Word: gdansk
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...first to be detained were hundreds of Solidarity activists, and virtually first among the first was Lech Walesa. Police knocked at his door at 3 a.m. Sunday. He refused to allow them in, demanding the presence of Gdansk Party Secretary Tadeusz Fiszbach, a noted liberal for whom Walesa had respect. As soon as Fiszbach arrived, Walesa gave himself up. He was then taken to the airport and flown to Warsaw, where, according to a government spokesman, "he is being treated with all the respect due the head of Solidarity." Out of his own choice or the government...
...immediate pretext for Jaruzelski's action was Solidarity's growing support for rash proposals amounting to heresy in a Communist state, including a call for a national referendum on whether the government should remain in power. The union had also set Dec. 17, eleventh anniversary of the Gdansk food riots, as a day of national protest. But the government's massive military operation had been in preparation for a long time. Deployment of troops had begun at least a fortnight earlier. When authorities published a list of 57 dissidents who had been "detained," it was plain that the list...
Many Poles had been fearing a violent reaction to Solidarity's growing militancy. "Operation Birdcage" is what they called the anticipated crackdown, in which the union's freer spirits would presumably be caged. Even Walesa, upon learning the crackdown had begun, angrily told Solidarity leaders in Gdansk: "Now you've got what you've been looking...
...terrorized by military force," and demanded the release of the Solidarity leaders. The army appeared loyal, but its ranks include large numbers of draftees who are sympathetic to Solidarity and sensitive to the country's problems. Only two months ago, just after Jaruzelski took over as Communist Party boss, Gdansk Party Secretary Fiszbach insisted to visiting TIME editors in Warsaw that a declaration of martial law was too dangerous even to contemplate. "I cannot imagine the aftereffects of such a course of events," he said. "Whoever even considers martial law does not take into account his responsibility for the destiny...
...also under way at the famous Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, the birthplace of Solidarity. On Tuesday night a few friendly soldiers had shared coal fires with some of the workers, trying to stay warm in the bitter Baltic winter. But early the next day, special armored units and elite Red Beret forces arrived to seize the plant. As six helicopters circled overhead, troops attacked the occupied buildings. They met with only passive resistance from the workers inside. A crowd of spectators was kept to a distance of 500 yards and tear gas was sprayed in the area. At one point...