LECH WAŁĘSA TURNS SEVENTY

LECH WAŁĘSA 

b. September 9, 1943 

THE FUTURE PRESIDENT 

OF POLAND (1990-1995) 

AS LEADER OF SOLIDARITY 

Plotting Strategy 

Warsaw, Summer 1981 

Imprisoned under Martial Law, December 1981 

1983 Nobel Peace Prize winner 

Now the subject of a new film by Andrzej Wajda, "Wałęsa: Man of Hope," meant to re-burnish Walesa's name and to introduce him to a new, younger audience (see here and here).  

SOLIDARITY-TO-BE WINS ITS STRIKE, THIRTY-THREE YEARS AGO

SOLIDARNOŚĆ 

IS BEING BORN 

GDANSK, POLAND 

August 30, 1980 

"LET POLAND BE POLAND" 

Solidarity Poster 

Summer 1981 

The story is here 

More Poland, here 

IT ALL STARTED IN THE GDANSK SHIPYARD, THIRTY-THREE YEARS AGO

ONE OF THE 

FIRST FRUITS OF 

THE RISE OF SOLIDARITY 

IN POLAND 

1980 MONUMENT 
TO THE WORKERS 
WHO DIED IN 1970 

Photographed in the summer of 1981 

Construction of this monument was one of the key demands of the Gdansk Lenin Shipyard workers who rose up on August 14, 1980, and gave birth to the movement known as Solidarność (Solidarity).  It was up by December 1980, and said to be built to last, so it could not just be torn down with another turn of the political wheel.  It is still up in 2013.  The shipyard and the shipyard workers have not fared so well -- except, of course, that ultimately they helped "Let Poland Be Poland." 

More of the story here and here. 

DOWN IN THE MINES II

WALL-EATING 

MACHINE 

WITH HUMAN 

(yes, over on the left) 

COAL MINE 
POLAND 1981 

DOWN IN THE MINES

PORTRAIT OF 

A COAL MINER 

POLAND 1981 

THE BRIDE AND THE GROOM DANCE AT THEIR WEDDING

JOY 

AND 

INSTANT 

POLISH COUSINS 

WEDDING DANCE 

POLAND 

THE SUMMER OF 1981 

STREET MARKET WITH VEGETABLES ... AND TWO MEN

POLAND IN 

THE SUMMER 

BEFORE 

MARTIAL LAW 

STREET MARKET WITH VEGETABLES 
AND TWO MEN 

IN THE RAIN  

SUMMER 1981 

WHY IS THIS WOMAN RUNNING?

THE WOMAN IN RED 

AND 

BLUE 

WARSAW 1981 

BOY & PIGEONS, CRACOW, POLAND

MEMORIES OF 

A SUMMER DAY 

BOY AND PIGEONS 

KRAKÓW (CRACOW) 

POLAND 

1981 

AT THE WEDDING FEAST

WEDDING COUPLE

POLAND 1981

INSTANT POLISH COUSINS

IN THE TIME OF SOLIDARITY

More Wedding Celebrations

More Couples

More Poland

SOLIDARITY ESTABLISHED IN POLAND, THIRTY-ONE YEARS AGO

SOLIDARNOŚĆ 

b. August 31, 1980 

KATOWICE (POLAND) COAL MINE  

Published in the February 15, 1982, 

issue of BUSINESS WEEK (p. 68) 

On August 31, 1980, Lech Walesa, representing the striking workers in the Gdansk shipyard, signed the August Accords wrenching certain rights from the Polish communist government. 

The development of what became a ten-million-strong movement growing out of the strike, called Solidarność, or Solidarity, was amazing, but also fraught with complications. 

One of them was the relationship between Warsaw and Moscow, discussed in the Sol W. Sanders Business Week article ("The high price Russia will have to pay in Poland") for which the photograph above was the illustration.  His conclusion:  "The Soviet Union can only lose economically in the continuing crisis insider her largest satellite." 

The USSR ultimately lost far more than economically; a brief discussion can be found here. 

Today, thirty-one years after the founding, Poland's president, Bronisław Komorowski, came to Gdansk to honor Solidarity.  Walesa had a more bittersweet take on the movement:  "'It was such a big victory, but the effects don't match it,' he was quoted by TVN24 as saying." 

