WARSAW — General Wojciech Jaruzelski, Poland's last communist leader who tried but failed to crush the freedom-fighting Solidarity union, died Sunday aged 90, local media reported.

Jaruzelski tried to strangle the Soviet bloc's first free trade union with a brutal military crackdown in 1981. He then became the first-ever communist leader to clear the way for democracy by agreeing to semi-free elections.

The Polish PAP news agency said Sunday it had learned of the death from former Polish president Aleksander Kwasniewski.