Word: torun
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Moscow had plenty to kick about. Two weeks ago, the Kania government promised official recognition to Rural Solidarity, an 800,000-member independent farmers' union. At the same time, some 500 rank-and-file Polish Communists were allowed to hold a heretical meeting at Torun to demand greater democratization within the party. As if that were not enough to exasperate the Kremlin, Polish leaders continued to pursue a conciliatory policy toward the independent trade union federation. That policy was reflected in the government's proposed agenda for talks with Solidarity that resumed at week's end. Though...
...that were not enough, the party leaders also had to contend with a potentially more dangerous erosion of power within their own ranks. Last week some 500 delegates from local Communist Party cells throughout Poland converged on a university lecture hall in the northern city of Torun, birthplace of the astronomer Copernicus, for an extraordinary conference on party reform. Speaker after speaker at the eight-hour meeting criticized Warsaw's Communist leadership for tailing to carry out its promised "renewal." Calling for greater democratization within the party, one delegate declared. "We are fighting for an idea. The top people...
Moscow could hardly take such heresies lightly. Even before the Torun gathering, Pravda had stepped up its attacks on those within the Polish party who held "views foreign to a Marxist-Leninist party." In the view of many Western analysts, the liberal evolution of the Polish party could pose a far more serious threat to the Soviets than the independent labor movement. Indeed, the situation seemed increasingly to resemble that of Czechoslovakia in 1968, when a party-led reform movement finally brought on a Soviet-led invasion. In the case of Poland, the immediate invasion threat appeared to be receding...
...react too rashly. "Those bandits and sadists from the security apparatus must be dismissed," he insisted. Walesa warned that, if necessary, the union could bring the entire country to a standstill in half an hour. To prove his point, union members in Bydgoszcz and the neighboring province of Torun called a two-hour strike. As sirens wailed and church bells pealed, 500,000 workers laid down their tools. Solidarity also mounted a national strike alert, meaning that unless the government takes satisfactory action against the Bydgoszcz police the country could be hit by a general strike...