ABSTRACT
On the eve of December 13,1981, Wojciech Jaruzelski made a decision that he had long considered and then prepared systematically: As Prime Minister, Minister of Defense and First Secretary of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of Poland (the Polish United Workers' Party), he imposed martial law on his country. The General had chosen this date with a sense of purpose: on December 11 and 12, a meeting of the "national commission" (of the ruling commit tee of Solidarity) took place in Gdansk, a final opportunity to reach a consensus between the two central powers that had been living a difficult, distrustful coexistence since September 1980; on the one hand, the Communist Party that, in the sense of the communist one-party systems, ruled the state as a dictatorship, and whose most important power base consisted of the Soviet Union and the Red Army; and on the other hand, the democracy movement of Solidarity, long since more than a union in the traditional sense, that was supported by the large majority of the Polish population.
