Wojciech Jaruzelski had sent Eugeniusz Molczyk to confer with Vice President George H. W. Bush and Bush had agreed with Molczyk that martial law was the lesser of two evils. Whether this meeting with the American vice president occurred is disputed. While it is erroneously cited, Harvard historian Mark Kramer has pointed out that no documents support Jaruzelski's claim. Jaruzelski was chiefly responsible for the imposition of martial law in Poland on 13 December 1981 in an attempt to crush the pro-democracy movements, which included Solidarity, the first non-Communist trade union in Warsaw Pact history. Subsequent years saw his government and its
1981 warning strike in Poland not improve the situation, as it characterized the Bydgoszcz events as a "flagrant violation of law, which created new tensions". Most members of Solidarity's National Coordinating Commission (NCC) were in favor of an all-national, general strike, which would completely paralyze the country until all details of the Bydgoszcz events had been explained and those guilty punished. Only few were against such action, among others, Bronisław Geremek, who said that the decision for an unlimited general strike would be a decision for a national insurrection. Finally, during the March 23, 1981, meeting in Bydgoszcz, majority of members of the National Coordinating