Word: crackdowns
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...that the Polish party was no longer in control, that the Sejm (parliament) was running wild, and that if he did not act to restore order, the Warsaw Pact would do it for him. Though Jaruzelski emphasized last week that Poland remained a sovereign state, many people regarded the crackdown as a Soviet invasion by proxy. On Tuesday, some 30 ranking Soviet officers were observed disembarking from a military plane. Nonetheless, insofar as Western journalists could tell, the two Soviet armored divisions based in Poland were not involved and remained in their garrisons...
...anomalies of the situation in Poland is that the crackdown was a purely military operation. Jaruzelski is the leader of the Polish Communist Party as well as the armed forces and the government, but in his speech to the nation last week he chose to call himself "a soldier and chief of government." There was no mention of the Communist Party. Politburo members were reportedly not told that martial law was being declared until two hours before the troops began to move. The Polish party is deeply demoralized after losing an estimated one-third of its 3 million members during...
There was no way of estimating how much further the government planned to carry its crackdown. Late in the week some foreigners were allowed to fly out of the country, and there was at least one vague sign that Poles themselves might some day be permitted to leave: the government's new currency regulations introduced a limit ($300) on the amount of money citizens could take with them on foreign trips. In addition, the sale of alcololic beverages was resumed after a week of prohibition. Many factories remained closed. So did the universities and any other institutions that might prove...
...leaders of Solidarity gathered in Gdansk for their final, fateful meeting before the crackdown, TIME Correspondent Gregory H. Wierzynski was with them. He was scheduled to spend the entire next day with Lech Walesa and his family, an interview that never took place. After scouring Gdansk for details of the mass arrests and strikes, Wierzynski drove to Warsaw, into a setting of total censorship. It was five days after the military takeover that Wierzynski was able to make his way to West Berlin, from where he sent his reports. Among them was this personal look at Poland under siege...
That wry comment from a Reagan Administration official summed up all too well the initial U.S. response to the imposition of martial law in Poland. Secretary of State Alexander Haig admitted that the Administration was "surprised" by the crackdown. Other officials insisted that he referred only to the timing rather than the fact of the move. Nonetheless, Washington had apparently focused its planning on the contingency that has not yet happened. The U.S. and its European allies long ago had agreed to invoke stern diplomatic and economic sanctions if Poland were invaded by the Soviet army. But there...