Jaruzelski: To forgive and forget
It was 30 years in coming, but in the eyes of at least some Poles, better late than never. Last week saw the commencement of the trial of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's last communist leader, together with several others accused on charges of orchestrating the massacre of more than 40 workers in Gdansk in December 1970. It was a sober reminder for many observers that the man many thought would go down in Polish history as responsible for the transition from communism to democracy might instead face a more ignoble epitaph in Poland's troubled and bloody history.
Thanks to the diligent work of historians and archivists, more is now known of the events that led to street protests by Gdansk workers against unexpected food price increases, followed by their being mowed down by Polish army troops on the orders of the communist authorities in Warsaw.
One thing is clear: at the center of events was General Wojciech Jaruzelski, then Poland's defense minister and high-ranking communist party functionary. He was present when communist party leader Wladyslaw Gomulka gave the verbal order to open fire, and it was troops under his command that did the shooting, much to the future shame of many Polish military officers. The trial that opened in Warsaw last week will do much to determine Jaruzelski's responsibility and, if so, the degree of his guilt and the punishment that he will receive.
The fact that the trial is only now taking place, 30 years after the events themselves, is in no small part due to Jaruzelski himself. For 20 years after the massacres, he was able to use his position in the communist party apparatus eventually as First Secretary of the Communist Party in the 1980s to quash all attempts at investigation and indeed to direct a campaign of silencing witnesses and dissidents seeking to write the truth about the events.
After the onset of democracy in 1989, Jaruzelski and his lawyers resorted to a series of blatant legal stalling tactics, involving procedural quibbles and faked illnesses to prevent a trial. Now, after all the obstacles have been removed, the trial has commenced. Few, however, seriously expect the trial to be concluded, much less Jaruzelski convicted, on the basis of the known track record of the Polish judiciary system in dragging out trials and the cunning of defense lawyers able to stop proceedings on any number of pretexts. So what is the point? Public opinion polls show Poles divided about the trial, reflecting the ambiguity of history's judgment of Jaruzelski, and many commentators argue that Jaruzelski's purported assistance in dismantling communism makes him effectively immune from prosecution.
Leaving aside the bizarre argument that being a democrat (even if one accepts that that is what Jaruzelski is, and not merely an opportunist who saw which way the historical wind was blowing) absolves one of criminal guilt let alone in cases involving the deaths of 44 people it may be that the public's persistent loyalty to their former dictator is more a function of the careful nurturing of Jaruzelski's image as an angst-ridden closet patriot by the country's predominantly left-wing media.
The truth about Jaruzelski, however, is that as a young man during the war even as a witness to communist brutality he threw in his lot with the Soviet NKVD and communist party to participate in the establishment of Stalinism in his home country. Moreover, he did so not only as a Pole, but as a loyalist to the Soviet Union, progressing in his military career under the protection of the Soviet leadership in Moscow and its intelligence services.
His biography reads like that of a typical rent-a-dictator: head of the Main Political Directorate of the Polish Army, in other words responsible for indoctrinating troops in communist propaganda; defense minister responsible for the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968; minister in charge of troops massacring striking workers in 1970; mastermind, as communist party boss, of the introduction of martial law in 1981 that crushed Solidarity; subsequent head of the military junta and communist party that ruled Poland until 1989. Apart from a small interlude at the end of his career in 1989, when he graciously allowed the Poles the right to their freedom, that seems like the resume of man who should be grateful he has the courtesy of a trial, even one as farcical as this one will no doubt turn out to be.
These days, Jaruzelski has become a master of pulling off the standard dodge favored by all former dictators, that of combining feigned illnesses with tear-jerking stories about how he was a democrat all along, notably to gullible Western journalists or foreign ambassadors who seem to think that communism was a bit of a jolly jape. That they should be so naive is perhaps understandable, although unforgivable. Worse are those who should know better, particularly former anticommunist dissidents who owe their political positions today to those who resisted communism in the streets, but who have spent the past 10 years whitewashing Jaruzelski as a "Polish patriot." No wonder ordinary Poles are confused and that almost the only ones with a clearer sense of the truth are those who 30 years ago lived through the dark nights and bloody days on the streets of Gdansk. Not to worry though: Only a few more years, and all will be forgiven and forgotten.
Marek Matraszek is the Warsaw director of CEC Government Relations. He can be e-mailed at director@cec.com.pl (mailto:).
