Wojciech Jaruzelski Quotes

The steps taken today serve to preserve the basic features of socialist renewal. All the reforms will be continued in an atmosphere of order, businesslike discussion and discipline, also economic reform.

The nation has come to the end of its psychological endurance. Many people are beginning to despair. Now it is not days but hours that separate us from a national catastrophe. Honesty compels one to ask the question: Did things have to come to this?

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.

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.

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.

The absence of a decision could result in an impetuous, dangerous development of a situation which has got out of any control. There is no ideal solution in such circumstances. The only thing is to find the optimal solution, "a lesser evil."

Citizens of Poland, very heavy is the burden of responsibility which lies upon me at the very dramatic moment in Polish history. But it is my duty to take it, accept it, because it concerns the future of Poland, for which we of my generation fought on all the fronts of World War II and gave the best years of our lives. I declare that today, the army council of national salvation, has been constituted. The council of state, obeying the constitution, declared a state of war (at midnight) on the territory of Poland.

It cannot be said that we didn't show good will, moderation, patience, sometimes there probably was too much of it ... the initiative of the great national understanding was backed by millions of Poles.

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

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.

Were it not for the declaration of martial law, the substantiation of that announcement in mid-winter would have signified not only economic but also biological catastrophe. No grand issues and dilemmas may be studied without their historical backgrounds in separation from the realities of a given moment. A historian seated in the tranquility of archives and libraries can allow his thoughts to wander in various directions. Basing on continually supplemented sources, he knows today what took place in the past. But a politician active at that time knew only what was happening at a given moment. And he also had to take into account that which could take place. A historian enjoys the comfort of delivering evaluations which have no practical effects.

I had to face up to many a dangers, often looking death in the face. Later, in the decades which ensued, I often had to resolve complex dilemmas. But that dilemma of 1981 was of a quite different dimension and of the very greatest specific weight since I bore the responsibility for the fate of the nation and country.

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.

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

I am saying this to avoid any suspicion that I want to defend, at no matter what price, the decisions I took. Martial law was an evil which resulted in various human vexations and sufferings which I very much regret. But even so, they were a lesser evil than the multidimensional catastrophe which faced us as a very real danger.