Word: communistes
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...this day two decades ago, Polish patriots took on the world’s largest army and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, eventually toppling the Communist regime in Warsaw. They achieved this feat not through violent revolution, but through a series of negotiations that became famous as the Round Table talks. The defeat of Communism in Poland—which was soon followed by its total collapse in Eastern Europe and, in 1991, the Soviet Union itself—should properly be regarded as one of the greatest triumphs in European history...
...Solidarity, led by the charismatic electrician Lech Walesa, had gained international sympathy after the 1980 shipyard strikes in Gdansk. It would eventually gain huge popular support; 1.5 million Poles would claim membership in April 1989. However, the Communist regime felt threatened by the union and responded with force. In 1981, Wojciech Jaruzelski, the secretary of the Polish Communist Party, declared martial law, criminalized Solidarity, and imprisoned much of its leadership. For two years, Poland suffered under military rule...
...amid all the memorials there are surprisingly few details about some of the most pivotal periods of Mao's life. The museum focuses on the early days of the Communist Party, the Long March, resistance against the Japanese and the defeat of the Nationalists. As might be expected in a country whose founding father's image is rigorously managed, there is little mention of the disastrous Great Leap Forward, a period of forced collectivization that led to famine and the deaths of millions, or the Cultural Revolution and the persecution of millions more labeled as counterrevolutionaries...
...Luckily, one doesn't have to travel far from Shaoshan and its blaring patriotic songs and armies of hawkers to find a more nuanced and interesting look at modern China. The birthplace of Liu Shaoqi, another communist leader and Mao's contemporary, lies an hour's drive from Shaoshan in Ningxiang county. Liu's memorial is quiet and forested. Once you pass through the entry gates there are no touts or trinket stands, and noticeably fewer visitors. Liu was known as a practical, down-to-earth official. During an inspection tour of the region in 1961, he learned...
...oppressors. Second, many United States companies who possessed property in Cuba before the government seized and nationalized it during the early ’60s still stand strong in lobbying against an end to the embargo. While both of these admittedly powerful constituencies have legitimate grievances against the brutal Communist regime, the Cuban government has not and will not become more accommodating to their interests on a mere whim. Dropping the embargo would allow us to facilitate the change we hope for without holding ignorantly to egotistical positions that do nothing but broaden the rift...