Word: walesa
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...Solidarity, led by the charismatic electrician Lech Walesa, had gained international sympathy after the 1980 shipyard strikes in Gdansk. It would eventually gain huge popular support; 1.5 million Poles would claim membership in April 1989. However, the Communist regime felt threatened by the union and responded with force. In 1981, Wojciech Jaruzelski, the secretary of the Polish Communist Party, declared martial law, criminalized Solidarity, and imprisoned much of its leadership. For two years, Poland suffered under military rule...
...agree--and have emerged among his staunchest defenders. Former activist Kazimierz Kutz, now a member of parliament, says Jaruzelski's actions allowed moderates on both sides to prevail, eventually leading to the Round Table talks that brought a peaceful end to Poland's communist regime in 1989. Even Lech Walesa, the legendary Solidarity leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner who was interned for almost a year in the clampdown, has said that Jaruzelski would have been considered a "great patriot" had he lived in different times and that the trial was a "mistake...
...Gang, "the summit cannot be held in a sound atmosphere, nor can it achieve expected goals." The reason? The French President's plan to meet with Tibetan spiritual leader Dalai Lama on December 6 as part of an event honoring fellow Nobel peace prize winner Solidarity leader Lech Walesa in Poland.(See pictures of the Dalai Lama's decades of spiritual leadership...
...Moscow would intervene. As a 17-year-old during World War II, he had been deported with his parents to Siberia after Soviet forces entered Poland. His father was imprisoned, and young Jaruzelski logged trees. "He had no illusions about Russia," says Stefan Chwin, a Polish writer. Even Lech Walesa, the legendary Solidarity leader interned for almost a year during the clampdown, feels empathy for Jaruzelski. "He belongs to an unfortunate generation broken by (historic) circumstances," Walesa said in a radio interview. "Had he lived in other times, he would have been a great patriot." Walesa believes the trial...
...Walesa, who claimed in his 1981 Time “Man of the Year” article to have “never read a serious book in his life” has received a total of 32 honorary degrees from institutions of higher education...