Word: walesa
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Until noon, the country was at a standstill, as millions of Poles downed their tools in the latest-and perhaps riskiest-confrontation with the Warsaw regime. "We don't want to overthrow the Communist Party," Solidarity Union Leader Lech Walesa told fellow strikers at a Warsaw steel mill. "We only want to get rid of the people who are putting the brakes on Poland's renewal." Specifically, he meant the officials responsible for a police attack two weeks ago on 26 union members in Bydgoszcz. Beyond that, however, Walesa and his comrades were boldly challenging a powerful group...
...blaming Premier Wojciech Jaruzelski for the incident. On taking office last month, the Soviet-trained general pleaded for "90 days of calm" and then consistently worked for accommodation with the unions. "There is trust in him and his uniform," Walesa told the strikers last week. "Jaruzelski is a good man," said a Warsaw taxi driver. "No known girlfriends. No dacha. No money stashed away. Not like others who are not as equal as they pretend...
...addition, local chapters were instructed to move their headquarters into major factory compounds in preparation for a general strike. Walesa was named to head a ten-man "strike command" committee that would operate from the Gdansk shipyard where last summer's labor revolt had begun. Finally, in an obvious reference to the intimidating Warsaw Pact troop maneuvers, the union issued a pledge not to "jeopardize law and order or Poland's foreign alliances...
Hope of averting a catastrophe seemed to depend on Walesa's continuing talks with Rakowski. When the Solidarity leader arrived at Warsaw's Council of Ministers building for Wednesday's meeting, supporters hoisted him on their shoulders and chanted his nickname: "Leszek! Leszek!" Barely 85 minutes later, when Walesa emerged, there was nothing to cheer about: there had been no progress. "The government," he explained, "had no proposal in relation to our demands...
...worst inner thoughts, but his most charitable or optimistic. Gerald Ford's famous error in the 1976 presidential debate, in which he said that Poland was not under Soviet domination, for instance. In a way, that turned out to contain a grain of truth, thanks to Lech Walesa and the strikes; in any case it was a nice thing to wish. As was U.N. Ambassador Warren Austin's suggestion in 1948 that Jews and Arabs resolve their differences "in a true Christian spirit." Similarly, Nebraska's former Senator Kenneth Wherry might have been thinking dreamily when...