ABSTRACT
The importance of the response of Western governments to the amnesty was emphasized by Zbigniew Bujak shortly after his release. The amnesty explicitly excluded several crimes: treason, espionage, conspiring to overthrow the political system, membership in a secret or criminal organization, major economic crimes, and sabotage; the automatically ruled out pardons for Poland's most prominent political prisoners. The act required that political prisoners both acknowledge their guilt, and pledge to refrain from oppositional activity as a condition of their release. The discretionary powers the authorities granted themselves in the Law on Special Procedure enabled them to take their time and keep people in Poland and the West guessing. The authorities' decision had been preceded by interviews with some 3,000 underground Solidarity activists, who had been shown the "error of their ways." The Polish authorities themselves apparently believed that the releases had closed the book on Solidarity and its underground leadership.
