Wojciech Jaruzelski Quotes

To make tomorrow better we must realize tough realities today, to understand the necessity for renunciation.

I do not make any promises. But I do promise one thing - anarchy will not be allowed into Poland. Let no one in Poland or outside cherish any illusions that the present decisions will allow for another round.

We have survived the boycott, restrictions and the barrage of instigatory propaganda. The Government of the United States and some of its customers can see for themselves the bankruptcy of attempts to interfere in Polish internal affairs.

I think, however, that it is better when we solve the Polish matters realistically, with prudence, when we discuss them calmly, normally.

The self-preservation instinct of the nation must be heard. Adventurists must have their hands tied before they push the homeland into the abyss of fratricide.

Citizens of the Polish People’s Republic. I turn to you today as a soldier and as the head of the Polish Government. I turn to you in matters of supreme importance. Our country has found itself at the edge of an abyss. The achievements of many generations, the house erected from Polish ashes, is being ruined. The structures of the state are ceasing to function. New blows are being struck every day at the dying economy.

Our soldier's hands are clean; he knows his hard service ... and has no other aim but the good of the nation.

Exactly one year ago martial law was introduced. The year that has passed was a great test. We have passed it. It has been passed by the party, by the people's authority and all the citizens. But there is the only winner: the Polish nation. This is the shortest-put truth about the past year.

A politician has to bear the weight of decisions whose effects are often enormous. And those decisions have to be taken. A controversial decision is better than no decision or waiving it, since it permits a situation to be brought under control while allowing it to be reined in with the possibility of correction.

Citizens of the Polish People's Republic, Difficult years are behind us. Hard times had rolled over the Polish lands. They had produced internal splits and dangerously weakened that bond that throughout centuries was uniting Poles in the face of the greatest dangers. I will not recall those pre-December days. We all remember them. Nothing can conceal the merciless meaning of the then facts. It is only facts that truly count in politics, in the life of nations.

We wish a great Poland, great with its achievements, culture, forms of social life, its position in Europe. The only way to gain this is by socialism accepted by society, constantly enriched by the everyday life experience.

Citizens. Great is the burden of responsibility that falls on me at this dramatic moment in Polish history. It is my duty to take this responsibility. Poland’s future is at stake-the future for which my generation fought and for which it gave the best years of its life.

Poland is not situated in a territorial vacuum on some uninhabited island. Indeed, the opposite is true. It lies in the most geostrategically sensitive part of Europe. In those recent years, Europe and the world were divided into two opposing political and military blocks. That meant that all internal conflicts inevitably led to external repercussions, reflecting on the climate of relations and the pattern of international forces.

We are a sovereign country so we must get out from this crisis by ourselves. We must draw away danger with our own hands. History would never forgive the present generation for wasting this chance.

The introduction of martial law was the most dramatic decision I had ever taken. And life had treated me harshly. I experienced my country's tragedy in 1939.