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Red Eagle: The Army In Polish Politics, 1944-1988

Andrew A. Michta
Reviewed by Peter Grose
Summer 1990
Red Eagle: The Army In Polish Politics, 1944-1988
Andrew A. Michta
Hoover Press
1990
280 pp.
$27.95
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General Jaruzelski is the central figure in this worthy monograph. As a representative both of Poland's historic military tradition and of the new, efficient postwar army, and with a reputation (not wholly deserved) as a soldier-patriot, he rose rapidly to power in the army and ultimately in the state apparatus, all the while consistently serving the interest of the Soviet Union and the communist system. Indeed, for a time he proved indispensable to it. Civil-military relations in Poland, Michta demonstrates, were unlike those anywhere else in Eastern Europe.

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