[63] The extent of rationing of basic necessities was wider at that time than during the German occupation of Poland during WWII and covered such staples as meat, sugar, butter, flour, rice, grits, cigarettes, detergent, sanitary products, and powdered milk.

[64] The vast majority of arrested opposition activists were held in prisons and jails around the country, not in government vacation resorts, and were not granted official status of political prisoners. See “Declaration of TKK NSZZ Solidarnosc from June 26, 1982, regarding persons detained for social activism.” In: Walichnowski, Tadeusz (ed.) (2001) 285-286. See also “Decision No. 50/81/CZZK of the Ministry of Justice, December 13, 1981, regarding the creation of centers of detention.” In: Kopka, Boguslaw and Grzegorz Majchrzak (eds.) (2001) 65.

Cases of prison guard brutality exhibited towards groups of political detainees were not unheard of. See Walichnowski, Tadeusz (ed.) (2001) 475.

[65] Walesa was released already on November 12, 1982, which allowed him to resume the leading role in Solidarity’s organizational structures, by then gone underground, as of November 22, 1982.  See Walichnowski, Tadeusz (ed.) (2001) 477. Walesa was also technically not “arrested,” but visited at his home by two dignitaries who invited him to board a plane to Warsaw, from where he was transported to a government villa. See Paczkowski, Andrzej. Wojna Polsko-Jaruzelska: Stan wojenny w Polsce, 13 XII 1981- 22 VII 1983. Warsaw: Proszynski i S-ka (2006) 48.

[66] “Andropov: In this context, I wanted to say that our position, which has been earlier formulated at the previous meeting of the Politburo and expressed many times by Leonid Ilicz [Brezhnev], is completely correct and we should not abandon it.  In other words, we are standing by the internationalist help, we are alarmed by the current situation in Poland, but when it comes to the operation “X,” it should be exclusively decision of the Polish comrades, it is going to be the way they will decide it to be. We will not insist and will not dissuade them.” (translation by the author) This passage is missing from “Transcript of the Soviet Politburo Meeting on the Crisis in Poland, December 10, 1981.” In: Krawczyk, Andrzej (ed.) (1993) 83.

[67] Jaruzelski’s claim that martial law was inescapable in order to avoid a Soviet invasion cannot be corroborated by any sources outside Jaruzelski and his circle, but they nonetheless carried surprising attention and credence even after the fall of communism. See Kogelfranz, Siegfried; Lorenz Andreas; Rybak Andrzej. “Das war psychische Folter. Ex-Präsident Wojciech Jaruzelski über Kriegsrecht und Interventionsgefahr in Polen 1981.“ In: Der Spiegel, May 11, 1992. http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13680621.html.  Accessed July 26, 2012.

[68] Jaruzelski’s downright preposterous claim that he had also sought and received “green light” from the U.S. for his imposition of martial law in Poland in a meeting of his envoy Eugeniusz Molczyk with Vice President George H.W. Bush, unsupported by other evidence, appears to support this assessment Cf. Perlez, Jane. “Warsaw Journal: Old Cold War Enemies Exhume One Battlefield”, The New York Times, 11 November 1997, 14. It is also not likely that a decision of such weight would have been left by the Reagan administration to the Vice President. Aside from statements of continuity and of the obvious assessment of the hopelessness of armed resistance against the Soviet Army, the Reagan administration sought to discourage Soviet strategems aimed at resolving the crisis by military means but did not identify an actual military threat. See Haig, Alexander. Caveat, Realism, Reagan and Foreign Policy. London: 1984, 240.

[69] Although Tito favored portraiture in his marshal’s uniform, his actual military service had been limited to WWI as the youngest sergeant in the Austro-Hungarian army and his later rank had always been incidental to his function of commander-in-chief. By comparison, Jaruzelski had been a career officer throughout his adult life and had risen through the ranks to become a general officer.

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