1989 - Collapse of Communism - Spring of Nations

[Bonobo]

The last 100 years of Polish history are here, in this pill. Later, we can compare and contrast life under two systems.

Life after communism
9/29/08

(CNN) -- Leszek Balcerowicz, Poland's former finance minister, recently said his country is enjoying "its best period in 300 years." CNN looks at how the country emerged from communism to become one of eastern Europe's most stable and thriving democracies.

Modern Poland gained independence in 1918 only to be overrun by Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Almost six million Poles, including the majority of the country's large Jewish population, died during the devastating six-year conflict.
The shadow of Stalin continued to loom large over Poland after the war, when the communist-dominated government ensured that Poland would become a Soviet satellite state for the next 40 years.
The following decades were punctuated by revolts against the authoritarian regime in Warsaw, but none had a greater impact on Poland's political future than events in 1980 at a shipyard in western Poland. With the economy in turmoil and rumours of corruption and mismanagement within the state causing widespread discontent, a series of strikes by workers paralyzed the country.
Eventually the government was forced to negotiate and on August 31, 1980, workers at the iconic Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, led by an electrician named Lech Walesa, signed a deal giving workers the right to strike and form trade unions. This heralded the creation of the Solidarity movement, which would ultimately be instrumental in bringing Poland's communist era to an end.
The presence in the Vatican at the time of Polish-born Pope John- Paul II was also a significant influence on the movement throughout the 1980s, as the Catholic church had remained a very potent force in Polish life.
Despite Soviet-endorsed attempts to slow the erosion of the regime's grip on power -- including the declaration of martial law in 1981 -- Poland's worsening economic situation, compounded by further strikes, meant that the government had no alternative but to negotiate a date for free elections with Walesa and the Solidarity movement.
In 1989, Solidarity activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki formed the first government led by non-communists since the war. The following year Lech Walesa was elected as Poland's president.
After years of economic mismanagement under the communists, Poland embarked on a painful reform program -- especially in traditional heavy industries such as coal and steel -- which involved the rapid privatization of much of its economy and a move away from the inefficient state- ontrolled system of economic planning.
Under finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz, Poland established a more investment-friendly , market-led economy which in turn cultivated more robust and competitive businesses. Banking and lending policies were reformed, while newly reshaped ownership relations, independent enterprises and strengthened domestic competition all had a massive impact.

These consistently implemented economic policies led Poland in a relatively short time on to the list of the most dynamically developing economies in Europe, according to the European Union. By the mid-1990s Poland had become known as the "Tiger of Europe."
Poland also liberalized its international trade. The national currency -- the zloty -- became convertible to other currencies and internal convertibility was also established, providing another platform for dynamic economic growth. New markets in countries that had been treated not so long before as ideological as well as economic enemies were opened up to Polish companies. The EU and U.S. were now the key markets for Polish goods.
This realignment of policy was emphasized by its accession into the
European Union in 2004. It had also joined NATO in 1999.
Unfortunately high unemployment and the promise of better salaries encouraged many Poles to work in another EU countries after 2004. This trend has only started to reverse in 2008, as the Polish economy enjoyed a boom.

[Bonobo]

Poles mark 20 years since talks toppled communism - The Round Table talks
2/4/09
WARSAW (AFP) — Twenty years after Poland's ruling communist party and the Solidarity freedom movement sat down for watershed talks, participants in the historic negotiations are recalling how they sped the collapse of the entire Soviet bloc.
February 6, 1989 marked the launch of the so-called Round Table
negotiations, which came after years of struggle between the regime and Solidarity, born in a strike-wave in 1980 and forced underground by a military crackdown a year later.
The negotiations paved the way to semi-democratic elections in June 1989, a vote which saw Solidarity, led by the iconic Lech Walesa, break the power monopoly of the communist regime by entering parliament.
"Was there any real alternative to this great bloodless victory?" Walesa, 65, asked rhetorically in an interview this week.
"Without the Round Table, communism could have stuck around for
another fifty years and a day," he said.
Two decades later, negotiators still marvel at the pace of change
sparked by the talks.
"No one on either side thought events would move so quickly and that six months later my government would see the light of day," Tadeusz Mazowiecki, 81, a Solidarity intellectual who became post-war Poland's first non-communist prime minister in 1989, told AFP.
"All we hoped for from those negotiations at the most was the
legalisation of Solidarity, seven years after it was banned by the
communists, and that Lech Walesa not be treated as just a private
person," Mazowiecki said.
The communist regime had refused to recognise Walesa as leader of the Solidarity union, banned in 1981.
The communist regime was also amazed, recalled Leszek Miller, at the time a communist negotiator.
"I thought it would be a step towards democracy and that Solidarity
would take on the role of the opposition, certainly not the role of
government straight away," said Miller, 62, who himself became
premier when the ex-communist Social Democrats won office in 2001.
"Solidarity got much, much more than it had demanded," he claimed.
After two months of talks, the Round Table yielded a complex
electoral accord allowing Solidarity to run for 161 of the 460 seats
in Poland's lower house and all 100 in the Senate.
In the June 4 election, Solidarity won every seat it was allotted by
huge margins, while the communist side was forced into embarrassing run-offs.
"Even hard line communists voted for Solidarity candidates -- the
will for change was widespread," said Jerzy Urban, once the
communist regime's media spin doctor who thwarted press freedom, now the publisher of "Nie" (No), a biting satirical weekly.
Incapable of forming a government, the communists ceded the
initiative to Mazowiecki, insisting he include a few party members
as ministers.
"We could have easily falsified the election results, but we
recognised them," Urban told AFP.
Communism still held sway elsewhere -- the Berlin Wall did not fall
until November 1989, and the Soviet Union only collapsed in 1991.
"Nothing was set in stone. Hard-line communists were still very
strong. (Romania's communist dictator Nicolae) Ceausescu had
proposed military intervention to help the communists recapture
power in Poland and there was the Yanayev putsch against (Soviet
leader Mikhail) Gorbachev in 1991," said Mazowiecki.
Mazowiecki also had to retain regime leader General Wojciech
Jaruzelski as head of state, before he stepped aside and Walesa was elected president, serving from 1990 to 1995.
Although the communist regime effectively gave up power after the
Round Table, the deal paved the way for communists revamped as
Social Democrats to win parliamentary elections in Poland in 1993.
Communist negotiator Aleksander Kwasniewski went on to become a two-term president, winning elections in 1995 and 2005.
During his tenure Poland cemented its place among western
democracies, joining NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
After Poland's regime fell, Mazowiecki faced criticism for drawing
what he called a "thick line" under the past, a strategy he claimed
was necessary to coax the communists out of power.
Twenty years after the Round Table accords, however, Jaruzelski, 85, and members of his entourage are now on trial over their regime's record.





Opposition leaders with communists

Partying. Everybody was glad that they were able to have peaceful discussion instead of civil war.




Two decades past Poland's 'compromise'
By JAN SKORZYNSKI
The Japan Times
4/5/09

WARSAW — "Poland — ten years, Hungary — ten months, East Germany — ten weeks, Czechoslovakia — ten days."

So chirped many in Prague in November 1989, reflecting the pride and the joy of the Velvet Revolution, but also the sustained effort that was needed to end communism, whose demise began in Warsaw the previous February.

Indeed, communism's breakdown had begun 10 years earlier in Poland during Pope John Paul II's first pilgrimage to his homeland, a visit that shook communist rule to its foundation. Within a year, Polish workers were striking for the right to establish independent trade unions, staging two weeks of sit-ins at state-owned factories to achieve their goal. Karl Marx would have been proud of them, but it was the pope's portrait that hung on the gate of Gdansk's Lenin Shipyard during the strike.

The Solidarity union that was born in 1980 broke the Communist Party's monopoly on power. The movement united 10 million people: workers and professors, peasants and students, priests and freethinkers among them — all of civil society. This infant democracy was harshly interrupted when martial law was imposed in December 1981, with Solidarity outlawed and dissidents arrested. But this totalitarian blitzkrieg could not last. Democracy did not die; it merely went underground.

For the next seven years, Solidarity fought for re-legalization, building the biggest underground network of resistance Europe had seen since Hitler's war. But this was nonviolent resistance. Its main weapon was the language of freedom. In the mid-1980s, there were about 1,000 independent, uncensored journals in Poland. They represented a full range of ideas and editorial styles — from factory leaflets and bulletins to intellectual magazines. Hundreds of books prohibited by Communist censors (for example, Gunther Grass' "The Tin Drum") came to light.

