what he saw as a fratricidal struggle.
On Monday, 14 December 1981 reservists called up to militia units received weapons and live ammunition.
So what brought this situation about?
The official reason for the martial law was economic. The shops were almost empty. Rationing had been introduced in 1976 for sugar. The communist system is one of a planned economy and one might have thought that they might have planned that sugar would be needed. Poland is today the seventh largest sugar beet producer in the world and potentially could have been then too. Sugar was, maybe still is for older people, a crucial economic marker. People would know the price of sugar. Today, people buy sugar to put in their tea and not much else. However in countries where the processed food industry is not developed then people prepare food at home. Sugar was needed not so much for baking cakes and the like but more for preserving food for the winter. It was therefore of great importance for many people.
In 1980 there were a wave of strikes throughout Poland which led to the formation of the free trade union Solidarity in August 1980. In the original 21 demands of the strikers in Gdańsk there was nothing about changing the political shape of the country which was accepted but of changing the economics. Something which was perfectly reasonable.



Please consider supporting me on Patreon. [ Ссылка ]

свернуть