On 16 December 1981, three days after the proclamation of the state of war in Poland by General Wojciech Jaruzelski (on the left on the gun turret), Fritz Behrendt, a Dutch cartoonist originally from Berlin, paints an ironic picture of the country’s future and illustrates the risk of a military intervention by Moscow to put an end to the strikes and restore order. The proclamation of the state of war in Poland results in a suspension of legal safeguards and sees the arrest of thousands of trade unionists, including Lech Wałęsa, and the dissolution of the free trade union Solidarność. On the right, Leonid Brezhnev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), is directly threatening Poland from the controls of his tank.