Wojciech Jaruzelski

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Wojciech Jaruzelski bigraphy, stories - President of Poland

Wojciech Jaruzelski : biography

6 July 1923 –

Wojciech Witold Jaruzelski (pronounced ; born 6 July 1923) is a retired Polish military officer and Communist politician. He was the last Communist leader of Poland from 1981 to 1989, Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985 and the country’s head of state from 1985 to 1990. He was also the last commander-in-chief of the Polish People’s Army (LWP). He resigned from power after the Polish Round Table Agreement in 1989 that led to democratic elections in Poland. Alongside the Soviet Union’s Mikhail Gorbachev and East Germany’s Egon Krenz, Jaruzelski is the last surviving leader of an Eastern Bloc nation.

Legacy

Jaruzelski is a controversial person in Poland. Some people, many of them a part of the "Solidarity generation", have a highly negative opinion of him, believing that Jaruzelski "is little short of a traitor", even comparing his philosophy of "a strong Poland within a Soviet dominated bloc" to Vidkun Quisling’s philosophy of a similar status for Norway within the Nazi controlled hemisphere. Opinion polls, as of 15 May 2001, suggest that a majority of the Polish people are open to agreeing with his explanation that martial law was implemented to prevent a Soviet invasion. Documents available tell another story that Jaruzelski openly lobbied Soviet intervention. In interviews in Russian Media (Rosiiska gazieta for example) he has been presented as the harbinger of Poland’s democracy.

Presidency

The policies of Mikhail Gorbachev also stimulated political reform in Poland. By the close of the tenth plenary session in December 1988, the Communist Party was forced, after strikes, to approach leaders of Solidarity for talks.

From 6 February to 15 April 1989, negotiations were held between 13 working groups during 94 sessions of the roundtable talks. These negotiations "radically altered the shape "of the Polish government and society", and resulted in an agreement which stated that a great degree of political power would be given to a newly created bicameral legislature. It also created a new post of president to act as head of state and chief executive. Solidarity was also declared a legal organization. During the following Polish elections the Communists were allocated 65 percent of the seats in the Sejm, Solidarity won all the remaining elected seats, and 99 out of the 100 seats in the fully elected Senate were also won by Solidarity-backed candidates. Jaruzelski won the presidential ballot by one vote on 19 July 1989.

Jaruzelski was unsuccessful in convincing Wałęsa to include Solidarity in a "grand coalition" with the Communists, and Jaruzelski resigned his position of general secretary of the Polish Communist Party on 29 July 1989. The Communists’ two allied parties broke their long-standing alliance, forcing Jaruzelski to appoint Solidarity’s Tadeusz Mazowiecki as the country’s first non-Communist prime minister since 1948. Jaruzelski resigned as Poland’s leader in 1990. He was succeeded by Wałęsa in December. Subsequently, Jaruzelski faced charges for a number of actions such as murder that he committed while he was Defense Minister during the Communist period.

On 31 January 1991, General Jaruzelski retired from the army service.

After retirement

In an interview conducted in 2001, Jaruzelski said that he believes communism failed, that he is a social democrat, and that he backed Aleksander Kwaśniewski, who at that time was the President of Poland, as well as Leszek Miller, who would later become the Prime Minister of Poland. Wojciech Jaruzelski in 2006 In May 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin awarded a medal commemorating the 60th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany to Jaruzelski. Other former leaders awarded the medal include former Romanian King Michael I. Czech President Václav Klaus criticized this step, claiming that Jaruzelski is a symbol of the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. Jaruzelski said that he had apologized and that the decision on the August 1968 invasion had been a great "political and moral mistake".