Martial law in Poland martial law had been imposed in clear violation of the country's constitution which had authorized the executive to declare martial law only between parliamentary sessions (at other times the decision was to be taken by the Sejm). However, the Sejm had been in session at the time when martial law was instituted. In 1992 the Sejm declared the 1981 imposition of martial law to be unlawful and unconstitutional. The instigators of the martial law, such as Wojciech Jaruzelski, argue that the army crackdown rescued Poland from a possibly disastrous military intervention of the Soviet Union, East Germany, and other Warsaw
1981 warning strike in Poland provocation, aimed at the government of Prime Minister Wojciech Jaruzelski. The government responded by sending to Bydgoszcz a special commission, headed by General Jozef Zyto, Deputy Prosecutor-General, whose task was to clear up the situation and find out who was guilty of the beating of the Solidarity activists. However, its members were not interested in fulfilling their task and their inactivity was criticized by Solidarity. Opposition activists were personally insulted by the Bydgoszcz events, thinking that if the beatings could happen to Jan Rulewski, they could happen to any of them. A statement of the Polish United Workers' Party did