History Book: Democracy for Poland

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, December 12, 2022. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Forty one years ago this week, the Polish prime minister and Communist Party leader imposed martial law.

AUDIO: GEN. WOJCIECH JARUZELSKI

Generał Wojciech Jaruzelski trying to make the point that the crackdown was to save Poland from catastrophe and civil war.

REICHARD: The iron fist was meant to shut down the Solidarity labor movement—which for four months had challenged the Communist government through labor strikes.

Ten days after martial law began, U.S. President Ronald Reagan used his Christmas speech to declare U.S. support of the Polish people. It would take eight years, but democracy did eventually come to Poland.

EICHER: Here is an excerpt of that 1981 Christmas address by President Reagan.

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: A few months before he took up residence in this house, one of my predecessors, John Kennedy, tried to sum up the temper of the times with a quote from an author closely tied to Christmas, Charles Dickens. We were living, he said, in the best of times and the worst of times. Well, in some ways that's even more true today. The world is full of peril, as well as promise. Too many of its people, even now, live in the shadow of want and tyranny.

As I speak to you tonight, the fate of a proud and ancient nation hangs in the balance. For a thousand years, Christmas has been celebrated in Poland, a land of deep religious faith, but this Christmas brings little joy to the courageous Polish people. They have been betrayed by their own government.

The men who rule them, and their totalitarian allies, fear the very freedom that the Polish people cherish. They have answered the stirrings of liberty with brute force, killings, mass arrests, and the setting up of concentration camps. Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders are imprisoned, their fate unknown. Factories, mines, universities, and homes have been assaulted.

The Polish government has trampled underfoot solemn commitments to the UN Charter and the Helsinki accords…

The tragic events now occurring in Poland, almost two years to the day after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, have been precipitated by public and secret pressure from the Soviet Union…

The target of this depression [repression] is the Solidarity Movement, but in attacking Solidarity, its enemies attack an entire people. Ten million of Poland's 36 million citizens are members of Solidarity. Taken together with their families, they account for the overwhelming majority of the Polish nation. By persecuting Solidarity, the Polish government wages war against its own people.

I urge the Polish government and its allies to consider the consequences of their actions. How can they possibly justify using naked force to crush a people who ask for nothing more than the right to lead their own lives in freedom and dignity? Brute force may intimidate, but it cannot form the basis of an enduring society, and the ailing Polish economy cannot be rebuilt with terror tactics…

I want emphatically to state tonight that if the outrages in Poland do not cease, we cannot and will not conduct "business as usual" with the perpetrators and those who aid and abet them. Make no mistake, their crime will cost them dearly in their future dealings with America and free peoples everywhere. I do not make this statement lightly or without serious reflection…

In order to aid the suffering Polish people during this critical period, we will continue the shipment of food through private humanitarian channels, but only so long as we know that the Polish people themselves receive the food…

But to underscore our fundamental opposition to the repressive actions taken by the Polish government against its own people, the administration has suspended all government-sponsored shipments of agricultural and dairy products to the Polish government…

The United States is taking immediate action to suspend major elements of our economic relationships with the Polish government. We have halted the renewal of the Export-Import Bank's line of export credit insurance to the Polish government. We will suspend Polish civil aviation privileges in the United States. We are suspending the right of Poland's fishing fleet to operate in American waters. And we're proposing to our allies the further restriction of high technology exports to Poland.

These actions are not directed against the Polish people. They are a warning to the government of Poland that free men cannot and will not stand idly by in the face of brutal repression…

When 19th century Polish patriots rose against foreign oppressors, their rallying cry was, “For our freedom and yours.” Well, that motto still rings true in our time. There is a spirit of solidarity abroad in the world tonight that no physical force can crush. It crosses national boundaries and enters into the hearts of men and women everywhere. In factories, farms, and schools, in cities and towns around the globe, we the people of the Free World stand as one with our Polish brothers and sisters. Their cause is ours, and our prayers and hopes go out to them this Christmas.

Yesterday, I met in this very room with Romuald Spasowski, the distinguished former Polish Ambassador who has sought asylum in our country in protest of the suppression of his native land. He told me that one of the ways the Polish people have demonstrated their solidarity in the face of martial law is by placing lighted candles in their windows to show that the light of liberty still glows in their hearts.

Ambassador Spasowski requested that on Christmas Eve a lighted candle will burn in the White House window as a small but certain beacon of our solidarity with the Polish people. I urge all of you to do the same tomorrow night, on Christmas Eve, as a personal statement of your commitment to the steps we're taking to support the brave people of Poland in their time of troubles…

We are blessed with a freedom and abundance denied to so many. Let those candles remind us that these blessings bring with them a solemn obligation, an obligation to the God who guides us, an obligation to the heritage of liberty and dignity handed down to us by our forefathers…

So, in a spirit of gratitude for what we've been able to achieve together over the past year and looking forward to all that we hope to achieve together in the years ahead, Nancy and I want to wish you all the best of holiday seasons. As Charles Dickens, whom I quoted a few moments ago, said so well in “A Christmas Carol,” “God bless us, every one.”

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