TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/100190/1001006.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.9 KB | 126 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 63

POLAND

The Man Who Did His Duty


Jaruzelski, who is preparing to step down, is likely to be
remembered better by historians than by his countrymen today

By JOHN BORRELL/WARSAW -- With reporting by Tadeusz Kucharski/
Warsaw


    He sits bolt upright, his hands folded neatly on the oak
table in front of him. A dark suit and subdued tie reinforce
the image of a stern military man, someone just as capable of
offering an interrogator no more than name, rank and serial
number as he is of impassively handing down a tribunal's
verdict. Not even his eyes, hidden behind dark glasses, give
anything away.

    That's the kind of mental snapshot visitors carry away with
them after meeting General Wojciech Jaruzelski. It is also the
framed portrait that Poland's President, who last week
announced his willingness to step down, will bequeath to the
nation. Easily his country's most controversial postwar
political figure, Jaruzelski, 67, will leave office even more
of an enigma than when he first came to power nearly a decade
ago.

    Vilified then as the man who imposed martial law in 1981 and
outlawed the Solidarity trade-union movement, Jaruzelski gazed
calmly from the sidelines last year as the revolt against
communism gathered steam. He acknowledged Solidarity's election
victory in June, and then won, with just a single ballot to
spare, a parliamentary vote for a six-year presidential term.
"As President, Jaruzelski has done practically everything that
was expected of him," says Pawel Ziolek, a spokesman of the
Forum of a Democratic Right, a coalition group. "Which means
he did nothing to disturb the process of dismantling the
system."

    But for most of his countrymen, Jaruzelski remains stranded
in a political no-man's-land strewn with the detritus of his
nation's recent struggles. Was he a Moscow stooge back in 1981
or a Polish patriot making an unpopular move to prevent the
bloodbath of a Soviet invasion? Was he as pivotal a political
player during the 1980s as trade-union leader Lech Walesa, or
was his just a walk-on part that will quickly fade in memory?

    It seems likely that historians will judge him more kindly
than many of his contemporaries do. He may even find his way
into Poland's pantheon of 20th century heroes, joining Walesa
and Jozef Pilsudski as men who marched briskly to the tattoo
of their times. "Some time will have to pass before Jaruzelski
can be looked at by Poles in a completely objective way," says
Professor Adam Bromke of the Polish Academy of Sciences. "But
time may work to his credit."

    Much of the judgment will rest on what actually happened in
late 1981, when spreading unrest had made Poland almost
ungovernable. Brezhnev was in power in Moscow, and the doctrine
he had formulated allowed the Soviet Union to intervene
militarily should its interests in Eastern Europe be
threatened. It may be hard to imagine today, but nine years
ago, the invasions of Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in
1968 were still powerful reminders of Soviet resolve.

    Jaruzelski characteristically refuses to talk about the
crucial weeks before he declared martial law on Dec. 13. Asked
in a recent interview with TIME whether the Soviets would have
invaded had he not cracked down, Jaruzelski replied almost
peevishly, "I am asked that question all the time. I don't
think it would help for me to answer it now."

    Yet his past in many ways personifies the abiding Polish
dilemma born of geography and the hard knocks of history.
Jaruzelski was 16 when Nazi Germany attacked Poland in 1939,
and he recalls vividly how, on a clear September day 51 years
ago, he and his family crossed into Lithuania as refugees. "I
thought then that the heavens had fallen in on me," Jaruzelski
recalls. "We were convinced that we would return home soon,
that an English-French offensive would enable the Polish army
to go on fighting against the Germans. It was not to happen."

    Instead, burdened with memories of dead horses on roadsides
and German planes strafing the refugees, the teenager was
deported to Siberia. It was there, during three years of forced
labor, he was struck by the snow blindness that later forced
him to wear his famed tinted glasses. Only in 1944 could
Jaruzelski return to Poland, and only then as a recruit in a
Polish army put together by Stalin.

    Having lived through a nightmare, he went to some lengths
to spare others. Climbing quickly through the military ranks
after World War II, Jaruzelski was army chief of staff when
Solidarity came into being in 1980 and became the Communist
Party leader the following year. His 1981 crackdown did not
lead to witch hunts or secret trials, as the 1956 invasion did
in Hungary. There was none of the petty vindictiveness of
Czechoslovakia's Soviet-backed Communist clique. "He has always
been a politician with bad cards who has tried to minimize the
damage," says Professor Jerzy Holzar, a historian at the
University of Warsaw.

    Jaruzelski seems to view himself as someone shaped by
history, a proud vision borne out by one of his last acts in
office. Instead of simply stepping down, he asked parliament
last week to introduce a constitutional amendment shortening
his six-year term of office. This way he can leave not as the
leader who resigned under pressure but as the President whose
term was reduced by an act of parliament.

    Walesa, his longtime opponent and the only candidate so far
to declare for the presidential elections likely to be held in
December, has far less modest views of himself. But whether he
will ultimately be able to shape Poland's fate any more than
Jaruzelski did may depend less on his skills than on
geopolitics. The Soviet bear may be hibernating, but the German
eagle is soaring in an ever widening economic gyre.