ABSTRACT
On December 6, 1986, General Wojciech Jaruzelski established a "social consultative council," intended to act as an institutional instrument "in the process of consulting and planning, and management and government, in a manner that would conform to the conditions of the socialist system and strengthen the rationality and effectiveness of the government." The council consisted of 56 individuals, all of them appointed by Jaruzelski. Most of them were members of the institutional establishment, such as educational officials, former politicians, artists, and social activists. The establishment of the council was a politically significant event. It was heralded by the authorities as a development "without precedent in the history of Poland or the other socialist states." The emergence of the council was not a breakthrough in the long-lasting chasm in relations between the authorities and their critics, nor a major step toward a true process of "national reconciliation."