OBAMA DOES WARSAW

OBAMA DOES 

WARSAW 

THE PEOPLE GATHER BEFORE 

THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER 

LOOMING ABOVE 

STALIN'S GIFT TO POLAND 

THE PALACE OF CULTURE AND SCIENCE 

WARSAW 1981 

 

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier was one of  Barack Obama's stops in his European-tour-ending trip to Poland.  {more to come} 

"CHRIST THE LORD IS RISEN TODAY": ARKA PANA Church, Nowa Huta, Poland

"CHRIST 

THE LORD 

IS 

RISEN TODAY" 

ARKA PANA CHURCH 

Nowa Huta, Cracow, Poland, 1981 

"CHRIST CRUCIFIED" 

BUT RISING 

by 

BRONISŁAW CHROMY 

FATHER JERZY POPIEŁUSZKO IS BEATIFIED, June 6, 2010

FATHER JERZY POPIEŁUSZKO

IS BEATIFIED,

June 6, 2010

INTERIOR OF ARKA PANA,

THE THEN NEW

CHURCH AT NOWA HUTA,

KRAKÓW (CRACOW), POLAND

IN 1981, IN THE

TIME OF SOLIDARITY

Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, the "priest of Solidarność"

(Solidarity), was murdered in October 1984.

An accounting and an appreciation is to be found here.

PATRIOTS & POLES & MORE PLACES TO PARK U.S. TROOPS

PATRIOTS & POLES & 

MORE PLACES TO 

PARK U.S. TROOPS 

POLISH SOLDIERS PARADE 

AT THE TOMB OF 

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER 

WARSAW, POLAND, 1981 

This is the week that American Patriot missiles arrived in Poland. 

On May 26, 2010, AFP reported that Polish Defence Minister Bogdan Klich "formally welcomed the 100-strong US unit that had arrived at a Polish army base in the northern town of Morag at the weekend, and viewed the three unarmed Patriot missile launchers which Polish troops will be trained to use. 

"'Your arrival here in Poland has two dimensions, political and symbolic. Politically, it's about Poland's security. And symbolically because on Polish soil, for the first time, US soldiers will be stationed long-term,' he [Klich] said." [italics added] 

Today (May 28) a Russian deputy foreign minister protested. 

Morag is only sixty kilometers, less than forty miles, from Russia. 

But of course the missile placement has nothing to do with Russia.... 

Some interesting analysis here. 

IN HONOR OF POLAND, AND OF COAL MINERS

IN HONOR OF POLAND, 

AND OF COAL MINERS

COAL MINER

KATOWICE, POLAND, 1981

IN THE FIRST SOLIDARITY ERA

THE PRESIDENT OF POLAND, LECH KACZYNSKI, AND OTHER PROMINENT POLES, DIE IN A PLANE CRASH

THE PRESIDENT OF POLAND,

LECH KACZYNSKI,

AND OTHER PROMINENT POLES,

DIE IN A PLANE CRASH ON

THE WAY TO COMMEMORATE KATYN

TOMB OF

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

WARSAW, POLAND, 1981

THE COUNTRY MOURNS

THE FALL OF COMMUNISM II

SHIFT CHANGE 

Katowice Coal Mine, Poland, 1981 

THE FALL OF COMMUNISM II

Speaking of the fall (or not) of communism ("All Rise," May 21, 2009), we are in the primetime of the twentieth anniversaries of the fall of the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. 

The year 1989 saw the second "Springtime of Nations." In astonishment, and uncertainty, the outside world, and even the political actors within the various members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact, watched as events unfolded and limits were pushed. 

Now, twenty years later, the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989, serves as a stand-in for all the regime changes that year. And the violent climax of the downfall of all the Soviet-bloc regimes in Eastern Europe came on Christmas Day, in Romania, when the just-deposed former leader Nicolae Ceausescu -- and his wife -- were executed by firing squad. 

But the Polish story should not be overlooked.  Timothy Garton-Ash believes "to this day that the Round Table - that is to say, the negotiated revolution - was a particularly Polish discovery, and is in a way Poland’s gift from 1989 to the world." 

The backstory includes the founding of the Solidarity trade union in Poland in August 1980, and its rise and rise until it was crushed in December 1981. When I took photographs all over Poland in the summer of 1981 (including the coal miners in Katowice, above), it was obvious how entrenched Solidarity was in the workplaces, and in society more generally.  At its height, there were said to be ten million members, out of a population of thirty-some million. 

  

That summer, and into the fall, there was nervous speculation as to whether the Soviet Union would invade; it was the era of Leonid Brezhnev and the Brezhnev Doctrine ('what we have, we hold'). But in the end, on December 13, 1981, Poland's own leaders imposed martial law.  Lech Walesa and other Solidarity leaders 

were thrown in jail. 

Solidarity came back to life again after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Moscow and seemed to embrace the possibilities of reform in other communist countries besides his own.  Still, as Garton-Ash testifies, "You have to remember that nobody knew what would happen next and nobody knew what the Soviet Union would accept."