Solidarity's leader, Lech Walesa, did not surrender in prison and retained his national esteem. With the economy in steep decline, Poland's rulers began to seek to stabilize the political system and re-establish relations with the West. In 1986, the government released political prisoners — a precondition for talks with the opposition. But it took the Communists two more years to realize that they could not introduce economic reform without Solidarity's assent.

So talks began.

The reason the talks were possible was that the opposition's goal was not the violent overthrow of party rule. Instead, its democratic goals were to be fulfilled by a compromise with the authorities. Walesa and his closest advisers — Bronislaw Geremek and Tadeusz Mazowiecki — pushed this moderate policy, demanding liberation while recognizing the political reality of Soviet domination.

Two waves of strikes in 1988 forced Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski's government to negotiate with Solidarity, which, after a few months of hedging, was legalized. The "Roundtable" talks to change the political system could begin. The haggling continued from February until April 1989. The main issues were legalization of the opposition, partially free elections, and creating the office of president to replace the Communist Party chief. The Communists were guaranteed a majority in Parliament. While the election to the newly created Senate was entirely free, the opposition could compete for only one-third of the seats in the Lower House.

But the key point was that the party's monopoly on power was jettisoned. Solidarity gained the opportunity to create independent media and a grassroots political organization. Finally, the Communists agreed that the elections to be held in four years would be entirely free. The road to democracy was open.

But the dictatorship' s end came sooner then anyone expected. In June 1989, the opposition won the parliamentary election in a landslide. It was impossible to form a government without its participation. Jaruzelski was elected president, but he had to accept the new division of power. The decisive political maneuver — building a coalition with allies of Communists — was carried out by Lech Walesa. A Solidarity representative, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, became prime minister.

In September 1989, Poland had the first government ever led by democratic parties in the Soviet bloc. It was a revolution, but with a difference: the political system changed without a body count. This was due, above all, to Solidarity's prudent policy. But it was civic activity — resistance movements, strikes and other manifestations of social support — that buttressed Solidarity.

Mikhail Gorbachev's nonintervention policy toward Eastern Europe meant that Soviet tanks would not annul the changes, as they had done with the Prague Spring.

The Polish Communists did not intend to build democracy; their plan was to absorb moderate opposition groups into a partially modified political system. Handing over power to Solidarity was the last thing they had in mind. Yet the Roundtable compromise turned out to be good even for them, as Communist "reformers" began to build new careers in business and politics (one, Aleksander Kwasniewski, became Poland's second democratically elected president).

The Roundtable also provided the Communists with a sense of safety that diminished their fear of democratic change. A hangman's noose did not await them. This was an important sign for Poland's neighbors in the Soviet bloc, which took its example to heart.

In a few months, talks between communist bosses and their democratic opponents (often in the form of a roundtable) paved the way to free elections and new democratic governments in Budapest, Prague, East Berlin and Sofia.

By 1989's end, post-Yalta Europe was free. Since then, the symbol of the great revolution of 1989 has been the fall of the Berlin Wall. But the Roundtable talks in Warsaw 20 years ago this month is where the Iron Curtain began to be dismantled.

Jan Skorzynski, a former deputy editor in chief of Rzeczpospolita, is the author of several books on the history of the Polish democratic opposition to communism and the Solidarity movement. His new book, "The Roundtable Revolution," will be published this month. © 2009 Project Syndicate/Institute for Human Sciences (www.project- syndicate. org)

[Bonobo]

. bbc.co.uk/ 2/hi/europe/ 8002550.stm
BBC News
How Poland became an aid donor
Brian Hanrahan's report from 17 April 1989

On 17 April 1989 the Solidarity trade union was given legal status and allowed to contest parliamentary elections. Its victory set a precedent for the toppling of communist governments across Eastern Europe. But the Solidarity government inherited a country in a terrible state. BBC Diplomatic Editor Brian Hanrahan went to see what has changed in the 20 years since.
Lodz is not on the standard visitor's programme. It is a dour place 140km (90 miles) to the west of Warsaw, and although it competes with Krakow for the title of Poland's second city, it has no famous castle or cathedral to put it on the international map.
But it is a good place to gauge how well Poland is doing economically. It depends on industry - not government or tourism - for its prosperity. And its wealth has gone up and down with the country's fortunes.
At first sight it does not look good. The cobbled streets are lined with grim apartment blocks and derelict industrial buildings with all the windows smashed out.
Communist inertia
By the time Solidarity took over in 1989, Lodz was already in decline. It was an industrial city that was losing its industry. Textile mills survived here when they were shutting in the rest of Europe.
The inertia of the communist state kept paying out subsidies long after Polish textiles had became uncompetitive.
Poland as a whole was a country with food shortages, a decrepit industrial base, and foreign debts so large it could not afford the interest.
But Solidarity introduced an economic revolution to match the political one. The state would not subsidise Lodz's textile industry, and it could not find anyone to buy it. The mills were shut down one after another.
For the workers who had been such staunch supporters of Solidarity, this was a painful reward.
Like the shipyard workers in Gdansk, and the steel men in Nowa Huta, near Krakow, they were paying for their revolution with their jobs. The unemployment rate in Lodz went up to 35%.
Poland hurtled from communism to capitalism so fast it hit the pain barrier. It was intended to save a collapsing economy, but the human cost was harsh and there was political uproar.
Little bitterness
Lucyna Braszak has hung onto a job in one of the textile mills since 1985.
She remembers the carnival atmosphere when Solidarity took over, and the long years of economic pain afterwards as wages went down and prices went up.
Now she is leaving for a job in a newly-built washing machine factory across the road, and shows surprisingly little bitterness.
"It is more difficult to make a living," she says. "It has become harder, but the more money you make, the better your prospects for a good life."
Now she believes there are decent jobs available for anyone who wants one.
These days Lodz is on the up. With an educated work force, and decent communications, it has been able to persuade big international companies to invest.
Its factories now assemble dishwashers, fridges and computers for sale around the European Union.
And while they may not make the city look much better - modern factories are only marginally more attractive than old ones - they have done wonders for the local economy. Unemployment is down to 7%.
It was never going to be a beautiful city but today Lodz has bustle and purpose and, most of all, jobs.
Poland made the transition to a market economy much faster than others in the old communist bloc.
It was called "shock therapy", and after seeing the social costs others shied away from following the Polish model.
The man who applied it to Poland has no regrets.
Leszek Balcerowicz was Poland's first post-communist finance minister, and later governor of the central bank. The modern Polish economy is very much his creation and he is prepared to defend it vigorously.
"Poles, compared to Ukrainians, are all winners, because stability in Poland is much higher thanks to the more rapid reforms," he says.
"Experience and research shows that countries that accumulate more rapid reforms are in a much better situation than those who went more slowly."
He thinks countries in economic trouble like Ukraine and Hungary are paying for their past failures to reform and they will still need to go through that in the future.
"It is only a question of time," he says. "It is better to start the cure earlier than later."
Stress test
Poland wanted to create an open-market economy and become part of the global capitalist system. It has succeeded just in time to feel the shudders as the major world economies fall into recession.
But so far Poland has stood up to the stress test of the global slow-down.
People have jobs, banks have capital, and the government is selling its bonds.
Some economists suggest it may be one of the few places in the world to avoid an economic contraction - good going for a country on economic life-support 20 years ago.
Today it is Poland that is paying into the financial rescue packages for Iceland and Latvia.
The current finance minister, Jacek Rostowski, says: "We have received a significant contribution from the international community in the past and our view is that it's important we give something back, now that relatively we're not too badly off."
Poles will tell you two things with pride. One is that they started the 1989 revolutions.
The other is that instead of receiving international aid, they are now strong enough to donate it.

