Word: jaruzelski
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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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...