P.M. from old nobility

Press, 13 February 1981, Page 6

P.M. from old nobility

By

DESSA TREVISAN,

of

“The Times” (through NZPA) Warsaw Although he has. spent all his life as a soldier, the slightly-built General Wojciech Jaruzelski, who was proposed by the Central Committee of the Polish Communist Party to take the Prime Ministership, does not look like a soldier/ Rather he has the stamp of a Polish nobleman, which is his family background. In the Second World War he went to the Soviet Union, where he joined the newlyformed Polish Army _ three years later. Trained in the Soviet officers’ school in

Ryazan, he fought with the Dabrowski Polish division, and joined the Polish Communist Party in 1947. His whole career was spent in the armed forces, where in 1960, he was promoted to head the political department and later was assigned the job of chief of the Polish General Staff. He has been Defence Minister since 1968 when the then Prime Minister, Cyrankiewicz, took him into the Government. At the same time, his political career in the party hierarchy continued to advance from membership of the Central Committee to the Politburo in 1971, thereby combining mi-

j litary activity with that of a , politician in the highest - party office. He was the man often 5 spoken of as likely to take, , up the post, either as Head - of State or at one time even 1 as head of the party. j Though he seldom takes f any public political position he is- said to have. been . firmly opposed to using > force in the Baltic riots ten ■ years ago. As recently as i last August it was largely > due to him and to Stanislaw i Kania, the present party se- ■ cretary, then in charge of . Army and security police in ■ the Politburo, that force was i not used against the . strikers.

General Jaruzelski has the reputation of a moderate, but he is also representing the Army, which, since his term as Defence Minister has become a modern, welltrained cohesive force, regaining the traditional popularity among the Poles; who are proud of their Army. Nevertheless, the Army’s daily newspaper, “Zolnierz Wolnosci,” which represents the view of the Ministry of Defence, has thoughout the recent crisis taken a harder attitude to the activities of the alleged anti-socialist forces, and expressed alarm over the deterioration in the social and political situation.