WARSAW, Poland — The former military leader of Poland, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, has been charged with “communist crimes” for declaring martial law in an attempt to crush the solidarity movement in 1981.

The charges against the 83-year-old ex-soldier, who was Polish president for most of the 1980s, came after the Institute of National Remembrance, the office charged with investigating Poland’s communist past, passed documents to a Warsaw court. Eight other former high-ranking communists face similar charges.

“Our aim is to fulfill an obligation to the nation and the Polish state, as well as to all those who suffered injustice and humiliation during the period of martial law,” said Andrzej Drogon, an official of the remembrance institute.

If found guilty, General Jaruzelski could face 10 years in prison for his role in suppressing the Lech Walesa-led solidarity movement, which had become the Soviet bloc’s first free trade union and had directly challenged the communist order.

On the night of December 12, 1981, troops poured on to Poland’s snow-covered streets and the nation’s borders were sealed. In the days that followed, thousands of solidarity activists, including Mr. Walesa, were arrested, and dozens were killed in clashes with the security services. General Jaruzelski has always defended his decision, arguing it was necessary to prevent a Soviet invasion.

To date, nobody from the higher echelons of the communist regime has been tried for crimes committed during the period.

The charges leveled at General Jaruzelski reflect the Polish government’s desire to punish the nation’s former communist leaders, with which it has little sympathy.

Led by the prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who, like his twin brother and Polish president, Lech, was a solidarity activist, it has made a settling of old scores a policy priority.

In February, the government announced its intention to demote the general to the rank of private and strip him of his generous pension. It has also mooted evicting him from his house, an elegant villa in one of Warsaw’s more prestigious neighborhoods.

Yet, despite the ardent will of the Kaczynski twins, doubts remain that General Jaruzelski will ever see a prison cell. The frail octogenarian could claim ill health to delay the legal process; in 2001, attempts to try the general for a 1970 massacre of Gdansk shipyard workers petered out due to his persistent health problems.

A trial could also open old wounds that many Poles would prefer were left untouched. Since the current government came into office in 2005 with its avowed intention of confronting a difficult and opaque past, Poland has been forced into an uncomfortable period of soul-searching.