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 General Jaruzelski, two days later, he met Wałęsa and other Solidarity activists. The demands of the opposition were: If no agreement between the government and Solidarity had been reached, the general strike was planned for Tuesday, March 31. In between, a meeting between representatives of the NCC, headed by Wałęsa, and members of the Council of Ministers' Committee for Trade Unions, headed by Deputy Prime Minister Mieczysław Rakowski took place in Warsaw, but it ended without agreement. During this meeting, a Solidarity activist from Szczecin, yelled at Rakowski: "What if your wife cheats on you once, twice, three times? Will