WARSAW: General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland’s last communist leader who imposed martial law to crush the Solidarity movement only to hand over power less than a decade later, died aged 90 yesterday after a long illness, a military hospital in
Warsaw said.
In public a stern, enigmatic figure in his trademark dark glasses, Jaruzelski’s record defies easy judgment and still divides Poles almost a quarter century after the fall of communism.
Lech Walesa, who was detained by Jaruzelski as Solidarity leader but eventually succeeded him as president, described the communist as a tragic figure who should be judged only by God.
For many Poles, Jaruzelski was a Soviet stooge who, with Moscow’s backing, announced military rule on December 13, 1981, after the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain, Solidarity, threatened communist rule.
Others accepted his argument that the decision helped to avert a Soviet-led military intervention like those that crushed similar protests in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
“The general was accompanied by his daughter Monika until the last moment,” the Military Medical Institute hospital in Warsaw, where he died, said in a statement. Under martial law, which lasted until 1983, dozens of demonstrators were killed and thousands more, including Walesa, were jailed. Decades later, on trial for declaring martial law and for human rights violations, Jaruzelski defended his decision.
Reuters
