Word: baltics
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...spilled out into side streets, waiting patiently in the early twilight while the tender strains of a Chopin piano concerto wafted from a loudspeaker. They had come to Gdansk to honor the memory of 45 workers killed by police and army bullets ten years before in riots along the Baltic coast. At long last a monument had been built: three slender trunks of steel crowned by crosses that bore dark anchors, like stylized Christ figures. To some, the 138-ft.-high sculpture outside the main gate of the Lenin Shipyard symbolized the futile workers' uprisings against Poland...
Solidarity is not a monolith, nor is it a creature of Walesa, though he is certainly its symbol and central force. Solidarity's 18-member leadership sprang directly from last summer's 21-day strike, and thus has a distinct Baltic coast flavor. Many are experienced labor activists who have been in trouble with the authorities before. One presidium member, Anna Walentynowicz, 51, was fired from her job as a crane operator a week before the Lenin Shipyard flare-up last August. "The immediate cause of the strike was to have me rehired," she says with a trace...
...voiceovers. Krzysztof, who has never traveled outside Poland, says: "If I had a choice of vacations I'd go to the U.S., but it's so expensive I don't even dream about it." Though the Ursus factory provides vacation centers for its workers along the Baltic Sea or in Poland's lake district, the Karasiewiczes prefer to spend their 3½ weeks of vacation tending a 3,200-sq.-ft. plot of land, ten minutes away from their apartment, which they received free as factory workers. Says Krzysztof: "We can plant vegetables and flowers...
While the NATO leaders did not entertain the possibility of military reponse, they discussed some risks that Alliance members could face in the event of an invasion. One example: the prospect of hundreds of Polish "boat people" escaping across the icy Baltic Sea, which would pose more than a refugee problem. "Do the Danes or the West Germans go to the protection of fleeing Poles with their frigates or patrol boats, and risk exchanging fire with the Russians?" asked a NATO official...
...pivotal element throughout Poland's four-month war of nerves. The unions have prevailed so far because they engender it and the regime does not. The government lost what little credibility it had ten years ago, when the army and police opened fire on rioting workers in Baltic seaports, killing at least 49. "It really started here in 1970," says an intellectual in Gdansk. "After 1970, both sides behaved differently." Tuesday is the tenth anniversary of that fateful day, and hundreds of thousands of Poles were expected to gather outside Lenin Shipyard's main gate to honor...