Word: polisher
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...other student protesters as counterrevolutionaries. But those who have known Wuer for years say he never sought to overthrow the government and that he hoped one day to join the * Communist Party. During the protests, he told reporters his aim was to "form a nationwide citizens' organization, like the Polish Solidarity," able to deal "openly and directly" with the government. Though sometimes overconfident, even cocky, he had no history of troublemaking. "He's a good student, he's from a good family, he loves the people, and he loves the country," said a close friend. But like others...
Perhaps no Soviet satellite was studying the results more carefully than Hungary, which is preparing for its own multiparty elections next year. Commenting on the Polish vote last week, the national Hungarian daily Magyar Nemzet said the Communist defeat "was not only humiliating but also constitutes an incalculable source of danger...
...Polish experience posed a special dilemma for Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. On the one hand, Warsaw's bold moves toward economic and political liberalization would have been unthinkable had Gorbachev not come to power in 1985 and launched his own reforms. On the other hand, the crushing defeat of the Polish Communists could be exploited by Soviet hard-liners as an argument against political reform at home. In fact, Gorbachev's party seemed in little danger of suffering a Polish-style humiliation at the polls. For one thing, the Soviet reform impulse is coming down from the leadership rather than...
Whatever reservations Moscow may have about the Polish election, the possibility of Soviet intervention seems extremely remote. Eight years ago, in the heyday of Solidarity's first incarnation, Leonid Brezhnev forced Jaruzelski to break the union. But Gorbachev has long since laid the interventionist Brezhnev Doctrine to rest, repeatedly promising the East * European regimes "mutual respect" and "non-interference in each other's internal affairs." Moreover, Gorbachev considers the reform-minded Jaruzelski an important ally in promoting what he calls "new thinking" throughout the Soviet bloc. Finally, the Soviet leader seems to regard the economic and political experiments in Poland...
...Polish people, they seemed remarkably subdued at this moment of democratic triumph. Compared with the unbridled euphoria that accompanied Solidarity's birth in 1980, there was little public celebrating after the election. Perhaps it was because people sensed the gravity of the moment. More important, they had seen their hopes dashed too many times before. "In Polish society, nobody has the idea of being a winner," explained Solidarity official Alfred Janowski on a visit to Washington last week. "We are so used to always losing." It was to counter such defeatism, rooted in two centuries of foreign occupation, that Walesa...