‘Our Fatherland has found itself on the verge of an abyss’

This chapter presents the juridical nature of the Martial Law in its broader political, economic and social context. The question whether there indeed existed an exceptional situation in December 1981 is a crucial one, as it determines whether the state of exception was justified in the light of the Constitution of the Polish People’s Republic, or not. In 1980, the fundamental pillars of the Leninist model of Poland’s state-socialist constitution came under direct challenge from the Solidarnosc movement, which emerged in the midst of the country’s deepest economic crisis since World War II. While in the 1970s, under the rule of Edward Gierek, a rhetoric of technocracy and consumerism had been introduced, the Martial Law signalled a language of ‘national salvation’ even in the most basic, biological sense. The presence of the military in many positions of responsibility, starting from the first secretary and prime minister, certainly contributed to the ideological shift.