Wojciech Jaruzelski

Wojciech Jaruzelski, born in 1923, head of state (1981-1989) of communist-led Poland and president (1989-1990) of post-communist Poland. Born in Kurów, Jaruzelski and his family were deported at the outbreak of World War II (1939-1945) by the invading forces of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). He later served with Polish forces under Soviet command fighting Germany. Jaruzelski was educated at the Infantry Officer’s School and Karol Swierczewski General Staff Academy in Warsaw and joined the Polish United Workers’ Party, also known as the Communist Party, in 1947. First elected as a deputy to the Sejm (the lower house of Poland’s legislature) in 1961, he served in several senior army posts and eventually became minister of national defense (1968-1983). In 1971 he became a member of the party’s Politburo (Political Bureau).

In February 1981 Jaruzelski was elected head of state and made secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party. He declared martial law in December of that year in an effort to crush the Solidarity trade union movement led by Lech Wałęsa. With Solidarity suppressed, Jaruzelski lifted martial law in 1983. In 1985 he stepped down as premier, only to become president of the Council of State. Facing economic stagnation and the advance of the glasnost, or openness, policy in the Soviet Union, Jaruzelski opened negotiations with Solidarity in 1988. The negotiations led to the April 1989 agreement legalizing Solidarity and instituting free elections.

In July 1989 Jaruzelski was elected by the Sejm to the renovated post of president, at which time he relinquished his positions in the Communist Party. In September 1990 he agreed to resign the presidency before the end of his term to allow free presidential elections, which were won by Wałęsa. In April 1995 he was formally charged, along with 12 others, with involvement in the killing of 44 demonstrators by the army in 1970. At that time he had been minister of national defense. In April 1996 a provincial court dropped the proceedings against Jaruzelski. He was spared from additional judicial proceedings in October 1996, when the Sejm voted not to charge Jaruzelski and other former communist leaders with constitutional violations relating to the imposition of martial law in 1981, when authorities imprisoned thousands of activists and killed about 90 others.