Lessons can be learned from Poland's success

Twenty-five years ago today, communist generals declared martial law in Poland. Many Poles, to whom the creation of Solidarity more than a year earlier had given hope of freedom, saw this as an end to their dreams. In reality, as we now know, this was the beginning of the end for communism.

The communist system was able to crush Solidarity, but it paid a high price for that victory. Though the "king" — Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski — appeared in military uniform on Dec. 13, 1981, the rest of the world saw that he was, in fact, like a naked king. The news of his weakness spread quickly throughout the socialist realm.

Martial law in Poland was one of the defining moments of the Cold War. On that December day, one of the pillars of detente fell — the hope that the communist regime could be entwined in a web that would limit its movements and force it to concede to the democratic cause.

This course of action had been successful to a certain degree in the 1970s. But the communist regime in Poland, feeling its monopoly threatened, threw off the web in an act of desperation in 1981. There could be no return to the detente-style politics of the '70s.

Solidarity was weakened and removed from legal political life, but it survived. What's more, first from the dissident movement and then from the workers' unions, arose a political opposition, the first of its size in the East Bloc. Western governments had a completely new problem: how to deal with a regime that rules but lacks legitimacy, and also with an opposition that is barred from ruling but does have moral legitimacy. Were they to choose the lure of the status quo or the uncertain promise of change?

The United States made the right decision. President Ronald Reagan accurately perceived that Poland offered the fulcrum needed to move things forward from the so-called Yalta pattern of a divided Europe. The United States gave the Solidarity opposition the support it needed most — moral support. By doing so the Reagan administration followed in the footsteps of President Jimmy Carter's administration, which had listened to the advice of its national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and strongly supported earlier dissident movements.

After Dec. 13, 1981, Poland received a large wave of humanitarian help for its people, as well as financial and technical help directed to the opposition. Perhaps the most important actor in the fight for the future of Poland and Europe lived in the Vatican: Pope John Paul II, the Polish pope.