Polish Armed Forces government to resettle ethnicities immediately after the war (Operation Vistula), and to violently suppress opposition several times, during the Poznań 1956 protests, the Polish 1970 protests, and during Martial law in Poland in 1981–1982. The LWP also took part in the suppressing of the 1968 democratization process of Czechoslovakia, commonly known as the Prague Spring. That same year Marshal of Poland Marian Spychalski was asked to replace Edward Ochab as chairman of the Council of State, and General Wojciech Jaruzelski, at that time the Chief of the General Staff, was named to replace him. Michta argues that Jaruzelski, as a
Wojciech Jaruzelski August 1968 invasion had been a great "political and moral mistake". On 28 March 2006, Jaruzelski was awarded a Siberian Exiles Cross by Polish President Lech Kaczyński. However, after making this fact public Kaczyński claimed that this was a mistake and blamed the bureaucracy for giving him a document containing 1293 names without notifying him of Jaruzelski's presence within it. After this statement, Jaruzelski returned the cross. On 31 March 2006, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) charged him with committing Communist crimes, mainly the creation of a criminal military organization with the aim of carrying out criminal acts —