Word: walesa
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Goldsmith, a failed aspirant to Parliament, is written off by some intelligence experts as a Conservative ideologue. Yet Western reporters have repeatedly experienced disinformation from the Soviet bloc, from attempts to discredit Polish Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa to contentions that the Korean Air Lines jet shot down by the Soviets was on a CIA mission. The issues in the Spiegel case probably are, as its editors said last week, beyond conventional proof. But the broader problem Goldsmith raised is one that knowing journalists cannot easily dismiss...
...Lech Walesa was back in the spotlight last week, holding aloft a bouquet of flowers and basking in the cheers of 1,500 supporters gathered near the Lenin Shipyard in the Baltic port of Gdansk. Four years ago, the outspoken electrician had scaled the shipyard gates and assumed the leadership of a strike that gave birth to Solidarity, the Communist bloc's first independent trade union. Solidarity was officially suspended in 1981, when the regime of General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law and detained most of the union's leaders. But as Walesa and his fellow workers showed...
With familiar chants of "Solidarnosc!"the crowd joined Walesa in defiantly flashing the V sign and singing the patriotic hymn God Who Watches Over Poland, as hundreds of grim-faced policemen looked on. But Walesa was seeking no showdown. After leaving his bouquet at the base of the monument to workers killed during antigovernment riots in 1970, he quietly thanked his supporters for coming and drove away...
...materializes, the mere fact that men once locked up as subversives are meeting and planning again is symbolic of the new mood. Though rebuilding the old Solidarity as a spearhead of resistance is out of the question, its ideals are being put forward by those seeking government reforms. As Walesa said in a speech he prepared for, but did not deliver at, last week's anniversary, "We signed the social agreements believing in the good intentions of the other party. We were painfully disappointed . . . What about union pluralism? What about freedom of speech? What about lifting repression on matters...
...Walesa's warning did not herald a return to the mass strikes and street demonstrations of the old era. Underlying the oppositon's mood is an awareness that enduring reforms can be won only through a long, gradual process. Looking back on Solidarity's tumultuous beginning, Jaworski recalls sadly that "we tried to influence the authorities in too short a period of time. It was a mistake. There was too much euphoria too early in the days of Solidarity." Now, he feels, former union supporters show a greater willingness to work from within the system. Ultimately, they...