Wojciech Jaruzelski (last Communist leader of Poland), age 86, again mounts a defense.

[pampango]

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/poland/100205/jaruzelski-defense

The struggles of the general who crushed the 1981 Solidarity uprising reflect Poland's complicated history. The latest blow-up over the general’s past came last week following the broadcast of a documentary called “Comrade General,” which took a hard and unfavorable look at Jaruzelski’s Communist past. The general is outraged at what he called the one-sided nature of the film, which hit at the core of his defense: that he is a Polish patriot who was acting out of the best interests of his country, not a communist stooge in the service of the Russians.

“Our country was in great danger,” he says, stressing that the Soviets had held massive maneuvers on the Polish border. “There were tanks on the border and Soviet forces in the country which would have been called on in extreme circumstances. Intervention would have destroyed the country,” he adds, saying “I would have put a bullet in my head” if the Soviet army had invaded Poland."

Opinion polls show that about half of Poles agree with his reasoning, and feel that he acted correctly, while the other half are vociferously opposed and see him as a traitor. Every year on Dec. 13, the anniversary of the day Jaruzelski declared martial law, protesters gather outside his modest Warsaw house. This year, they waved signs with slogans such as “We're waiting for Justice” and “We remember your crimes,” while a smaller group held a sign reading, “We believe in you General” and chanting, “May you live 100 years.”

His world of ancient values and privilege collapsed in 1939, when Poland was invaded first by Germany and then by the Soviet Union. The Jaruzelski estate was in the Soviet zone, and, like thousands of others of his class, he was deported to Siberia together with his family. There he buried his father and his eyes were blasted by the light reflected off the snow, forcing him to wear dark glasses for the rest of his life.

"... he decided to become an active servant of the communist regime imposed by Moscow, first hunting down the remnants of the underground opposition, then rising fast through the ranks to become army chief and defense minister. He led Polish troops in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and commanded soldiers to fire on striking Polish workers in 1970."