Czeslaw Kiszczak: Soldier who joined Poland’s martial-law triumvirate but later helped the transition to democracy

Czeslaw Kiszczak was a soldier, politician and statesman who as a loyal and trusted member of General Wojciech Jaruzelski’s regime played a crucial role in Poland’s dramatic and chequered political life in the 1980s. He was Minister of the Interior, served on the Military Council of National Salvation, Deputy Prime Minister – and Prime Minister for a few days – as well as a member of the Politburo of the ruling party.

As such he was one of the principal architects of the suppression of Solidarity and the declaration of the State of Emergency in December 1981. Eight years later he was co-chairman of the Round Table conference which led to the reconciliation with and reinstatement of Solidarity, and the June 1989 elections which the Communists in effect lost – leading to the formation of Poland’s first non-Communist government since 1945, led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki.

Kiszczak continued to serve as Interior Minister until July 1990 – meaning that he assisted both in the delegalisation of Solidarity in the early 1990s and in the deconstruction of communism in the later part of the decade, believing on both occasions that he was acting in his country’s best interest.

From December 1981 until June 1989 he was the second-most important person in Poland, which was effectively governed not by the Communist Party but by a triumvirate of generals – Jaruzelski, President and Party leader; Kiszczak, head of the security services; and Florian Siwicki, Minister of National Defence.

Their power stemmed from their command of the army and police rather than their (very real) control of the Party; for the first time in any communist country the supreme political positions were in the hands of professional soldiers – and all three considered themselves to be soldiers before everything else. They also saw themselves as patriots who in 1981 had saved Poland from Soviet intervention through the lesser evil of martial law; most Poles saw them as stooges.

Kiszczak, a soldier with long experience in military intelligence and counter-intelligence, was appointed Minister of the Interior in 1981 in order to make the secret police, which had often acted as a state within a state, subordinate to the triumvirate. He failed, however, to achieve total control over his Ministry, whose employees regarded him as an unwelcome alien presence.

The murder by some of them of Father Jerzy Popieluszko in 1984 was motivated not only by their desire to silence a troublesome priest, but also to undermine Kiszczak’s relatively good relations with the Catholic hierarchy. While he was in charge no priest was arrested in Poland, despite Soviet complaints that he and Jaruzelski were too lenient towards the Church.

Kiszczak always claimed that although contingency plans for martial law had existed for some time, the final decision came only a few hours before it was imposed, when it became clear to Jaruzelski that Solidarity was not prepared to compromise. Kiszczak always maintained that he had tried to alleviate the conditions of internees, and that from the very day of the declaration of martial law he was involved in talks, official and unofficial, with the Church hierarchy, leading public figures, and Solidarity leaders, including Lech Walesa, for whom he had great sympathy and respect.

In 2004, however, Kiszczak was put on trial for ordering troops and police to break up a strike at the Wujek coalmine. In the ensuing violence, nine strikers were killed and 21 injured. Kiszczak was sentenced to four years’ jail, but as part of an amnesty this was commuted to two years’ suspended.

He was born in 1925 in Roczyny in south-west Poland, into a working class family. His father was a steelworker, often unemployed between the wars. He was a communist sympathiser, and young Kiszczak was brought up in an anti-clerical, pro-Soviet atmosphere. In 1942, when he was 16, he was arrested by the Germans with his mother, older brother and an aunt and sent for forced labour, to Germany then Austria.

Towards the end of the war he was in Vienna, where he joined a Communist-led anti-Nazi resistance group which collaborated with the Red Army. Returning to Poland, he joined the Polish Workers’ Party – the Communists – almost immediately, and was sent to the Central Party School in Lodz, which was training civilians and military Party apparatchiks.

He was commissioned, and considered too young for political work in the army, was assigned to military intelligence, serving with short breaks until 1981; to Kiszczak this was a great step up the social ladder. In 1946 he was sent to the Polish Consulate-General in London, where his official task was to help repatriate members of the Polish armed forces who had served in the West during the war.

His superiors found him a keen, highly motivated and disciplined young officer who frequented London’s museums and theatres (and, on his own admission, its pubs). Lieutenant Kiszczak fell in love with an Englishwoman “of good family”, the widow of a Polish airman, who introduced him to London’s high life.

In 1957 he graduated from the Polish General Staff Academy, which paved the way for his promotion in 1973 to the rank of General, and his appointment six years to the post of chief of military intelligence. In July 1981 he was moved to the Ministry of the Interior. He retired in 1990 and published a memoir, General Kiszczak Speaks … He Reveals Almost All.

With Wojciech Jaruzelski, Czeslaw Kiszczak will always remain one of the most controversial figures in contemporary Polish history; there will always be a debate about whether they were patriots or traitors.

JAN CIECHANOWSKI

Czeslaw Kiszczak, soldier and politician: born Roczyny, Poland 19 October 1925; married (one daughter, one son); died Warsaw 5 November 2015.