[Bonobo]

Children of the Solidarity revolution


By Krassimira Twigg
BBC News
4/16/09
Twenty years ago, on 17 April, Poland's communists agreed to hold elections and to allow the Solidarity movement to take part.
The first democratic elections in the Soviet bloc resulted in the eventual collapse of the communist regime - but for most of the 1980s, Solidarity had been an illegal organisation whose members faced a constant risk of arrest.
Natalia Borysewicz as a child in the 1980s
Natalia Borysewicz and her sister acted as couriers for her father
For their children, these were years in which the excitement of a secret and forbidden life could easily turn to heartache.
Natalia Borysewicz, now in her thirties, was given important jobs by her father, a miner and Solidarity member at the brown coal mine near their home in Belchatow.
"He was using us kids as couriers to smuggle underground literature. We didn't fully understand what we were doing, but it was very exciting. We knew we shouldn't mention to anybody what was discussed at home.
"Although we were heavily indoctrinated at school, our parents educated us at home and so we ended up with two versions of education."
Filip Sikorski was another child whose family was involved with the workers rights' movement. His father, an engineer, introduced Solidarity to his computer institute in Warsaw, and sometimes travelled from place to place, distributing illegal literature.
Filip remembers how proud he was when his father would ask him to help carry the materials to the train station.
"His rucksack was full of magazines and forbidden books, like Orwell's 1984. I had to keep quiet about it. We were always afraid that the doorbell might ring one morning and it would be the police."
Martial law
For Natalia, the excitement came to a sudden end on 13 December 1981, when the Polish government introduced martial law in an attempt to crush political opposition. Thousands of people were arrested.
Her father spent eight months in prison without charge or any indication of when he would be released.
"I remember very well how our life was with dad in prison. It was very tough for my mum. They say 'poor men', but I say 'poor women', as it was the women who had to deal with everything."
Natalia remembers that her father maintained his sense of humour even in prison. On one of her visits he gave her a badge he had made for her to wear, which read: "I am the daughter of a political prisoner."
After he was released, the authorities offered the family the opportunity to emigrate.
"We visited a couple of foreign embassies to make enquiries," Natalia says. "To my disappointment my parents decided to stay. My dad thought it would be cowardly to leave the country, so this was his sacrifice."
Life went back to normal for the family, although Natalia's father withdrew from the political movement.
"He was more of a veteran, my dad. He didn't want to be the guy at the front. Anyway, towards the end of the 1980s, being a member of Solidarity wasn't much of a heroic thing anymore, it became easier and more mainstream."
Radical change
The speed of the developments in 1989 took everybody by surprise. February saw round table talks between the communist government and the opposition, which led to the first democratic elections in the Soviet bloc and an overwhelming victory for Solidarity.
Filip Sikorski (in the middle) with his brother and a friend waving the EU flag after Poland voted in a referendum to join the European Union in 2003
Filip (centre) celebrates Poland's Yes vote in the 2003 EU referendum
"What followed was a radical change," says Natalia. " Young people like me benefited hugely. The change opened the world for us. Look at us now, I work for a bank in London, and my sister works for a big international company in Poland."
Natalia is proud her father was part of those momentous events and she thinks that if it hadn't been for Solidarity, Poland wouldn't be where it is now.
"We are an enterprising nation and we started flourishing. We are confident now. We are citizens of Europe."
The events filled people with excitement - and worry. The Red Army was still present in the country and the memories of what happened in Czechoslovakia in 1968 (when Soviet tanks crushed resistance) were all too vivid.
For Filip, the turning point was when in August 1989 Tadeusz Mazowiecki was appointed the first non-communist prime minister in the history of post-war Poland.
"It was an unforgettable moment: all our dreams and hopes came true. Finally, the people of Poland were in charge of our country."
Filip now works for an international company and regularly travels on business to other European countries. He is delighted that Poland is now a member of Nato and the EU.
But while the majority welcomed the changes, others felt disappointed. The transition from a planned to market economy meant that some companies went bankrupt and jobs were hard to find. Gone was the sense of security enjoyed under communism.
"Communism is like living in jail - you are provided for, you don't have to worry about food, but you have no freedom," says Filip.
A new beginning
Natalia Borysewicz having a drink with her father
Natalia is proud of her father's contribution to democracy in Poland
Natalia's father is 67 years old now. He won a presidential award for his contribution to Polish democracy.
"From time to time he puts on a suit and goes to meetings. He is very proud of his contribution. He jokes that he even wears his medal in bed."
But this recognition came with a bitter aftertaste. When his personal file was declassified, he discovered that close friends he had trusted had betrayed him.
Filip's father is now 72. He runs his own IT business, employing more than 60 people. The collapse of communism gave him the opportunity for a fresh start in his fifties.
"There's no stopping him now. He is doing very well and is not even thinking about retirement. He says that communism stole 40 years of his life and he now has to make up for it."

[valpomike]

It took many like these, with there drive and want, to make this major change, that was needed, for Poland.

Let this never go back as it was, prior.

Poland needs, and wants to be free.

Mike

[Bonobo]

1989 – 'Poland's gift to the world'
Polish Radio

20.05.2009



EXCLUSIVE - We interview British historian and journalist Timothy Garton-Ash in the run-up to June's twentieth anniversary of the first democratic elections in Poland.

To many, Timothy Garton Ash needs no introduction. Currently a professor of European Studies at Oxford University and columnist for many of the UK's top newspapers, he was heavily involved with the Solidarity opposition during the 1980s and witnessed many of the historical events first hand.

In the days counting down to Poland's first partially free elections on the 4t June 1989, Solidarity members were not too sure of what the future would bring. Twenty years on, much has changed. But has Poland really `returned to Europe'? John Beauchamp, our correspondent in Kraków, interviewed the professor after a lecture he gave, in the southern Polish city, on the events of 1989:

Thenews.pl Going back to the days running up to the elections on 4 June 1989, what were the expectations of the Solidarity leaders for the first partially-free elections within the Warsaw Pact?

Timothy Garton - Ash: You have to remember that nobody knew what would happen next and nobody knew what the Soviet Union would accept. The most optimistic expectation had been free elections in four years' time. Now, Solidarity had, as it were, the problem of success, and the question was: could you achieve a non-communist prime minister in a deal which, eventually, Adam Michnik [prominent opposition activist and now Editor-in-Chief of Gazeta Wyborcza] summarised as `Your president, Our premier'. So we'll get [General] Jaruzelski as president, [Tadeusz] Mazowiecki as prime minister. But the idea that you then go off and make capitalism, join NATO and the European Union - nobody thought that at the time.

You were following the opposition back then. What were your thoughts on the Round Table agreements and the elections that followed?

It was the most extraordinary year of my life. It was as if something wonderful happened every week […] I believe 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.

Lech Wa³êsa, as leader of Solidarity and already a Nobel prize winner by that time, was obviously key to the Round Table talks and the elections. But who for you was key to the final outcome of the events of 1989?

Wa³êsa was indispensible during the whole of the 1980s. But actually the Round Table talks were as much the work of intellectuals such as [the late] Bronis³aw Geremek and others involved in the detailed negotiations, in making what was, let's be clear, a complex compromise with the communist authorities. When I say `compromise' , in English this can be a positive term, and I think this was a positive compromise.

The Velvet Revolution [in Czechoslovakia] made defunct the very definition of revolution and the events of 1989 break the paradigm set perhaps by the French Revolution exactly 200 years earlier. How did this happen?

Through a long-learning process we got to the point where you had non-violent revolutions. For 200 years that would have been a contradiction in terms. By trial and error, with much bloodshed, we reach the point now where you can have a fundamental change of system without blood flowing in the gutters.

A popular slogan back in 1989 was `Return to Europe': how would you comment on Europe's response to the break-up of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact, and were Poland and other countries in the region ready to embrace what the rest of Europe had to offer?

I think embrace is the wrong way to put it. I think Poland almost embraced too much of western consumer society. I think you should take over the fundamentals of a good system, but I actually, in a way, wish that Poland had kept more specific features of its own culture, and I think that's a challenge for each individual country to combine the basics of a well-functioning liberal democracy with characteristics of its own culture and society.

Timothy Garton Ash (born 1955), is an English historian and professor of European studies at Oxford University. He has written many books and essays on Polish and central European history. In The Polish Revolution: Solidarity, 1980–82 (Scribner 1984) he gave a vivid, eye-witness account of the August strikes at the Gdansk shipyard which have birth to the Solidarity Trade Union. In The Magic Lantern: The Revolution of 1989 Witnessed in Warsaw, Budapest, Berlin, and Prague (Random House, 1990) he wrote about the momentous events of 1989 and the fall of communism in central and eastern Europe. In 2005, he was voted onto a list of the 100 Top World's Intellectuals by Prospect (UK) magazine. He lives with his Polish wife, Danuta, and two children in Oxford, England.

