Word: jaruzelski
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...Baltic port of Gdansk. Four years ago, the outspoken electrician had scaled the shipyard gates and assumed the leadership of a strike that gave birth to Solidarity, the Communist bloc's first independent trade union. Solidarity was officially suspended in 1981, when the regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law and detained most of the union's leaders. But as Walesa and his fellow workers showed last Friday, the anniversary of the 1980 Gdansk agreement that legally recognized the union, the spirit of Solidarity was still alive...
...peaceful celebrations underscored the opposition's new mood of restraint in the wake of the government's decision last July to free 652 political prisoners. The Jaruzelski regime was taking a calculated risk in hopes of boosting its credibility at home and abroad. So far, the gamble has paid off: not only has the U.S. relaxed some of the sanctions it imposed after martial law, but the freed prisoners have shown little of the radicalism espoused during the heady days of Solidarity...
Despite its weakness on that score, the Jaruzelski government also has some grounds for optimism. The regime gained considerable confidence from the turnout at the June 17 regional and local elections, in which, according to official figures, some 75% of the voters went to the polls, despite calls for a boycott from Solidarity leaders. That electoral victory undoubtedly helped convince Jaruzelski, and his Soviet patrons, that the regime could at last afford to release the political prisoners...
Some Administration officials opposed the policy change on the grounds that it helps legitimize the rigid regime of Wojciech Jaruzelski. Supporters of the Administration move argued that the sanctions have only hurt the Polish people. In the end, said a U.S. official, with an eye on the sizable Polish-American vote, the decision was "80% domestic politics...
...spokesman, Jerzy Urban, last week were aimed at the U.S., not for what it had done but for what it had failed to do. What infuriated Urban was Washington's apparent initial tepid response to Warsaw's sweeping amnesty for 652 political prisoners. To Premier General Wojciech Jaruzelski's regime, the amnesty clearly lived up to Washington's conditions for lifting an array of painful economic sanctions imposed after Poland declared martial law in 1981. But the Reagan Administration seemed to Warsaw to be dragging its feet. If amnesty is not enough, cried Urban, "what does...