Word: warsaw
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Poland's military bosses call Poznan their model city. While the workers of Gdansk, Warsaw and Katowice resisted, rioting and striking, after martial law was declared on Dec. 13, not a ripple of unrest was reported in the industrial center 175 miles west of the capital. Indeed, Zdzislaw Rozwalak, the leader of the local Solidarity chapter, had promptly furnished the state radio with a statement of support for martial law and condemned the union's behavior. Thus the regime of Wojciech Jaruzelski last week confidently chose Poznan as the showcase site for the first officially organized foreign press...
Over the previous weekend, for example, Polish authorities had ended their censorship of foreign press dispatches. Telephone links were restored within, but not between, major cities. At a Warsaw press conference last week, Deputy Premier Jerzy Ozdowski even expressed vague hopes that martial law might be lifted "tomorrow or by Feb. 1." The skepticism of Western observers seemed to be confirmed at week's end when Government Spokesman Jerzy Urban declared that martial law would last until "all fatal phenomena"-in other words, all opposition-ended...
...Warsaw's "normalization" campaign, apparently, was to sway Western European opinion and prevent the NATO governments from joining with the U.S. in denouncing martial law and imposing economic sanctions. But as the NATO foreign ministers assembled in Brussels last week, the generals' strategy had clearly failed. It did not take U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig's dismissal of the Polish gestures as "phony moderation" to convince the Europeans; their intelligence reports contradicted the rosy announcements from Warsaw...
After four weeks of martial law, the initial shock has worn off, but the reality of what has happened is finally sinking in. Warsaw has been transformed from one of the liveliest cities in Europe to one of the dullest and most depressing. The theaters are closed, the cafés usually empty and the streets practically devoid of traffic after dark. But worse than these obvious signs is the apparent death of the spirit. Poland is a nation of individuals. The most ordinary worker wears his cap just so and has his own look. Now, when you walk through...
Through the gloom covering Poland today it is possible to catch an occasional glimpse of spirit that still glows. In one huge housing block in Warsaw, occupants who own dogs have agreed to walk their pets together-15 minutes after the 11 o'clock curfew. They stand in the courtyard chatting, some in bathrobes, defying the police to try to arrest all of them...