[uncltim]

+++I think embrace is the wrong way to put it. I think Poland almost embraced too much of western consumer society. I think you should take over the fundamentals of a good system, but I actually, in a way, wish that Poland had kept more specific features of its own culture, and I think that's a challenge for each individual country to combine the basics of a well-functioning liberal democracy with characteristics of its own culture and society.+++

I hope the Polish people will take the above paragraph to heart. I also hope they realize that the day they convert to the Euro as currency, Will be the day that Poland ceases to be a sovereign nation.

In my ignorant yet observant opinion.

-Tim

[Bonobo]

Poland: From Soviet satellite to 'Tiger of Europe'



Solidarity leader Lech Walesa

Solidarity leader Lech Walesa addresses striking workers in Gdansk, Poland in 1989.



(CNN) -- Leszek Balcerowicz, Poland's former finance minister, recently said his country is enjoying "its best period in 300 years." CNN looks at how the country emerged from communism to become one of eastern Europe's most stable and thriving democracies.

Modern Poland gained independence in 1918 only to be overrun by Germany and the Soviet Union during the Second World War. Almost six million Poles, including the majority of the country's large Jewish population, died during the devastating six-year conflict.

The shadow of Stalin continued to loom large over Poland after the war, when the communist-dominated government ensured that Poland would become a Soviet satellite state for the next 40 years.

The following decades were punctuated by revolts against the repressive authoritarian regime in Warsaw, but none had a greater impact on Poland's political future than events in 1980 at a shipyard in western Poland.

With a struggling economy and rumors of corruption and mismanagement within the state causing widespread discontent, a series of strikes by workers paralyzed the country.

Eventually the government was forced to negotiate and on August 31, 1980, workers at the massive Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, led by an electrician named Lech Walesa, signed a deal giving workers the right to strike and form trade unions. This heralded the creation of the Solidarity movement, which would ultimately be instrumental in bringing Poland's communist era to an end.

The presence in the Vatican at the time of Polish-born Pope John-Paul II was also a significant influence on the movement throughout the 1980s, as the Catholic church had remained a very potent force in Polish life. The Pope even made a visit to the country in 1979.

Despite Soviet-endorsed attempts to slow the erosion of the regime's grip on power -- including the declaration of martial law by General Wojciech Jaruzelski in 1981 which outlawed Solidarity -- Poland's worsening economic situation, compounded by further nationwide strikes, meant that the government had no alternative but to negotiate a date for free elections with Walesa and the Solidarity movement.

Solidarity members won a stunning victory in the election of 1989, taking almost all the seats in the Senate and all of the 169 seats they were allowed to contest in the Sejm or parliament. This gave them substantial influence in the new government. Activist and journalist Tadeusz Mazowiecki was appointed prime minister, while Lech Walesa was elected as president the following year. Were you in Poland in 1989? Send us your memories

After years of economic mismanagement under the communists, Poland embarked on a painful reform program under finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz -- especially in traditional heavy industries such as coal and steel -- which moved away from the inefficient state-controlled system of economic planning.

Despite growing unemployment and a dilapidated infrastructure, Poland was slowly transformed into an investment-friendly , market economy.

Banking and lending policies were reformed, while newly reshaped ownership relations, independent enterprises and strengthened domestic competition all had a massive impact.

Over a relatively short period of time, Poland had become one of the most dynamically developing economies in Europe and by the mid-1990s, it became known as the "Tiger of Europe."

Poland also liberalized its international trade during this period. The national currency -- the zloty -- became convertible to other currencies and internal convertibility was also established, providing another platform for dynamic economic growth.

New markets in countries that had been treated not so long before as ideological as well as economic enemies were opened up to Polish companies. The EU and U.S. were now the key markets for Polish goods.

This realignment of policy was emphasized by its accession into the European Union in 2004. It had also joined NATO in 1999.

Unfortunately the continuing problem of high unemployment and the promise of better salaries encouraged many Poles to work in other EU countries after 2004. However this trend started to reverse in 2008 as the Polish economy enjoyed a boom period.

Politically, Poland has also successfully transformed itself into a fully democratic country. Since 1991 the Polish people have voted in parliamentary elections and four presidential elections -- all free and fair. Incumbent governments have transferred power smoothly and constitutionally in every instance to their successors.

[tufta]

Twenty years ago, on 4 June, 1989, partly free elections took place in communist Poland as a result of talks of a Round Table between the regime and part of the opposition.

The society treated the elections as a plebiscite and simply rejected the Communist system. Soon, further changes occurred. In August, Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first non-Communist Prime Minister.

Events in Poland were the beginning of the fall of the Communist system in the whole of East-Central Europe.

Already in June, negotiations between the authorities and the opposition in Hungary began. The abolishment of fortifications on the border with Austria meant the end of the “Iron Curtain”. On 23 August, 1989, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, hundreds of thousands of Estonians, Lithuanians and Latvians created a living chain and manifested their desire for independence. In October, the “peaceful revolution” broke out in the German Democratic Republic and on 9 November, the Berlin Wall fell down. Shortly after that, the “Velvet Revolution” broke out in Czechoslovakia and also reforms in Bulgaria started. At the end of December, Ceauşescu’s dictatorship in Romania was overthrown; however, over one thousand people died during the revolution.
In 1990, in most of the countries of East-Central Europe, free elections took place. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia proclaimed independence, which Soviets tried to crush with force at the beginning of 1991. It was, however the end of the Soviet Union. After an unsuccessful putsch of conservative forces in August 1991, at the end of the year the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus proclaimed the dissolution of the USSR. In the same year, the dictatorship in Albania came to grief, the last Communist dictatorship in Europe. The Warsaw Pact and the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance were dissolved.

Read more about this fascinating period of modern history
www.year1989.pl/

P.S. No idea how this message landed in the shoah thread...

[Bonobo]

20 Years On
William Brand
The Krakow Post
3rd June 2009


www.krakowpost.com/imgsize.php?w=350&img=i/is56/solidarity.jpg

A look back at the world-changing events of June 1989

When the celebrations marking the anniversary of the June 4, 1989 Polish parliamentary election are held in Krakow this month, political distractions should not obscure the fact that ending communist control in a European country for the first time since the end of the Second World War was an unprecedented achievement. It opened the door for the rest of the Soviet Bloc. The end of the Cold War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the "reunification of Europe" would all have been unthinkable without the momentous Polish election.

CNN is working on a series about 1989 titled "Autumn of Change," and that's significant because, even in southern Poland, early June is hardly autumn. A promotional spot prepared by the EU accentuated the autumnal aspect, as well – the opening of the border between East and West Germany on November 9, 1989 provides the visual leitmotif. The Polish foreign ministry and the country's ambassador to the EU promptly protested about the marginalisation of Polish events.

Yet it seems inevitable that the attention of the world media will climax only in November, and that archival footage of Germans taking hammers to the ugly wall and driving their cute Trabant cars through the Brandenburg gate will dominate screens around the world.

On June 4, months ahead of the big hoopla, Krakow will be the centre of a less photogenic and probably less-ballyhooed celebration, but the Berlin happening would not have been possible without what happened in Poland twenty years ago this spring.

On that day, after a winter of negotiations between the government and the opposition, Poles voted to elect what has since come to be known as the "Contract Sejm." The Sejm is the lower house of the Polish parliament, and the Contract was signed on 5 April at the end of the Round Table Talks - two months of public deliberations between large teams of pro-Solidarity and Communist Party politicians and expert advisers.

The Contract envisioned elections for all 100 seats of the Polish senate, an institution that the communists had abolished immediately after the war when Soviet troops ended the German Nazi occupation of Poland and, under the terms of the Yalta pact agreed by Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill, incorporated Poland into Moscow's sphere of influence.

The 1989 Contract also provided for the unrestricted election of 35 percent of the Sejm, the lower house of the legislature. The other 65 percent was reserved for the communists, who had exercised total power for over 40 years. Never before in the communist bloc had the electorate experienced even such a significant degree of freedom, partial though it was.

When the election results came in, they were staggering. Not that anyone had ever thought the communists enjoyed much genuine support, but Polish voters repudiated them completely, with the pro-Solidarity bloc, endorsed by the Union's charismatic leader Lech Wa³êsa, sweeping 99 out of the 100 senate seats (an independent agro-businessman with unlimited campaign funds won the other), and every single one of the available 35 percent of the seats in the lower house.

Despite the fact that the "Contract" - many remarked on its similarities to the kinds of deals more familiar from mafia movies - left the communists with a majority, the game was up.

