The Past As Prologue
Poland's communist leader Jaruzelski is again on the docket
It is hardly anyone's idea of justice. The crime is 31 years old. The defendant is 78 and ailing. His accusers have been pushing to try him for a dozen years--but they had a different crime in mind. It could be another dozen years before a verdict. And yet the trial that got underway in Warsaw last week may well go down as one of the most important landmarks in the history of post-communist states.
Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the last communist leader of Poland, is on trial for allegedly giving shoot-to-kill orders that cost 44 striking workers their lives in 1970. He and his 11 codefendants, if convicted of manslaughter, face possible jail sentences of eight years to life. All of them were highly placed officials when the killings occurred. Jaruzelski himself was defense minister, and that's the hitch: The orders to use force to break up demonstrations in three Baltic port cities initially came not from him but from Poland's leader at the time, Wladyslaw Gomulka.
Different crime. According to the latest poll figures, most Poles do not believe Jaruzelski should be tried for the 1970 killings. Indeed, the politicians who pushed for the trial had something else in mind: They wanted to see Jaruzelski prosecuted and punished for the imposition of martial law in December 1981.
The long struggle to bring Jaruzelski to justice testifies to Polish society's continued efforts to come to terms with the legacy of communism. A number of post-Soviet countries, such as Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, entered the 21st century with their old communist leaders at the helm. Others, like the Czech Republic and Germany, have largely completed the legal process of identifying and punishing those responsible for crimes of the old regime. Still other countries chose shorter routes: Romania's communist dictator was summarily executed, while Russia quickly aborted the attempted trial of Communist Party leaders and allowed many of them to retain high posts. But Poland, perhaps because it has sought the middle ground, seems little closer to resolving its past than it was a decade ago. The process started resolutely enough. In 1989, the country's first noncommunist prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, called for "drawing a thick line" to separate the country from its past. But any effort to do so was probably doomed because of the country's split legacy: On one hand, the Polish regime had dealt harshly with its opponents at several historic junctures. On the other hand, its transition to post-communism was the earliest and arguably the smoothest of all its neighbors.
No one person is more responsible for that conflicted history than Jaruzelski, who is viewed by some as a bloody dictator and Soviet stooge and by others as a reformer not unlike Mikhail Gorbachev. In 1981 he decided to introduce martial law in a country swept by a months-long wave of strikes and protests that gave birth to the Solidarity movement. The move imposed unparalleled restrictions on the Polish people and left the country's already hobbled economy in shambles.
Still, Jaruzelski's supporters believe that by imposing martial law the general prevented the bloodier alternative--a Soviet military invasion like those that followed reformist moves in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. In 1989 Jaruzelski was instrumental in organizing negotiations between communists and Solidarity activists that led to the Round Table Accord that same year, which paved the way for the Eastern bloc's first partially free elections. In June of that year Jaruzelski became Poland's president--a post he was to cede to Solidarity's Lech Walesa once election laws were reformed.
Mazowiecki's Solidarity government was quickly followed by several others with less generous attitudes toward their predecessors. But their efforts to organize trials of former communist leaders floundered, mainly because unpopular economic reforms eroded public support for government initiatives.
In addition, early attempts at lustration--the process of fingering collaborators of the old regime--turned embarrassing when a leaked list of suspects was revealed to include, incredibly, Walesa himself. In 1993, Poles voted for a government of former communists, and the momentum seemed lost forever. But some activists refused to give up. One was Mariusz Kaminski, 35, a member of parliament who became a Solidarity activist as a young teenager. For seven years Kaminski and his allies have held candlelight vigils in front of Jaruzelski's villa on the anniversary of the imposition of martial law. After efforts to bring Jaruzelski to trial for that event failed, Kaminski and his allies turned their energies to the current trial.
Old, sick man. By and large, public opinion has favored a forgive-and-forget approach. "Poles look at Jaruzelski as an old, ill man," says Wieslawa Kozek, head of the Polish Institute of Sociology. "Their approach is something like, `Let us leave him alone.' " Outside the courtroom, Jaruzelski's supporters expressed their outrage. "It's a scandal that he is treated like a criminal and put on trial," said retired Col. Stanislaw Ludwiczak.
But among Poland's opinion makers many support the trial as a building block to democratization. "Such trials are probably 11 years too late with regard to public opinion," says prominent political scientist Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski. "But they are not too late with regard to restoration of the norms of justice in public life . . . they send a message to would-be dictators that justice may not be swift but it will come."
But norms of justice took a beating early in the trial. On the second day of hearings both of Jaruzelski's lawyers quit: One said his life had been shattered by the dredging up of an old manslaughter conviction; the other simply claimed he was too old to handle the case. The trial will now most likely be delayed until a new lawyer is up to speed on the case--which will take at least a couple of months. Then the court will have to deal with 1,100 witnesses and the recorded testimony of 2,400 more. Even if the evidence is abridged, the trial is likely to drag on for more than a year.
Even if the star defendant lives long enough to hear the verdict, whatever justice emerges from the tortured process will almost surely be too little, too late for the surviving relatives of the nearly forgotten victims: the 44 people who died in demonstrations 31 years ago.
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF WOJCIECH JARUZELSKI
1923-1945 War years. Born in Kurow, Jaruzelski, at 16, was deported to Siberia by the invading Soviet Army. Three years later, he was sent back to fight the Germans.
1945-1968 Rise to power. Joined Polish Communist Party at 24, promoted to general at 33. Defense minister in 1968.
1981 Martial law. Became premier in February 1981. Declared martial law Dec. 13, 1981, arresting thousands of Solidarity activists. Lifted martial law two years later. In 1988, initiated talks leading to legalization of Solidarity and transition to free elections. Elected president by parliament in July 1989 and relinquished party positions.
1990-1996 Memoirs. Defends martial law as the only way to have prevented a Soviet invasion. Parliament grants amnesty covering Jaruzelski's actions during martial law.
2001 Trial. Jaruzelski is on trial for the deaths of 44 workers shot during strikes at three Baltic ports in December 1970 when he was defense minister.
With Bogdan Turek and Patricia Koza
This story appears in the May 28, 2001 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.