On the night of Saturday 12 December to Sunday 13 December 1981, martial law was declared by the communist government in Poland. The declared aim was economic, the shops were empty, ration cards were issued for even basic staple goods, wildcat strikes were common place. This was the very definition of economic mismanagement. President of the Polish People’s Republic Wojciech Jaruzelski said in his televised speech which was broadcast on the television and radio from early in the morning of 13 December that the aim in declaring martial law was to repair the economy adding that he realised that force would not resolve the issue and that the aim was not to install a military dictatorship.
The declaration of martial law meant that the country was now ruled by a council called Military Council of National Salvation WRON, in Polish, Wojskowa Rada Ocalenia Narodowego. Here we can see them in their meeting of 14 December 1981. In Latin America and Africa, military juntas appeared all the time, the idea possibly being that the army is good at organising things. Anyone who has ever been in an army will know how much nonsense that is and, furthermore, Jaruzelski had had several months to resolve the economic crisis. Nearly all of the military officers in WRON were communist party members, some of them had roles within the government even earlier. Therefore given that they had been unable to resolve this situation earlier, it was unlikely at best that they would do so now.
The repression was organised well in advance. An order dated 23 October 1980 with a list, in order of importance of whom to arrest. First is Lech Wałęsa, next Bogdan Lis, next Andrzej Kołodziej, then Henryka Krywonos.
Martial law happened during a very cold winter when life for many people in industrial centres was already difficult due to food shortages. The plan for martial law was drawn up to a large extent by General Czesław Kiszczak. As the first thing the communist authorities did was to arrest trade union leaders and others opposed to the regime, then organisational leadership amongst the opposition was lacking. This was facilitated as Solidarity was then holding meetings in Gdańsk and so opposition leaders were in one place at one time. All the communist authorities had to do was to surround the hotels where the out of towners were staying. Others were picked up on their way to, or at, the main railway station. Such people include Zbigniew Bujak,Władysław Frasyniuk, Bronisław Geremek, Zbigniew Janas, Jan Olszewski, Zbigniew Romaszewski and Tadeusz Mazowiecki.
To add to the confusion, although there had been warnings of impending martial law, telephones had been cut off and communication was severely restricted. Nonetheless by the time Monday came around it was clear that there would be a series of sit in strikes throughout the country. As it happened there were at least 199 strikes, 47 of which were in the Gdańsk region.
The communist authorities expected strikes and attempted to resolve them in three phases. In phase one, representatives of the prosecutor's office, the police and the Polish People's Army visited the strikers in order to negotiate peacefully. They pointed out that in times of martial law to refuse a military order could result in very serious punishment including the death penalty.
If this did not work out, they would give a demonstration of strength, using military equipment such as tanks and armoured personnel carriers to block off roads and entrances to the place of employment. This was accompanied by appeals made using loudspeakers appealing to the strikers to conform. A T72 tank had a 125mm smoothbore cannon, a 7.62 coaxial machine gun and a 12.7mm anti aircraft machine gun whilst the strikers had their bare fists.
Nonetheless if a show of force did not work, then real force was used. Forty such sit in strikes were broken by use of force, most of them in places where there were a lot of employees such as the coal mines in Silesia, the shipyards and ports in the north of the country, the steelworks in Katowice and Kraków or the Ursus tractor factory in Warsaw amongst others.
The communist authorities expected trouble in Gdańsk. Ten years earlier, in December 1970 strikes had been put down by force resulting in many deaths.
Lech Wałęsa, leader of the Solidarity trade union, returned to his flat in Gdańsk Zaspa after midnight in the early hours of Sunday, 13 December 1981 from the meetings of the Solidarity National Committee. At around one in the morning, activists came to him with information about the arrests. Nevertheless, he went to bed. At 02:45 the door bell woke him up. He was greeted by the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party in Gdańsk, Tadeusz Fiszbach, the Gdańsk provincial governor, Jerzy Kołodziejski, and with them a militia unit with crowbars and other equipment to smash down the door.
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