The Contract had also provided for press freedom, and there was no way to gloss over the fact that the election had stripped the communists of any pretense of legitimacy. As soon as the results came in, the New York Times quoted the regime's press spokesman as conceding that "The elections were of a plebiscite character, and Solidarity has achieved a decisive majority.''

Bronis³aw Geremek, the chief Solidarity adviser who died in a car accident in 2008, said just after the elections that "when the system of rule changes, when the heritage of the Stalinist system and the communists' right to appoint leaders falls, room will be created for new political solutions. But this is not a matter for today or tomorrow."

As it turned out, change came more quickly than Geremek or anyone else envisioned at the time. Before the summer was over, the communists gave up on trying to form a government and a Solidarity-led coalition took power with the Catholic intellectual Tadeusz Mazowiecki as prime minister.

Without a shot being fired, without mass demonstrations and in fact without much of a sense of excitement at all, communist rule had ended in a Soviet-bloc country. It seemed unimaginable at the time, but the Cold War had effectively ended overnight.

In a landmark speech to the United Nations the previous autumn, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev had renounced the Brezhnev Doctrine, which kept the "fraternal socialist countries" in line by threatening to invade them if they tried to change their political system.

Gorbachev was facing up to the fact that his own basket-case economy needed radical reform (which he would never manage to deliver) and that its central European satellites were more of a liability than an asset, especially because the Soviets had to supply them with oil and natural gas.

In a sign that Soviet strategists were finally shaking off their World War II hangover, they also realized that any future would-be conqueror of Mother Russia was far more likely to try to pull off the job in half an hour with a salvo of intercontinental nuclear missiles than by driving tanks across half of Europe as Hitler had done. The rationale for the expensive Eastern Bloc "glacis" was gone.

So Gorbachev had opened the door, but it took the Poles to work up the courage and cut the deal — the "Contract" - that allowed them to walk through, into the unknown and into the future that gave us the world we know today.

In fact, Polish oppositionists had been working constantly for change since the glum, repressive Brezhnev era. They acted boldly, signing their names to their declarations, and wisely, turning down increasingly desperate government pleas to "share responsibility" by endorsing half-hearted reforms that would have left the decrepit official power structure in place. Underground political movements, think tanks, and a diverse unofficial press thrived. This grass-roots movement was powerful, ready, and eager to step up to the plate when Gorbachev finally relaxed the Soviet grip.

It cannot be emphasized enough that the changes of the last 20 years were inconceivable before June 4, 1989. Poles had always castigated themselves for relying on miracles, but a miracle would seem to have happened.

What came next was a chain reaction, as one Warsaw Pact country after another followed suit. Hungary made a move towards autonomy, but only in October 1989, with its own version of the Round Table. Later came the Czechs, and the year concluded with the bloodbath that ended the cruel reign of Romania's Ceauºescu.

Along the way, on November 9, the East Germans let the Trabants roll through the gap in the Berlin wall. They did so in a moment of distraction, because it remains unclear who, if anyone, gave the order. By that time, the world media had realized that Europe really was changing, and the TV cameras were ready to capture those images that have since become iconic, and that we will surely see a thousand times in the build-up to the big media event this coming November.

In the longer perspective, the fall of the Berlin Wall was not so much a spontaneous outburst of freedom as a surrender to the inevitable. It was one of the last in a chain of collapsing dominoes. The first domino fell in Poland, and that is what the ceremonies in Krakow on 4 June will be celebrating.

[Bonobo]

80 percent GDP growth in a free Poland

Polish Radio

03.06.2009



Poland's GDP has grown by 80 percent since the collapse of communism 20 year ago.

S³awomir Skrzypek, governor of the National Bank of Poland told Polish Radio today that: "Poland's GDP has grown by 80 percent and our economy has been promoted from eleventh to seventh position in Europe. But we are still behind the Czech, Hungarian and Slovakian economies," he said.

As regards growth in the future, Skrzypek said Poland is still could experience GDP growth this year. According to the Central Statistical Office's report announced last week, Poland saw GDP growth of 0.8 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

In Skrzypek's opinion Poland's main problem today is falling investment, which probably will continue during the next months. But the shrinkage has not been as steep as he feared, however.

"We were expecting a three percent investment decrease in the first quarter of the year. But we were positively surprised [at the latest data] as the decline was not so deep", he added.

Meatless butcher

The scene in Polish shops throughout the 1980s was often like in the famous photo of a Polish butcher shop (right) at the time. Poland experienced a severe economic slow down as the 1970s ended, which lasted throughout the 1980s.

From a 2.5 percent GDP growth in 1976–78 period, the economy shrunk by 2 percent in 1979, 4 percent in 1980 and 5.5 percent in 1982. Inflation averaged 54.3 percent annually in the 1980s.

Debt to Western governments reached nearly 25 billion USD by 1983, rising to $33 billion in during the `shock therapy period in 1991, reaching 52.5 billion USD.








f.polska.pl/gal/126/227/213/big.jpg



img.interia.pl/wiadomosci/nimg/r/4/sie_zylo_stanie_wojennym_3015333.jpg











fakty.interia.pl/galerie/historia/tak-sie-zylo-w-stanie-wojennym/zdjecie/duze,926442,1,794

[valpomike]

And things will keep getting better for them, unless they take on the Euro. It is time for Poland to get her break.
What I read, most Polish don't want the Euro.

Mike

[valpomike]

What do the rest of you think on this, most off, those who live in Poland.

Mike

[locopolaco]

Jun 9, 2009 16:44:57 GMT 1 valpomike said:

What do the rest of you think on this, most off, those who live in Poland.

Mike

most people i know in PL are definitely prospering and are glad of the direction Poland has been heading.. only the very old and the lazy hate that they actually have to do something to survive.

[valpomike]

Why would the very old think like this?

Mike

[locopolaco]

Jun 9, 2009 22:20:14 GMT 1 valpomike said:

Why would the very old think like this?

Mike

some and not all.. but, the older generation was never really exposed to anything else but the commie system.. they got a nice pension, etc. once things changed to the dog-eat-dog system, they basically got the shaft.

[tufta]

Jun 9, 2009 22:01:03 GMT 1 locopolaco said:

most people i know in PL are definitely prospering and are glad of the direction Poland has been heading.. only the very old and the lazy hate that they actually have to do something to survive.

Very much so!

[Bonobo]

I claim that Poland led other nations in their fight for freedom and independence. No other country had experienced so many turmoils and rebellions against the totalitarian regimes as Poland. You can read about it here:
polandsite.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=polishhistory&action=display&thread=70


Of course, the collapse of communism wasn`t solely the Polish merit. But we contributed much to it.




How Poland and Hungary Led the Way in 1989By Walter Mayr, Christian Neef and Jan Puhl
Spiegel Online
10/30/09

