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Poland The Military and Society
The declaration of martial law in 1981 and the
repression in
the years that followed greatly harmed the image of the
military
in Polish society and within the military itself. Until
that
time, the Polish People's Army had consciously maintained
an
apolitical posture that was bolstered by its abstention
from
action against mass demonstrations in Polish cities in
1956 and
1970. At the same time, however, PZPR membership was
strongly
encouraged among military personnel and was practically a
prerequisite for advancement to the senior officer grades.
Party
membership among military officers increased from about 50
percent in the mid-1950s to about 85 percent by 1980.
Almost all
senior officers were party members.
In the year 1981, however, the military became
identified
fully with the communist state for the first time when
General
Wojciech Jaruzelski became party leader and president.
Throughout
the 1980s, the army was viewed with distrust and
antagonism. With
the fall of the Jaruzelski government in early 1989, the
Polish
military began an active campaign to separate itself from
all
political parties, to work with the former opposition
leaders,
and to "humanize" its image. In early 1990, Jaruzelski's
announcement of his resignation from the PZPR precipitated
the
mass return of party cards by Polish officers, and at the
last
PZPR congress in 1990 the military delegation sat apart.
Such
symbolic acts were stimulated by the political reality
that the
military's symbiotic relationship with the PZPR had ended
and
that the military had no relationship whatever with
Solidarity,
the now-dominant political force that had enormous public
support. And public support acquired a direct strategic
value for
planners in the post-Warsaw Pact world. In 1992 Professor
Kazimierz Nózko of the National Defense Academy stated
that the
new Polish defense system must be based on "the stable
foundation
of psychological and patriotic preparation of all society
and the
armed forces to repel aggression determinedly."
In 1990 officials of the ministries of national defense
and
internal affairs approached officials of the Roman
Catholic
Church with proposals to upgrade and increase chaplain
positions
in the military and security forces. In 1991 the Field
Ordinariate was reestablished as the church's arm to
minister to
the armed services. A field bishop was appointed for the
first
time since World War II. Between 1989 and mid-1992, the
number of
military chaplains had risen from twenty-nine to
sixty-two.
Participation of military personnel in religious
services,
long discouraged under the communist regimes, increased
dramatically in 1990 and became an important element of
the
campaign by the Ministry of National Defense to refurbish
the
military's image. To reinforce the patriotic image of the
armed
forces, the military establishment revived historical
traditions
such as appointing officers by a sword stroke and playing
the
fife and drum at the changing of the guard at the Tomb of
the
Unknown Soldier.
All political organizations were banned from the
military in
1989, and military personnel were forbidden from
participation in
political parties or trade unions during their term of
active
duty. Depolitization of the Polish military proceeded
rapidly in
the early 1990s, and outward manifestations of loyalty to
the
military in society increased accordingly. One survey
showed that
80 percent of Poles had a positive view of the military as
early
as 1991, and a 1992 survey showed that the military had
surpassed
the Roman Catholic Church as the most trusted institution
in
Poland. Some experts believed that such results were
premature
and unrealistic, however, contending that the memory of
the
military's role in martial law would linger in Polish
society,
and that attitudes among career military personnel
remaining from
the Warsaw Pact era would lag behind organizational
reform.
In 1990 the government called in army transport
equipment and
personnel during a rail workers' strike in Pomerania to
prevent a
collapse of the national transport system. Comparisons
were made
between that military intervention and the role of the
military
in suppressing the demonstrations of 1981. However, Deputy
Minister of National Defense Onyszkiewicz, whose role in
Solidarity gave him public credibility, cited this
application of
the military as an example of a justifiable, nonpolitical
use of
military assets to serve society in a national emergency,
without
the use of force toward strikers--in contrast to the
repressive
activities of the martial law period. In mid-1992 Walesa's
power
struggle with the Ministry of National Defense again
aroused
public fears that the military would be used to reach
political
goals. Again Onyszkiewicz, now acting minister of national
defense, reassured Poles that competing political factions
would
use instruments of civilian government to resolve their
differences.
A controversial issue after 1989 was the status of
communist
civilian officials and military officers who had been
responsible
for quashing civilian uprisings and labor strikes. Many
individuals who had served during that era remained in
command
positions in 1992. According to a 1991 survey by the
antiestablishment reformist Viritim officers' group, 40
percent
of officers had "conservative" views, 45 percent were
"indifferent" to reform, and only 5 percent were willing
to speak
openly for institutional reform. A second activist group,
the
illegal Association of Junior Officers for Promoting
Change in
the Army, sought purges of officers whose military
policies did
not conform to their philosophy. Their attempt to
undermine the
authority of the Ministry of National Defense became part
of the
ongoing public dispute between Walesa and the ministry
over
control of military policy making
(see Evolution and Restructuring
, this ch.).
The Polish public was not reluctant to express opinions
on
the military. Because of public pressure, Jaruzelski
himself was
called to testify about the killing of striking coal
miners in
1981. Czeslaw Kiszczak, who had been minister of internal
affairs
in 1981, was scheduled for indictment in the fall of 1992
for
issuing orders to shoot strikers. Some Poles demanded the
largescale trial of former communist authorities, but by
mid-1992 none
had gone to jail. Especially controversial was the case of
Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski, a Jaruzelski aide who defected
in 1981
and revealed Warsaw Pact military secrets to the United
States.
Some Poles demanded that Kuklinski be pardoned; others,
including
many military personnel, felt that because he had betrayed
Poland
as well as the Jaruzelski regime, Kuklinski should remain
in
exile or return to serve the sentence given him in
absentia.
Data as of October 1992
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