army obeyed him. There was some sullen relief,
but protest strikes also broke out, harshly sup-
pressed at the cost of a number of deaths and
injuries. With the Communist Party now a broken
reed, Jaruzelski formed the Military Council of
National Salvation. Solidarity was outlawed, hun-
dreds of its members were arrested, including for
a short time Lech Wa∏e ̧ sa, and the rest of the lead-
ership was driven underground. Yet the attempt
to obliterate Solidarity proved a total failure. The
electrician Wa∏e ̧ sa did not sink back into obscurity
but was internationally celebrated with the award
of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. The over-
subsidised command economy failed to respond
to economic medications applied by the commu-
nists, and US economic sanctions and rejection by
the West isolated the regime until 1983. The
workforce was not to be inspired by military or
communist appeals to work harder. A particularly
shocking example of the brutality prevailing under
the regime was the abduction and murder by
the Interior Ministry’s security forces of a popular
radical priest, Father Jerzy Popieluszko, whose
church had become a focus for the opposition.
Gradually Jaruzelski relaxed military rule and
the majority of Solidarity activists were released
from jail. But attempts by Jaruzelski to improve
the economy by cutting subsidies provoked new
strikes in 1988. The people were not prepared to
accept such measures from a regime that kept
itself in power by force. The authorities knew that
national malaise and economic crisis could not be
overcome without the cooperation of the oppo-
sition. And so in February 1989 began the
‘round-table talks’ between the military commu-
nist regime and opposition groups, including
Solidarity. The constitutional reforms agreed by
April that year ended one-party rule. Solidarity
was permitted to emerge as a political party – that
was a far-reaching concession. Czechoslovakia
had been invaded in 1968 when Dubcˇek had con-
ceded as much. This time, Gorbachev had made
it clear that the Eastern European nations could
follow their own road of development.
The concession Solidarity made was that in the
lower house of the Polish parliament, the Sejm,
65 per cent of the seats would be reserved for
the Communist Party and only 35 per cent would
be contested. A senate was created as well, which
would be freely elected, and the Senate and the
Sejm together would elect a president. Solidarity
swept the board in the elections held in June
1989: of the 161 seats in the lower chamber that
they were able to contest, they and their nomi-
nees won 160; in the Senate, they won 92 out
of 100 seats. It was a triumph for Wa∏e ̧ sa. With
their 299 reserved seats, the communist coalition
partners still had a majority in the lower chamber.
When it came to the election of the president,
Jaruzelski made it by one vote, with some help
from Wa∏e ̧ sa, who refused to stand against him
for fear that this would push the communists and
Moscow too far. The compromise was cemented
when, in August 1989, Jaruzelski appointed the
first non-communist premier, a Solidarity sup-
porter and close associate of Wa∏e ̧ sa, Tadeusz
Mazowiecki; he, in turn, with an eye on Moscow,
formed a coalition government in which Solidarity
ministers formed the largest group but which allo-
cated the crucial ministries of Defence and the
Interior to two communists.
Because the leading role of the communists
had been removed by compromise and negotia-
tion in Poland, vestiges of entrenched communist
power, such as the free elections for only a part
of the lower chamber, survived until October
1991 when a ‘reserved’ communist majority was
no longer an option after the revolutions else-
where in Eastern Europe during 1989. Poland
was also the first communist nation to attempt to
transform itself from a planned to a Western-style
free-market economy. The new government
inherited a ruined economy with soaring inflation
and falling production. The finance minister,
Leszek Balcerowicz, inaugurated a harsh pro-
gramme to restore the value of the currency, cut
subsidies, deal with a huge foreign debt and make
industry competitive and productive once more.
The shops began to fill with stocks in 1990, but
at prices few could afford. Standards of living fell
more steeply than under the communists. The
Solidarity alliance grew weaker as the ‘common
enemy’ vanished, and Wa∏e ̧ sa began attacking
Mazowiecki, blaming his government for the
hardships of economic reform because it was not
acting energetically and speedily enough.
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