Draft Law on Extraordinary Measures of Action in the Interest of the Protection of Citizens and the State of 1981. A Contribution to the Genesis of Martial Law in Poland

Abstract

On 13th December 1981, in a televised speech, General Wojciech Jaruzelski announced the imposition of the martial law after having previously received permission for its imposition from the Council of State on 12th December 1981. The authorities of the People's Republic of Poland, headed by General Wojciech Jaruzelski, drastically curtailed the daily lives of millions of Poles over the next two years on the basis of the martial law decree, in an attempt to oppose the political opposition, of which Solidarity was the epitome. The adoption of such a drastic measure against the political opposition in the literature repeatedly raises the debate whether there were no other options to enforce political peace in Poland. Many authors point out the draft law on extraordinary measures of action in the interest of the protection of citizens and the state as an alternative to the martial law decree, as the draft law in its provisions was a much more liberal and extreme piece of legislation. The contemporary text is intended to present the draft of the Emergency Powers of Government Act (the alternative name of the bill). The work is largely based on the material obtained from an archival search of files from the Institute of National Remembrance and from the files from the Archives of the Chancellery of the Prime Minister, which were transferred to the Archives of New Records in Warsaw in the course of collecting material. The research material was also obtained from Solidarity and Tribune of the People press articles, from numerous scientific publications, from transcripts and Sejm prints which are in the digital resource of the Sejm Library.