Word: lech
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...hate strikes," Union Leader Lech Walesa told a group of journalists last week. That remarkable statement by the organizer of last summer's mass shipyard strike was symptomatic of the conspicuous spirit of conciliation that both labor and government strained to maintain as Poland's year of peril came to a close. Communist Party Boss Stanislaw Kania demonstratively placed wreaths on monuments that had been erected in the northern port cities of Gdansk and Gdynia to honor workers killed by police and troops in 1970. Kania's gesture was of high symbolic importance, since it signified...
...Year because he stands at the end of 1980 looking ahead, while the year behind him smolders in pyres. The events of any isolated year can be made to seem exceptionally grim, but one has to peer hard to find elevating moments in 1980. Only Lech Walesa's stark heroism in Poland sent anything resembling a thrill into the world. The national strike he led showed up Communism as a failure?a thing not done in the Warsaw Pact countries. Leonid Brezhnev, a different sort of strongman, had to send troops to Poland's borders, in case that country, like...
Karl Marx could hardly have imagined that a socialist empire based on the "dictatorship of the proletariat" would one day be shaken to its core by a son of the working class. Yet in 1980 an unemployed Polish electrician, Lech Walesa, rose from the masses to become one of the Communist world's most charismatic figures. When he scaled the gates of Lenin Shipyard in the Baltic port of Gdansk last August, Walesa did far more than seize the reins of an angry strike movement. To millions of Polish workers, he became the symbol of their dreams...
...that only a few weeks before had threatened a deadly holiday for the U.S.S.R.'s nettlesome neighbor. The turmoil-weary nation enjoyed a calm but austere Christmas, free for the moment from the testy confrontations between the authorities and the independent new Solidarity unions led by Worker-Hero Lech Walesa. Thanks to a last-minute rationing plan, stores in many areas were stocked with requisite hams and trimmings for Christmas dinners, though lines were still long...
...point of arrogance. In private conversation, he has a marked fondness for first-person pronouns. In public appearances, however, he can exhibit flashes of deep humility. A crowd of miners in Jastrzebie last October asked Walesa who could teach them democracy. His answer: "Who? Not Lesio [a diminutive of Lech], for he is too small, too stupid. Yourselves. Everybody." Yet he can be remarkably highhanded when chairing union meetings, often interrupting speakers in mid-sentence and imposing his own views...