The imposition of martial law on the night of December 12/13, 1981, was one of the most important events in Poland’s recent history. At that moment, the hopes of broad sections of society for reform of a system that was economically inefficient, ideologically alien, and rejected much of the historical and cultural tradition of Poles were dashed. After a period of sixteen months of liberalization of communism in Poland, repression against oppositionists returned (much harsher than during the rule of Edward Gierek), as did tightened censorship, party control over cultural and scientific life, and the omnipotence of the nomenklatura in workplaces. The response to the violence used by the communists was a well-organized network of Solidarity conspirators, which the Security Service was unable to deal with. The introduction of martial law in Poland was illegal, even from the point of view of the communist law in force at the time. First of all, the State Council’s decree on martial law and related decrees were passed by the State Council during a session of the Sejm, which was completely contrary to the Constitution. In 2011, the Constitutional Tribunal ruled that the introduction of martial law was illegal.
Galij-Skarbińska et al. (Wed,) studied this question.