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
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 —