The heavy cross of the ex-president

Jaruzelski faces prison

The troubles of the famous Polish politician Wojciech Jaruzelski did not end with the fact that in the middle of last week, President Lech Kaczynski awarded him the Cross of Exiles to Siberia, and then deleted him from the list of recipients, allegedly because he got there due to a mistake by the presidential staff (see. "News Time" dated March 30) . Wojciech Jaruzelski has already returned the cross of exiles to Siberia and the accompanying certificate, although at first he was not surprised by the award - he was deported to Siberia with his parents in 1941.

Now 82-year-old ex-President of Poland Wojciech Jaruzelski faces criminal prosecution. At the end of last week, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (INR), which investigates crimes against the Polish people, filed a serious charge against him - “leading a criminal alliance of an armed nature, the purpose of which was to commit crimes against freedom and public order.” Once the investigation is completed, the Institute of National Remembrance may refer the case to court.

At the end of last week, Jaruzelski was summoned to the INP, where he was told that they would familiarize him with the essence of the charges in more detail around May 10. For now, it is clear that we are talking about martial law that was in force in Poland from December 13, 1981 to July 1983. In those years, Jaruzelski was prime minister, minister of defense, and then first secretary of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) and chairman of the Military Council of National Salvation.

The investigation into why martial law was introduced was already carried out for five years in the 90s by the parliamentary commission of constitutional responsibility of the Polish Sejm. Then dozens of witnesses were heard, documents received from the USSR, the GDR and Czechoslovakia were reviewed. The proposal to bring Jaruzelski to justice and transfer the case to the State Tribunal failed thanks to the votes of deputies of the left factions of the Sejm. According to post-communists, General Jaruzelski acted in a state of “utmost necessity”, since otherwise Warsaw Pact troops would have invaded Poland to suppress the protests of the Solidarity movement. Most likely, it was about USSR troops according to the scenario of what happened in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.

In recent years, Polish historians have made great efforts to prove the opposite: the Soviet intervention was not foreseen, and its threat was just a pretext for imposing martial law. Now Jaruzelski and several other statesmen of socialist Poland of that period are accused of several counts at once: deprivation of liberty through internment and judicial punishment, violation of bodily integrity and labor rights of Polish citizens, mainly participating in Solidarity. Since we are already talking about a “criminal alliance,” the initiators of martial law can be punished as the most dangerous criminals, up to eight years in prison.

This is not the first accusation against Jaruzelski. The so-called “December trial” continues - about responsibility for the events in December 1970, when several dozen Polish workers died during anti-government protests. Therefore, the ex-president was not surprised: “This fits into the logic of the actions of the current government.” The general has already stated that he will provide arguments in his defense to an independent court. “I just don’t know whether I’ll wait until the end of the process,” he added. “I’m almost 83 years old, and my health is far from the best.”

Accusations against Jaruzelski again divided the Poles, most of whom still consider the former leader of Poland to be an honest and courageous man. Even his opponents, who call for a “reckoning with the communist past,” are wary of the former communist leader. One of the leaders of the illegal Solidarity, former political prisoner Vladislav Frasyniuk, says: “Jaruzelski should be assessed by history, not by lawyers... The IPP acts on orders.”

Valery MASTEROV, staff correspondent for the Moscow News newspaper in Warsaw, for Vremya Novostei