Word: crackdowns
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Until the story broke through the blackout, coverage of Polish events was dominated by TIME'S Bonn bureau, which relied heavily on its network of contacts in Stockholm, Vienna and Eastern Europe to funnel in information. Bureau Chief Roland Flamini, having returned from Poland four days before the crackdown, had an advantage in evaluating the scene and the fragments of data seeping in. Flamini had visited Katowice, the mining center where many of last week's clashes occurred, talked with Polish Archbishop Jozef Glemp and shared a journey from Gdansk to Warsaw, and a cup of tea, with...
...least a fortnight earlier. When authorities published a list of 57 dissidents who had been "detained," it was plain that the list had been drawn up in advance: three people on it were out of the country. (Not on the list but determined to protest the "flagrant and brutal" crackdown and to express his "solidarity" with Walesa: Poland's Ambassador to the U.S., Romuald Spasowski, who sought and was swiftly granted asylum along with his wife, daughter and son-in-law.) Last week, after the sudden crackdown, a Gdansk doctor said he realized at last why so many extra beds...
Many Poles had been fearing a violent reaction to Solidarity's growing militancy. "Operation Birdcage" is what they called the anticipated crackdown, in which the union's freer spirits would presumably be caged. Even Walesa, upon learning the crackdown had begun, angrily told Solidarity leaders in Gdansk: "Now you've got what you've been looking...
Partly because of the prevailing uncertainty and partly because of the communications blackout, public response to the crackdown seemed muted. The population was depressed and weary from the crises that had beset the country in recent months. Poles were also disillusioned by the disunity within Solidarity, traumatized by the newly imposed military rule, anxious over the lingering possibility of Soviet intervention and fearful for the fate of their national hero, Lech Walesa...
...Sunday, exactly six hours after the crackdown began, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish party chief and Premier, made a radio address to the country. He declared a state of martial law and announced that henceforth the country would be ruled by a "military council for national salvation." Speaking in a tired voice, he said, "Our country is at the verge of an abyss. The state structure has ceased operating." Solidarity's leaders, he charged, "threaten us with the use of force. They no longer obey the law. Everyone is on strike. They call for confrontation with the Reds...