Status: Closed file. Martial law imposed 13 December 1981, suspended 31 December 1982, formally lifted 22 July 1983. Legal reckoning incomplete. Subject: The imposition of martial law in the Polish People’s Republic, the machinery used to enforce it, and the disputed justification behind it. Background Solidarity was legalised in the autumn of 1980 under the Gdańsk Agreement, and within a year it had somewhere close to ten million members in a country of thirty-six million.