Everyone remembers the iconic images from the dramatic breaching of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989. But the groundwork was laid elsewhere. The fate of Germany and the rest of Europe was decided in Warsaw, Budapest and Moscow.
By that evening of Nov. 10, 1989, Anatoly Sergeyevich Chernyayev had been meticulously keeping a diary for 20 years. Every day, after coming home to his apartment on Deneshny Pereulok from the party headquarters on the Old Square or from the Kremlin, he had sat down at his desk to write in his diary.
After gazing out the window at the Foreign Ministry building, a Socialist Classicist monstrosity built shortly before Stalin's death in the neighborhood where Moscow's coin makers traditionally had their shops, he would write a detailed account of his daily experiences. He focused, in particular, on the thoughts that he could not express at work, where he was surrounded by fellow party comrades: his futile hopes, frustrations and disappointments.
Chernyayev, a close associate of then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, made a short and laconic entry into his diary on Nov. 10: "The Berlin Wall has collapsed. An epoch in the history of the 'socialist system' is coming to an end," the advisor to the president and party chairman wrote on that Friday evening. "Following the Polish and the Hungarian workers' parties, Honecker has now fallen, and today there was news of Shivkov's departure. All we have left now are our 'closest friends': Castro, Ceausescu and Kim Il Sung. All people who hate us."
His tone was not one of bitterness but of deep sarcasm. Chernyayev had seen this day coming for a long time. "It's the end of Yalta and the Stalinist legacy," he concluded.
Let History Pass it By
The motto "Workers of the world, unite!" was still emblazoned on the front page of Pravda, the party-controlled newspaper, lying on the table next to him. A top headline, on that Nov. 10, read "Today is the day of the Soviet police." Pravda had let history pass it by.
It was a completely different story elsewhere in Europe, where people were celebrating with abandon, almost overwhelmed by the images from Berlin showing East and West Germans in each others' arms. "Germany weeps with joy. Berlin is Berlin once again!" wrote the tabloid BZ. The news that Berlin, divided for 28 years, was united had even traveled as far as the remote reaches of the Australian West Coast. German film director Wim Wenders, was on a visit to the region at the time ("I couldn't have been farther away from Berlin than I was at that moment," he said), encountered a hermit living in a cave. "It was early in the morning, and he was dead drunk. He was a Lithuanian and he spoke a little German. He kept drinking toasts to Berlin, speaking in a loud voice in an attempt to drown out the Wagner music blaring from his ghetto blaster. 'No more walls! No more walls! No more walls anyplace in the world!'"
1989 went down in the history books as the year of the fall of the Berlin Wall and of peaceful revolution in East Germany. That, at least, is the way the Germans like to see it. It was also the way then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl saw it from the beginning. "We are writing a chapter in world history, once again, it must be said," the chancellor said on Nov. 9, in an emotional speech during a state visit to neighboring Poland.
But why did it take so long for the Wall to come down? And who actually destroyed it?
Bit by Bit
Was it the Berliners who stormed the Bornholmer Strasse border crossing on Nov. 9 -- the ones who then used pickaxes to open up the wall, bit by bit, until it fell down? Or was it those who created the conditions that allowed the citizens of other East German cities, Leipzig, Plauen and Dresden, to demonstrate in the streets in October?
Would the Wall ever have fallen if the inconceivable had not already taken place in Moscow, Warsaw and Budapest? When and where exactly was the point at which the liberation of Eastern Europe was no longer to be stopped?
An honest search for answers will conclude that the opening of the border in Berlin was undoubtedly the most spectacular event during the period surrounding the demise of the Soviet bloc. But it was not the real historic turning point of 1989.
All it takes to realize "how limited is the heroic image of 1989 we have formed in retrospect," as historian Karl Schlögel puts it, is a cursory look at newspapers from 1988 and 1989. Schlögel associates "other dates, other places and other people" with the end of an era. In the night of the fall of the Berlin Wall, "as delirious as it was," only "those things were sanctioned that had already been decided -- previously and elsewhere."
The fall of the Wall, of course, was undoubtedly a "symbol of change -- it gave you those amazing images from Berlin," concedes former Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski. "We Poles had to negotiate our political transformation in arduous talks." In other words, Kwasniewski is trying to say, the German revolution didn't begin until the Polish one was almost complete. By the time the Wall came down, Poland already had a non-communist president. Solidarnosc activists are even more direct. Without Lech Walesa, they say, the Berlin Wall would not have fallen.
A Journey Back in Time
Most Germans have already forgotten -- or never even realized -- that the events in Eastern Europe were the blueprint for the turnaround in East Germany. The concept of the German round table talks, which began at Berlin's Dietrich Bonhoeffer Haus Hotel in December, was imported. The Poles had come together in the same way 10 months earlier, and it was only at their round table that they managed to bring about their change of government.
A journey back in time to that fateful year; a look into previously unknown documents; meetings with key players of the day -- all result in some astonishing discoveries two decades later. The Hungarian communists' monopoly on power, for example, had already been broken in January. At that time, East German leader Erich Honecker's Socialist Unity Party, or SED, still seemed to be in firm control. There was no group of reformers within the party nor did a truly broad civil rights movement within the general population yet exist.
Equally intriguing is that the Polish trade union Solidarnosc, despite its magnificent election victory in June of 1989, failed to see that it had a real chance to take over political power in the country. Meanwhile, Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was facing such difficult problems at home that an intervention by Soviet troops abroad was unthinkable.
'A Revolution without a Revolution'
In early 1989, only two Eastern European nations were seeking their own path: Poland and Hungary. In Budapest, the shift had begun within the Hungarian Communist Party; in Warsaw Solidarnosc had put a Polish reformation in motion.
But even in those countries, no one realized where the journey was to lead in the coming months.
It was "a revolution without revolution," says former Polish dissident Adam Michnik, who founded the opposition newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in May 1989 and then became a member of the democratically elected senate. "No one took to the streets, and there were no barricades or firing squads."
1989 was "a year of miracles," says Michnik. "What was not yet possible in January became reality in February, and by March it was possible to demand even more. None of us had a sense of what was happening."
A Table for Poland
Workers in the collective at the Henryków cabinet-making plant had been working overtime since November 1988. They were in a rush to complete a special order from Warsaw -- a large, round table made of heavy oak. The cabinetmakers made the table out of 14 separate parts and turned each of its 28 legs on a wood lathe -- the final product was 8.8 meters (29 feet) in diameter. The round table was intended for an event that would later be named after the odd bit of furniture. The attendees were to include, on the one side, representatives of the government like Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak, the head of the state union Alfred Miodowicz, and young Communist Aleksander Kwasniewski as the prime minister's assistant. On the other side were their challengers: Solidarnosc leader Lech Walesa, together with dissidents like Jacek Kuron and Adam Michnik, as well as Catholic journalist Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Some of these men had only recently been released from prison.
The table was finished at the end of January. The government had it brought to the Namiestnikowski Palace in Warsaw, where the constitution of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Europe's first modern constitution, was adopted in 1791. It was merely a coincidence that the table was placed into the same room where the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet bloc's counterpart to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, was signed in May 1955. At the time, no one knew that the first round table in the Eastern bloc would shatter the socialist military alliance, or that the communists of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) would seal their departure there, more than 40 years after coming to power.
Though, it must be said, the PUWP had never felt truly politically secure in Poland. Even Stalin said that, "imposing communism on Poland is like putting a saddle on a cow."
More and More Strikes
Poland, more than any other nation, learned how to cope with foreign masters. During the Nazi occupation, it established an entire underground state, complete with schools, universities and its own army. The knowledge of Poland's independent streak did not prevent Stalin from transforming the country into a socialist satellite state after World War II. As a result, the Poles were always at the forefront of any unrest within the Soviet sphere of influence in the ensuing years.
In 1956, workers in Poznán demonstrated against food shortages, students rebelled in 1968, and in 1970 an uprising by dockworkers in Gdansk was violently suppressed by government forces. But in 1980 the Communists were forced to allow the first free trade union, known as Solidarnosc, or Solidarity. Then, when General Wojciech Jaruzelski imposed martial law in December 1981, hundreds of thousands left the Communist Party.
More and more strikes followed. In 1988, inflation reached dramatic levels and Poland's foreign debt amounted to $40 billion (€27 billion). The party had to relent, and in August it quietly began holding talks with Lech Walesa, the electrician from Gdansk. The idea of the round table was born.

