Word: walesa
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...heady days of August 1980, the closed gate of the Lenin Shipyard in the Baltic port city of Gdansk became a symbol of the spirit of Solidarity, the newly formed independent trade union movement. It was here that Lech Walesa, the movement's leader, first made his demands for economic and social reform. Months later, when Solidarity swept the country, a monument was erected at the gate to commemorate both the birth of the union in 1980 and the 45 Poles killed in the food riots of 1970. Last week, shortly after the army and police had broken a strike...
...first to be detained were hundreds of Solidarity activists, and virtually first among the first was Lech Walesa. Police knocked at his door at 3 a.m. Sunday. He refused to allow them in, demanding the presence of Gdansk Party Secretary Tadeusz Fiszbach, a noted liberal for whom Walesa had respect. As soon as Fiszbach arrived, Walesa gave himself up. He was then taken to the airport and flown to Warsaw, where, according to a government spokesman, "he is being treated with all the respect due the head of Solidarity." Out of his own choice or the government...
...list of 57 dissidents who had been "detained," it was plain that the list had been drawn up in advance: three people on it were out of the country. (Not on the list but determined to protest the "flagrant and brutal" crackdown and to express his "solidarity" with Walesa: Poland's Ambassador to the U.S., Romuald Spasowski, who sought and was swiftly granted asylum along with his wife, daughter and son-in-law.) Last week, after the sudden crackdown, a Gdansk doctor said he realized at last why so many extra beds had been placed in the local military hospital...
Many Poles had been fearing a violent reaction to Solidarity's growing militancy. "Operation Birdcage" is what they called the anticipated crackdown, in which the union's freer spirits would presumably be caged. Even Walesa, upon learning the crackdown had begun, angrily told Solidarity leaders in Gdansk: "Now you've got what you've been looking...
...depressed and weary from the crises that had beset the country in recent months. Poles were also disillusioned by the disunity within Solidarity, traumatized by the newly imposed military rule, anxious over the lingering possibility of Soviet intervention and fearful for the fate of their national hero, Lech Walesa...