Talk:Martial law in Poland

Merge with History of Poland (1945-1989)

IMHO this should be merged with History of Poland (1945-1989) - 09 November 2005

Constitution

Where is the bit in the constitution that says you aren't allowed to declare martial law? --EuropracBHIT 08:48, 25 March 2006 (UTC).

Nowhere... The problem is the way they declared it. They could declare martial law only if Sejm (the Polish parliament) had agreed to it first. And this is not clear yet.

THe other thing is that you don't declare martial law because you're in a bad mood today, otherwise it might lead to repressions (like censorship, imprisonment).

According to Art. 33 of the Constitution of the Polish People's Republic of 22 July 1952 (with changed numeration of articles), the state of war (Art. 33 (1)) was different from martial law (Art. 33 (2)). Martial law could be declared by the Council of State if it was neccessary for the defensive capability or security of the state. That means that the Council of State (and not Sejm) had the right to declare martial law, but only if there was real threat to either defensive capabilty or security of the state (internal threat to state’s security was cited in the declaration of the Council (Dz. U. z 1981 r. Nr 29, poz. 155)).

What is often misunderstood is that declaration of martial law was a different thing from the Decree on Martial Law of 12 December 1981 (Dz. U. z 1981 r. Nr 29, poz. 154). The Decree on Martal Law was a legislative act (a decree), which regulated things like functioning of the state organs and limitations of civil rights and liberties during martial law. As there was no such legislative act (either a statue or decree), declaring martial law without such act would create some kind of legal void (the pre-war Statue On Martial Law of 1939 was no longer in use, though not officialy derogated). That’s why the Council of State passed the Decree on Martial Law and other related decrees on the same sitting as the martial law itself was declared.

Passing of the Decree on Martial Law and other related decrees was a clear violation of the Constitution, as it’s Art. 31 stated that the Council of State could make decrees with statue force only between sessions of Sejm (and they needed to be authorised by Sejm on its nearest session). On December 1981, Sejm was in session, so such decrees couldn't be passed. Sejm later had authorised the decrees, but whether it had the power to do so (as they were invalid from the beginning) is debatable (for example in the opinion of the First President of The Supreme Court Prof. Lech Gardocki it hadn't).

I hope this clears a bit the legal surroundings of the declaration of martial law in Poland in 1981. Myszodorn (talk) 19:56, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Fourth Citation

The fourth citation links to a page that does not exist: http://wiadomosci.gazeta.pl/wiadomosci/1,55670,3250318.html —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.96.229.187 (talk) 17:11, 23 January 2007 (UTC).

Yeah, typically, no proper reference with article title or anything, only a web address that breaks after a while. Booo! Deuar 14:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Translation

I'm a Pole and i don't understand "which translates loosely? as "state of war"". Why "loosely". It translates exactly as "The state of war". (Not in legal mean of course.) Please correct it.

I'm a Pole and there is completely WRONG translation. We had in constitution 2 states:
state of war - stan wojny
state of emergancy - stan wojenny (stan wyjatkowy).

We didn't have any state of war cause, we didn't fight with anyone.

You are wrong. Precisly speaking, "stan wojenny" is equivalent of "state of emergency" in 1981 "state of war" is in Polish "stan wojny" and means situation when war is declered to other country. In contemporary nomenclature, there is "stan wojenny" (roughly "state of siege"), "stan wyjątkowy" ("state of emergency" or "martial law" - and it was "Stan wojenny" in 1981) and "stan wojny" - "state of war" - in international law. someone could correct it in text please :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.222.86.22 (talk) 21:28, 16 December 2011 (UTC)

One-sided summary?

The summary makes a rather one-sided assertion that martial law was a military crack-down of political opposition. While definitely true and source-able, it completely ignores the "other side" view that Solidarity strikes had significant impact on economy and were, from a point of view, nothing short of economic sabotage and threatened (for example) distribution of food to cities or coal to power plants (and it was winter mind you). Or exports, including "promised" exports to the USSR. There's a generic reason why martial law was ruled illegal on constitutional grounds rather than "there was no war" grounds, but this article doesn't even give a hint. If I can find proper sources, I'll try to fix it, but if someone else has good sources at hand please feel free to improve the article yourself. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.161.24.89 (talk) 08:48, 21 July 2008 (UTC)

Curious

I'm curious, as to why someone would wish to remove the well sourced paragraph on HSWP's 'brotherly assistance' to the Polish communists [1], [2], [3] . Are these IPs and a registered account different persons or one user with different identities...?--Miacek and his crime-fighting dog (woof!) 19:01, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Jas Bagniewski - who is he?

Second paraghaph states

Pro-democracy movements such as Solidarity and other, smaller organisations were banned and their leaders, including Lech Wałęsa and Jas Bagniewski, detained overnight.

I am Polish, I am interested in history and I have never heard about this (Bagniewski) guy. Maybe my history knowledge is poor but Polish wikipedia also does not know anything about him. Who is he? It looks like somekind of hoax. Admins, please check it. --Medevacs (talk) 00:08, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

File:TrybunaLudu13.12.1981replica.jpg Nominated for Deletion

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Victims

Nine striking miners were killed during the Pacification of Wujek, three people during the August 31, 1982 demonstrations in Poland, and Jerzy Popieluszko was murdered by the secret police. Is there concise information about the other victims? The BBC article claims "as many as 100" but does not elaborate on its sources. Our article here says that "a Polish parliamentary commission in the years 1989-1991 arrived at a figure of over 90 deaths". Maybe we could get a source on the report of that commission? -- Seelefant (talk) 04:49, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

This would be helpful and useful to include in this article. SummertimeDoctor (talk) 01:29, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

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Citation Issue

Citation [6], which leads to Google Books, seems to be improper. I believe it would be a citation to the book "From Solidarity to Martial Law", a book for which I lack the proper citation, not to Google Books (though perhaps a case could be made to list Google Books as publisher of the digital format in lieu of the print publisher?). 96.248.207.126 (talk) 22:54, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

airport closed or not

Hi, the article states that the national borders and airports were closed. Later the article talks about aircraft to Tempelhof which were hijacked. Which is correct, or if both, when were the airports reopened? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 178.232.170.62 (talk) 18:12, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

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Bias

The article has biased notions that are clearly written from a partisan point of view, just like most of the articles about Poland's history. Those people tend to rewrite history about the country. --Comrade-yutyo (talk) 20:00, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

So you think those in power until 1989 were not communists? Come to your senses. Perhaps it is true that some articles are exaggerated, but that does not mean you can modify per your own political views "comrade". That breaks Wikipedia:Neutral point of view rule. Oliszydlowski (talk) 01:26, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Communism is the name of historical phase where there is no state, currency and class at all. Socialism is the phase to that, and People's Republic of Poland was even at the very first phases of socialism, which is named as the dictatorship of proletariat. Your lack of info breaks Wikipedia:Neutral point of view rule. Learn the ideology you shittalk about first, and then do your preaching. --Comrade-yutyo (talk) 22:08, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Bias occured again. Please stop it. Stop writing in a way that favors your personal political views. That is what you are doing. --Comrade-yutyo (talk) 22:46, 5 September 2020 (UTC)