------------ --------- --------- --------- --------- --------- -

A Popular Uprising against 'Oligarchic Rule'
But even before the drama began at the Namiestnikowski Palace in Warsaw, the unthinkable happened in Budapest. And it happened when the country's leadership was away from their desks.
On the morning of Jan. 28, Károly Grósz, the chairman of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party (HSWP), departed for Davos, Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Miklós Németh was sitting at home, brooding over the question of how to fight Hungary's hyperinflation and cope with its billions in debt.
At 4:00 p.m. that afternoon, a radio program called "169 Hours" begins. Németh was listening, and what he heard was the very foundation of Hungarian communism being destroyed. A man interviewed on the show said: "What happened in 1956" had now been found, "on the basis of current research," to have been a "popular uprising against an oligarchic form of rule that was humiliating the nation."
Never before had the Soviet power been attacked quite as directly by one of its fellow socialist states. The phrase "form of rule that was humiliating the nation" was a direct reference to Moscow's subjugation of Eastern and South-eastern Europe. Since the bloody intervention of Soviet troops in the fall of 1956, the Hungarian government, true to party principles, had defined "popular uprising" as "counter-revolution ," which it was every comrade's duty to quell.
Defying Taboos
Imre Pozsgay, the man interviewed on the radio that afternoon, was an important figure. For 55 years, he had been an unwieldy reform communist, a politburo member and minister of state, a forward thinker and contrarian in his party. Even his 1968 dissertation, on the "Possibilities for Democracy in Socialism," was frowned upon. Nevertheless, he retained his fondness for defying taboos.
Pozsgay, as chairman of a historical commission, announced that his party had legitimized its leading role in the country for more than three decades with a lie, namely the claim that it had restored law and order during the 1956 uprising. He deliberately chose a day on which party Chairman Grósz was out of the country to deliver his bombshell.
The interview with Pozsgay had hardly ended before Prime Minister Németh reached for the telephone. He called Gyula Horn, the state secretary at the foreign ministry, who, partly because he had studied in the Soviet Union for four years, was considered a man with close connections to the Kremlin. Pozsgay asked Horn to "immediately report all reactions to this interview coming from Moscow in the coming days or weeks" -- and with good reason. As Németh estimated at the time, there were still 200,000 Soviet soldiers stationed in Hungary, and nuclear warheads were stored not far from Lake Balaton.
Further than Any Other
But there was no reaction from Moscow. Pozsgay heard rumors that Honecker and Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu were trying to encourage the Soviets to intervene. But the Kremlin seemed to have its own problems.
Németh, the young head of the government, in office for only 65 days, was considered a man of the West. As the Central Committee's Secretary of the Economy, he was invited to stay at then Bavarian Governor Franz Josef Strauss's Munich villa. In 1987, he negotiated the first major loan for Hungary with German banker Alfred Herrhausen, and in 1988 he met German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in Bonn.
Németh was a reformer in a country that had gone further than any other in breaking Eastern European taboos. Preparations for the introduction of a multiparty system were almost complete, and the removal of border protection measures was already being discussed. All of this was happening without any objections from Moscow. Nevertheless, Németh believed "no one can be 100 percent sure about the Russians."
A Looming Catastrophe in the USSR
Had the Hungarians known what had been happening at the Kremlin since the beginning of the year, they would have slept more peacefully.
It was on a Sunday evening, Jan. 15, when Soviet Communist Party leader Gorbachev met with three of his closest advisors to discuss the schedule for the next week. But first he read them a coded telegram he had just received from the head of the KGB office in Prague. The agent had written to inform the Soviet leader that the Czechoslovakian Communist Party leadership was sharply opposed to his policy of perestroika -- or political restructuring. The leadership in Prague was predicting chaos and ruin for its fellow socialist country.
Gorbachev advisor Chernyayev, full of contempt, wrote in his diary that evening about "a band of crooks who seized power in 1968 and were coddled by Brezhnev and the like," and he referred to Milos Jakes, the general secretary of the Communist Party in Prague, as a "weakling" (Jakes would throw in the towel 38 days after Honecker).
By then, orthodox and liberal members of the socialist camp were practically at each other's throats. Gorbachev's perestroika, an attempt to introduce a modicum of market economy and political transparency into the Soviet realm, was entering its fourth year. But it was still unsuccessful, prompting the conservatives to predict the demise of the communist superpower.
The Flipside
A catastrophe was looming in the USSR, where there were widespread gasoline shortages by year's end. Tea and toothpaste disappeared from shops, as did razor blades and irons. Butter and sugar were no longer available. Russian society, hopelessly entangled in the debate over political change, had ceased working.
But there was a flipside to the dramatic situation. As the situation became increasingly dire at home, Gorbachev and his aides began throwing the foreign policy ballast overboard. This benefited the Hungarians, the Poles and, later, the Germans.
By that point, the Russians' main concern was to avoid becoming completely isolated. Gorbachev was scheduled to travel to Cuba for a visit with Fidel Castro, but given all that was happening, Gorbachev wasn't sure he should make the trip.
Castro, like Jakes, felt that perestroika was a betrayal, as Chernyayev and politburo member Alexander Jakovlev told their boss, adding that Castro had run his country into the ground. Helping Cuba was a waste of time, they argued. "We cannot give Castro $10 billion or $20 billion. But all he wants from us is money."
Gorbachev insisted on going to Cuba, nonetheless. "After Czechoslovakia, Romania, Kim Il Sung and Honecker, we cannot open yet another front against us."
A few days later, however, he would give in on a different issue: Afghanistan. It was an important step in setting the course for 1989.
Frantic Appeals from Kabul
The issue had in fact already been resolved. The Soviet troop withdrawal was well underway, and the last Soviet soldier would leave the country on Feb. 15. After nine years of war and 14,450 deaths, the Kremlin was ending its adventure in the Hindu Kush region. For days, however, Moscow had been receiving telegrams from Kabul with frantic appeals for help, begging the Soviets to stop the withdrawal. President Mohammed Najibullah, hoping to break a blockade of Kandahar and Jalalabad and stop the mujaheddin, requested a 5,000-man Soviet brigade and bomber squadrons.
Najibullah's request triggered the last of the bitter Afghanistan debates within the inner stratum of the Kremlin -- one which continued at Gorbachev's dacha in Novo-Ogaryovo. KGB Chairman Vladimir Kryuchkov and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze (who had just returned from Kabul with his report on the situation there) proposed yet another about-face. It was important not to sacrifice one's friends, they argued. The echo in the Third World would be disastrous. If Najibullah could endure militarily for the next two months, he would survive.
Members of the reformist camp were strictly opposed to the idea. Shevardnadze had "lost his mind" and was "naïve," they said, and he had fallen into Najibullah's trap. Before the meeting, Chernyayev told Jakovlev that Najibullah only wanted to further commit Moscow to Afghanistan. "But we are talking about the lives of our boys. Najibullah's regime is beyond saving."
The Death of the Brezhnev Doctrine
Gorbachev had remained silent until then, but then he exploded. Had anyone even considered what would happen in Afghanistan once the Soviet troops were gone, he asked? He had predicted that this would happen, he said, and yet he was "categorically opposed to a new military campaign. As long as I am General Secretary, I will not allow us to break our promise to withdraw."
It sounded extremely ethical, but there was, of course, a more mundane explanation. By then, Gorbachev had asked his aides to study the outcomes of the Soviets' worldwide military campaigns, from Hungary and Prague to Angola, Vietnam and Afghanistan. They concluded that the expense had not been worth the effort -- and that the same applied to the billions in foreign aid Moscow had sent to countries beyond the Soviet borders.
The dispute in the politburo was the final renunciation of "the expansionist element" in Soviet foreign policy, Chernyayev would later say. According to Chernyayev, it was clear that Moscow would no longer interfere in the affairs of an ally to keep its leaders in power. The meeting at Novo-Ogaryovo thus became a key event in 1989, the true trigger for the liberation of Eastern Europe. The Brezhnev doctrine was dead.
Two Options -- Success or Catastrophe
The Polish Round Table began on Feb. 6 in Warsaw. It was to be a curious event -- curious, because the opposition was completely unprepared for victory. When it came, they hardly knew what to do.
Interior Minister Czeslaw Kiszczak was standing at the door to the conference room to greet the Solidarnosc delegation. Ironically, Kiszczak was the one who had enforced martial law and the later repressive actions in 1981. In the winter of 1989, he was among the most despised members of the political power structure.
As the dissident Adam Michnik approached the door, he was thinking: "This is all being broadcast live. If my landlady sees me shaking hands with Kiszczak, she'll throw me out." But he did it nonetheless. Kwasniewski sat down across the table from Michnik. "I had seen him on television," says Michnik, "and I had the worst possible impression of him: a talking head careerist." Kwasniewski, for his part, thought: "These are all people who hate communists and who act completely without responsibility. " Only one thing was clear to both sides at the time, says Kwasniewski: "Our negotiations would either end successfully or there would be a catastrophe. "
The first item on the agenda was the renewed decriminalization of Solidarnosc. The Communist Party quickly conceded defeat on the question, realizing that otherwise the talks would have failed immediately. "We had to make it clear to the party that the Round Table was in their interest," says Michnik. According to Michnik, the talks presented an opportunity to prevent new rebellions, and perhaps even to allow the Communist Party to remain in power. At that point, the opposition had not yet considered that assuming power was even a possibility.
Too Soft?
The need for economic reform was the least contentious issue; radical change had begun to creep in elsewhere. The Communists proposed a new approach to electing the parliament, according to which 35 percent of members would be democratically elected, while the remainder of the seats would be reserved for the party.
Walesa was reluctant to agree to this formula. Many of his supporters already felt that he was too soft. A relatively weak Solidarnosc faction in the Polish parliament, the Sejm, could hardly bring about significant change. The Round Table was on the verge of failure, and even one-on-one meetings in the Warsaw suburb of Magdalenka were not helpful.
Kwasniewski, of all people, saved the day. He was a political insider who had previously served as minister for youth affairs, but he was also a highly adaptable man, prompting his enemies to disparage him as a ruthless opportunist. But now Kwasniewski' s flexibility was paying off. Without wasting much time consulting with his fellow party members, he proposed establishing a second, democratically elected house of parliament: the Senate, which had been abolished in 1946.
It was a compromise that Walesa could accept. In addition, the Communists promised to abolish censorship, so that Solidarnosc could publish its own newspaper. The opposition was stunned. It was making more headway at the Round Table than it had ever expected. In another concession, the Communists agreed to allow all activists who had lost their jobs in 1981 to be rehired.

