There could hardly have been a greater contrast between this and the first National Congress held by Solidarność at Oliwa near Gdańsk in September 1981. The Congress constituted the first democratically elected national assembly since the pre-war Sejm, which lent its deliberations gravity. While Wałęsa and the moderates attempted to pin the discussion down to matters concerning the union itself and the Gdańsk accords, many of the delegates, frustrated and incensed by the government’s bad faith, raised issues of principle that went far beyond these confines.
There were calls for the foundation of a political party to represent the workers and for free elections. As the Soviet Baltic fleet held the largest exercise since the Second World War, on 8 September the Congress passed a motion to issue a statement of sympathy and support to all the downtrodden peoples of the Soviet bloc and to encourage them to start free trade unions. TASS called the Congress ‘an anti-socialist and anti-Soviet orgy’, and the Polish Politburo accused Solidarność of violating the Gdańsk accords.
The Soviet leadership was nearing the limits of its tolerance. Yet the Soviet Union was diplomatically isolated as a result of its invasion of Afghanistan, and economically dependent on the West. The scale of the popular movement in Poland, its charismatic leader’s immense popularity throughout the world, the high profile of the Polish Pope on the international scene and the determined attitude of the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and President Ronald Reagan meant that an invasion might end in catastrophe for the Soviet Union.
Conveniently for Moscow, Jaruzelski was prepared to do almost anything to avoid one. After Kania’s resignation in October, he took overall control and began preparations for a clampdown, which began on the night of 12 December 1981. At 11.30 p.m. the telephone network went dead, followed by radio and television transmissions. In a complex operation carried out with remarkable efficiency, almost the entire leadership of Solidarność were arrested. Thousands of people were dragged from their beds and ferried to prisons and concentration camps, while tanks patrolled the snow-covered streets and ZOMO stormtroopers were deployed at potential trouble spots. Factories, mines and the railway network were occupied and placed under military command. A curfew was imposed and travel was forbidden. At six in the morning of 13 December the national anthem was played on television and Jaruzelski declared that he had imposed martial law as the country had been on the edge of a precipice.
The workers were unprepared, and while there was a wave of strikes and sit-ins on 14 December, there was little resistance when the troops moved in. The Wujek mine in Silesia was the scene of an underground sit-in which ended on 16 December with ZOMO firing on and killing nine of the surrendering miners. Their colleagues in the Piast mine held out longer, but the last nine hundred came to the surface on 28 December. Although a few Solidarność leaders remained in hiding and mounted a campaign of underground opposition, the movement was ostensibly crushed. In all, some 5,000 of its members were detained, while another 150,000 were hauled in for ’preventive and cautionary talks’.
On 22 December Jaruzelski told the Politburo that they had won the first battle, but that they still had a campaign to fight and a war to win, which would take ten years. He was right about the battle. There was some low-level protest, with slogans daubed on walls and fliers distributed in the streets. Many writers and actors boycotted the state media. Strikes and demonstrations were staged on the national day of 3 May 1982, but they were put down brutally and effectively. People who did not submit lost their jobs and were subjected to pressures of one sort or another. On the anniversary of the signing of the Gdańsk accords there were demonstrations in over sixty towns, but these were dispersed. Over 5,000 people were arrested, and at least three people killed and hundreds wounded in the process, demonstrating the pointlessness of this kind of action. In December 1982, a year after its imposition, martial law was suspended, and six months later, lifted. By then a number of special powers had been brought in that made it unnecessary.
Jaruzelski’s attempts at normalising the situation were less successful. He tried to garner support for the government by creating a Patriotic Movement for National Regeneration and an official trade union, which people were pressured to join. But neither carried much credibility.
The United States had imposed stringent trade sanctions, and other Western countries followed suit. This hit Jaruzelski’s attempts at reviving the economy. Plans and reform programmes were announced, but nothing came of them. The zloty was devalued twice, in 1983 and 1985, and inflation rose to around 70 per cent.