Item COLD WAR 22/1 - Transcript of interview with Prime Minister General Witold Jaruzelski, 1996

Typescript transcript of interview with Polish Gen Wojciech (Witold) Jaruzelski, Prime Minister of Poland, 1981-1985, Head of State, 1985-1990, and President, 1989-1990, relating to Jaruzelski's family background, notably the death of his father in Siberia following service with the White forces in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1922; Jaruzelski's military service during World War Two, 1939-1945; the Katyn massacre, the murder of approximately 4,500 Polish officers, probably by the Red Army, Katyn Forest, near Smolensk, USSR, 1940; the Second Warsaw Rising, Poland, Aug 1944; the devastation in post-war Poland, 1945-1946; the strong relations between Poland, the USSR and the German Democratic Republic, 1949-[1970]; the communist coup d'etat in Czechoslovakia, Feb 1948; the Soviet intervention in Hungary, 1956, and in Czechoslovakia, 1968; the Federal German Republic's policy of 'Ostpolitik' (Eastern policy), accepting the existence of the German Democratic Republic and of its eastern border with Poland, the Oder-Neisse line, Nov 1970; the creation of the Warsaw Pact, the Warsaw Treaty of Friendship, Co-operation, and Mutual Assistance, Poland, 1955; industrial unrest, organised by the free trade union Solidarity, at the Gdansk Shipyard, Poland, 1980; the economic reliance by Poland on the USSR, [1980-1982]; the imposition of martial law in Poland, 1981-1982; the Soviet policy of 'perestroika' (the economic and social restructuring of Soviet society), introduced by Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the USSR, 1985-1991, and President of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, 1988-1991; the end of the Cold War, 1990. 9pp