Poland's Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski Dies at 90

ABC - AP ^ | 5/25/2014 | VANESSA GERA

[Borges]

Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, the communist leader who imposed harsh military rule on Poland in 1981 in an attempt to crush the pro-democracy Solidarity movement but years later allowed reforms that ended up dismantling the regime, has died at age 90.

[wetgundog]

I piss on his grave.

[Borges]

Yeah I was shocked by how relatively positive the response has been.

[Revolting cat!]

The line of defense and heroism is what the post-communists in Eastern Europe have been promoting, New York Times repeating, and Internet keyboard "intellectuals" parroting as their own original insights. Here's an "obituary" by a young Polish journalist Dawid Wildstein, whose father Bronislaw Wildstein, an intellectual and student activist during Jaruzelski's reign who suffered for his opposition (and survived, while his best friend was murdered by the secret police.) Translated by Google Translate:

I will cry, because the criminal departed unjudged. Because he died free. And I'll cry if you bury him with honors and in any place that is designed for distinguished Poles. And probably this will happen. And I'll cry if dirty authorities of the Third Republic will now defend murderers and human totalitarianism. And probably it will happen.

But I will not cry, he died as one who terrorized and intimidated its own citizens. I will not cry after the dictator who served the red totalitarian ideology as monstrous as Nazism, an ideology which murdered millions. Who was willing to enslave their own country to serve another state. I will not cry after the man who was the author of the anti-Semitic purges and commanded an army that invaded a neighboring country, there to suppress freedom with bullets and tanks.

[zot]

Thanks for your post # 7. I didn’t know that.

[dfwgator]

[dfwgator]

Let’s set the record straight.

A few months before, Jaruzelski begged the Soviets to invade Poland, they flat out told him “No.”

The story he made up about saving Poland from Soviet invasion was BS.

[dfwgator]

Every time a Commie dies, an angel gets its’ wings.

[dfwgator]

Remember the heroes of the Wujek Mine.

[Cronos]

Jaruzelski was no Polish patriot. He called on Moscow to send troops to crush solidarity. When that failed, he called for martial law. It failed because Moscow made the decision in the spirit of glastnost not to get involved in another satellite state like it did in Hungary and Czechia.

[dfwgator]

Unfortunately, many Poles do buy into the myth that he saved Poland from Soviet invasion.

[Cronos]

it’s good marketing/propaganda

[GreyFriar]

I can only say, that looking at the intel that was coming across my desk every day during the crisis, there was NO indication that the Kremlin was NOT going to invade. As I originally said, the Soviets had matched all the indicators for invasion that had occurred before Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany.

There was only the decision to be made and we had no inside the Kremlin info on that.