Word: polish
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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During the following weeks, Polish authorities stepped up their surveillance of the restive labor leader. The day after the announcement of the Solidarity meeting. Walesa was forcibly taken from his home to a nearby militia station, where he was detained and interrogated for five hours. Later that week his wife and his chauffeur were also called in for questioning...
Szafar of the Russian Research Center concurs, saying. "This kind of demonstration shows Walesa's not forgotten, even if Polish affairs are out of the headlines--it produces a feeling of solidarity with the Polish workers' movement. I'm very glad Harvard did decide to extend the invitation, no matter what the outcome...
Other specialists express skepticism about the impact of Harvard's unusual correspondence with the Polish leaders. "Harvard really doesn't mean that much in Poland," says William E. Schaufele Jr., who served as the American ambassador to Poland from 1978 to 1980. "It may mean something in the broad European context, but not a lot in Poland...
Moreover, notes Brantley, also a professor of international law at Tufts's Fletcher School of Diplomacy, it is unlikely that the Harvard offer affected Walesa's stature simply because it went virtually unnoticed in the Polish press. "It received minimal, minimal coverage," she says, adding that even the underground newspapers "had more important things to cover...
...there was one notable exception to Brantley's statement, and it provides an extraordinary footnote to the story of Harvard's brief dalliance with Lech Walesa. In its issue of May 6, the Polish Communist Party newspaper Trybuna Ludu printed this piece of commentary...