During the night of Dec. 12-13, 1981, the Polish military authorities moved to take control of the country, and the Council of State established a "Military Council for National Salvation", to be led by Gen. Jaruzelski, while at the same time declaring a state of martial law, effective from midnight on Dec. 12-13.
The Polish television network was closed down in mid-transmission at 11.45 p.m. on Dec. 12, and at midnight the Warsaw headquarters of Solidarity were raided by police and militiamen; it was later claimed that the documents taken during this action included plans for a seizure of power by Solidarity.
Almost the entire leadership of Solidarity (including Mr Walesa and Mr Kuron) was detained at about 2.00 a.m. on Dec.13, when the police and militia encircled the hotel in which the Solidarity national co-ordinating commission was staying for its Gdansk session; of the presidium members, only Mr Zbigniew Bujak and Mr Wiadyslaw Frasyniuk were thought to have evaded capture.
At 5.00 a.m. GMT (6.00 local time) General Jaruzelski delivered a speech on the state radio network in which he announced, in his capacity "as a soldier and as head of the Polish Government", the introduction of martial law (the Polish expression used meaning literally "state of war").
Article (33), Paragraph of the Polish Constitution stipulated that the Council of State could proclaim martial law "in parts or in the entire territory of the Polish People's Republic, should this be required by considerations of the defence or security of the state", and that it could also proclaim a general or partial mobilization under similar circumstances.
Gen. Jaruzelski said in his speech that Poland "found itself on the brink of an abyss"; the achievements of successive generations of Poles, he said, were being destroyed, the structure of the state was failing and the economy was under attack, while living conditions were steadily deteriorating. The continuing atmosphere of conflict, misunderstanding and hatred was, he said, "sowing psychological devastation and harming the traditions of tolerance". Strikes and other protest actions had become the norm in Poland and had recently begun to involve also schoolchildren, while calls were being made for physical reprisals against communists. Vast private fortunes were being amassed as a wave of crime swept the country, and "chaos and demoralization assumed disaster proportions" as the nation came "to the end of its psychological endurance". Gen. Jaruzelski claimed that "not days but hours" stood between Poland and "national catastrophe".
The Polish radio network broadcast at 10.00 a.m. (local time) the same day a proclamation by the newly-formed Military Council for National Salvation in which it repeatedly stressed that the martial law provisions were of a transitional nature only, drawing attention to the constitutional and legislative clauses on which it and its activities were founded. Its task, according to the proclamation, was "to foil a coup d'etat" and to restore order to the administrative and economic units. Meanwhile, it said "the state of martial law the need to suspend the activity of trade unions", although it expressed its conviction that they would "soon be able to resume their statutory activity in the interests of the working people". Among the other major statements in the proclamation was the announcement that "all means and powers arising from the martial law" would be used against persons "guilty of action against the interests of the socialist state and the working people"
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