Word: lech
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Lech Walesa comes home to a movement in disarray...
...gamble, but it appears to have succeeded. In releasing former Union Leader Lech Walesa after eleven months in detention, the government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski conveyed a new sense of self-confidence rather than any weakness toward Poland's still rebellious population. Now the focus is on a special session of parliament that has been set for Dec. 13, the first anniversary of the military crackdown. Many Poles believe that Jaruzelski, who has successfully contained resistance, will choose that day to lift martial law altogether...
...self-assurance was reflected in its treatment of Walesa's release. A planned television interview with Walesa was unceremoniously shelved, and newspaper reports were limited to nine lines on an inside page. Said Government Spokesman Jerzy Urban: "The information is tailored to the scale of the news. Lech Walesa is a private person...
Perhaps, but to many of his supporters Lech Walesa, or "Leszek" as they affectionately call him, is still the man who has become inextricably linked with the word Solidarity. For three days, hundreds of supporters kept a vigil beneath the second-story window of his apartment block on the outskirts of Gdansk. Suddenly, late in the evening, an excited murmur spread through the milling crowd. Before the convoy of four cars could pull to a stop, it was mobbed by surging onlookers who struck up the chant, "Leszek, Leszek." At the center of the commotion was a familiar figure with...
...union's legal registration fizzled, thanks to the extraordinary security measures taken by Warsaw. Even the announcement of Walesa's release was more of a testament to the success of martial law than to any lessening of repression. As Urban put it last week: "The person of Lech Walesa no longer poses a threat, and there is no need to keep him in internment...