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Poland Transition and Reform
In 1989 the peaceful transition from the Jaruzelski
regime to
the popularly elected Solidarity-led government had little
immediate impact on the organization of the Polish
military.
General Florian Siwicki, who had been Jaruzelski's
minister of
national defense, served in the first cabinet of
noncommunist
Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, even though Siwicki had
been
closely involved in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia
and the
imposition of martial law. Under Mazowiecki, Siwicki
directed a
first phase of military reforms until he was replaced in
mid1990 . General Czeslaw Kiszczak, Jaruzelski's minister of
internal
affairs throughout the martial law period, also was held
over in
Mazowiecki's first cabinet. Kiszczak began redirecting the
charter of the infamous special police services away from
their
traditional communist role of support for the government
in power
and toward protection of society as a whole.
In 1989, for the first time since the interwar period,
the
military came under open scrutiny by the Polish media and
parliament. Public resentment of the armed forces as a
tool of
communist repression was increased by exposures of
brutality and
corruption under Jaruzelski. The military responded with a
campaign of openness and humanization that finally led to
substantial reform and reduced hostility between the
military and
Solidarity. Reform measures taken by the end of 1990
included
removal of all political organizations from the military,
further
budget and manpower reductions, conversion of thirty
military
installations to civilian use, shortened terms of service
for
draftees, and freedom of religious practice in the
military
(see The Military and Society
, this ch.). Shortages of
personnel
already had forced passage of an alternative service law
in 1988.
Lech Walesa, the first popularly elected president, who
came to
power in December 1990, became commander in chief of the
armed
forces, and the Ministry of National Defense began a
transition
from a basically military body into a civilian agency of
the
government in which military authority would be distinctly
subordinate
(see Evolution and Restructuring
, this ch.).
Externally, Poland's chief military goal in the first
postcommunist years was ending the Warsaw Pact obligations
that
still placed Soviet troops on Polish soil in the early
1990s,
then moving as quickly as possible to a new set of
national
security agreements. In 1990 Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and
Poland
began urging the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, citing
new
geopolitical conditions that made such an arrangement
superfluous
for the security of both the Soviet Union and the East
European
member nations.
In late 1990, the Poles then entered long and difficult
bilateral negotiations on the Soviet troop issue,
including the
timing for withdrawal from Poland and the method by which
Soviet
troops leaving Germany would cross Polish territory.
Soviet
negotiators resisted an early timetable (Walesa's initial
bargaining position required complete withdrawal by the
end of
1991) and demanded compensation for installations that
Soviet
forces had built. The Soviet position on Poland was
determined by
existing agreements for complete Soviet withdrawal from
Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and by the recent
reunification of
Germany. After those events, Poland was perceived as the
last
pillar of the Soviet Union's European security structure.
The
issue was finally resolved in late 1991 with Soviet
agreement to
remove all combat troops from Poland by the end of 1992
and all
support troops by the end of 1993. A separate agreement
defined
terms for transit of Soviet troops from Germany through
Poland
(see Threat Perception
, this ch.).
Data as of October 1992
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