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Giving Up the Monopoly
Hungarian Prime Minister Németh arrived in Moscow on March 3, five weeks after the Pozsgay interview. When Gorbachev met him at the Kremlin, Németh received a reprimand for the breach of taboo on the matter of the 1956 "popular uprising." But Németh's main request, which would be central to the dramatic, transformational events that would later transpire in 1989, was met without any significant objection: The removal of Hungary's border fence to the West and the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungarian soil.
Three weeks later, party chairman Grósz accompanied Németh to Moscow and explained to Gorbachev why the Hungarian Communist Party had decided to give up its monopoly on power.
Moscow, Gorbachev told Grósz, had nothing against pluralism in other socialist countries. He also reassured the Hungarians that foreign troops would no longer be used to address the internal affairs of other countries.
Grósz was relieved, and he told the Soviet leader that the Hungarians were not doing anything the Russians weren't doing. He also suggested that Gorbachev follow in Hungary's footsteps by getting rid of reactionary diehards and dissolving his politburo.
'Arbitrariness of Fate'
But the giant Soviet Union was not nearly as far along as diminutive Hungary. "With the current central committee, such a move is impossible," Gorbachev told his advisors after Grósz had left. But the Soviet leader was trying to shake up the political system in his own way. The first semi-democratic elections -- for the Congress of People's Deputies -- were to take place on March 26. This alone seemed to go a step too far for the political establishment, and local party leaders had begun accusing Gorbachev of surrendering to the "arbitrariness of fate."
When the election results were announced a few days later, a storm of indignation broke loose in the politburo. All party and military leaders in Leningrad had been defeated by a wide margin -- and the candidacies of party leaders in 30 other regional and municipal races were utter failures. One angry politburo member characterized the elections as an "attack against the Soviet power."
It was a paradox. Gorbachev, the reformer, was giving the Hungarians and the Poles free rein to democratize their systems, even as he was forced to slow down the process at home.
But even if he had wanted to, he no longer had the power to influence the course of events in Eastern Europe. Aside from their economic woes, the Soviets were also now faced with secessionist movements within their own borders. In early April, the military used spades and gas to crush Georgian protests in Tbilisi. The Baltic states were also demanding freedom.
"Russia must cease being an empire," Chernyayev noted. "But what form should it assume?"
An Election in Poland
On April 16, room 252 in Warsaw's Voivodeship Court was filled to capacity. At 10:57 a.m., the presiding judge announced that Solidarnosc was legal once again, and 500 of the union's supporters began cheering wildly.
Professor Bronislav Geremek, the head of a group addressing political reforms at the Round Table, Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Henryk Jankowski, a pastor from Gdansk, were there to accept the judge's decision. "God, hold your hand over Poland!," the crowd sang.
Three weeks later, on May 8, the first issue of Gazeta Wyborcza appeared: eight pages and 150,000 copies. The 20 editors worked in a former nursery in Warsaw's Mokotów neighborhood, where they typed their messages to their supporters.
Gazeta Wyborcza, which translates as "Election Newspaper," was the first legally published opposition paper in the entire Eastern bloc. It was originally intended to be named "Daily Newspaper," but then editor-in-chief Adam Michnik decided that the name Gazeta Wyborcza more aptly reflected his short-term goal: elections.
Gary Cooper and the Forces of Evil
"A specter is passing through Europe," Michnik titled his cover story in the May 9 issue, "the specter of the end of totalitarianism. " Michnik was the quintessential dissident. A former member of a communist youth group and a student of history, he and his friend Kuron advocated reforms in the 1960s and were expelled from the university as a result. Michnik became one of the party's biggest enemies and was imprisoned for years. A bitter quarrel erupted between the government representatives and the opposition over whether Michnik and Kuron should be permitted to sit at the Round Table.
By May the quarrel was almost forgotten, as Poles looked forward to their first semi-democratic elections since 1939, scheduled for June 4. Solidarnosc put up large numbers of posters depicting actor Gary Cooper taking on the forces of evil in "High Noon." But on the Solidarnosc poster, Cooper was wearing a Solidarnosc badge over his sheriff's star, and instead of a revolver he was holding a ballot in his hand.

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A Visit to Moscow
Polish President and Communist Party leader Wojciech Jaruzelski made another trip to Moscow to sound out Gorbachev, and to make certain that the Poles could, in fact, expect tolerance from their much larger neighbor.
The Kremlin reformer and the general got along well. Jaruzelski, the son of an aristocratic landowner, was familiar with the Russian mentality. In 1940, his family was deported to Siberia, where he worked as a lumberjack in a labor camp. The Soviet authorities later selected him to attend an officer-training academy.
In the preceding months, Jaruzelski had attempted to initiate his own reforms, but now he was concerned that he was losing control. There had been unrest in Krakow, where students dressed as Red Army soldiers had smeared yoghurt onto a memorial for the Soviet armed forces, put on cardboard helmets with Soviet stars and carried a portrait of Gorbachev as a bulls-eye target through the streets. The incident resulted in clashes between the students and security forces. Jaruzelski, for his part, felt that he had no option but to threaten the opposition with the military.
Almost Too Late
Gorbachev reassured him, telling Jaruzelski that he should not be afraid or resentful of the people. But this only prompted Jaruzelski to justify his military methods, which, as he said, "we have applied at certain moments." Still, he added, this was no way to continue, which was why, he argued, Poland was in a sense a testing ground for reforms. But once again, he added, it was almost too late.
"Mikhail Sergeyevich (Gorbachev) is in good spirits. He is confident and he is making jokes," Chernyayev wrote in his diary. "Gorbachev has put into motion irreversible processes of decline, which were concealed by the pipe dream of the communist world movement, proletarian internationalism and the socialist community. Socialism in Eastern Europe is disappearing… "
Gorbachev had apparently failed to notice that he was also being undercut in the Soviet Union. For the first time, Communist Party opponents were displaying portraits of Czar Nikolai II in Moscow's historic district, while television stations were showing images of his coronation in 1896. This was not nostalgia but a visual message that the 1917 October Revolution, in which the Bolsheviks came to power, was only an episode in Russian history.

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Devastating Defeat
The Communists lost the election in Poland in a landslide. They had hardly campaigned at all, in the expectation that the popularity of Walesa and his cohorts had already peaked. In doing so, they had, once again, grotesquely misjudged the mood within the general population. In addition to the one-third of seats in the Sejm it had been granted, Solidarnosc won 99 of the 100 seats in the new senate. The Poles wanted "fundamental change," Michnik wrote.
It could not have been a more devastating defeat for those in power until the election. As it turned out, the Round Table reforms had expanded into a revolution.
The party leadership was in shock. The Communists had claimed the office of president for themselves, and Jaruzelski was expected to fill the position. But after the election fiasco, they could no longer be certain that the general would be able to garner enough votes. Even a number of Communist members of parliament and member of the old bloc parties could no longer necessarily be counted on to toe the party line.
Tactical Considerations
Besides, how could the Communists claim the presidential office if the majority of the people had voted against them? In the Secretariat of the Central Committee, the inconceivable was suddenly a possibility: that someone could assume the post "who was not a member of the Polish United Workers' Party."
By now, the opposition had recognized its opportunity to assume governmental responsibility. But Walesa's team was unsure how the military and intelligence service would react. Besides, they lacked a concept for how to pull Poland out of its economic slump. Once again, there were strikes and demonstrations, but this time they were also directed against the opposition. People who were spending hours waiting in food lines could no longer appreciate the dissidents' tactical considerations.
On July 3, Michnik, writing in Gazeta Wyborcza, proposed a power-sharing arrangement: "Your president, our premier." Moscow signaled its approval of the plan. In fact, only three days later Gorbachev went even further when he said, in a speech to the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, that if the social order in some countries were to change in the future, it would be their concern. Any outside intervention would be "impermissible, " Gorbachev said.
A Meeting of the Warsaw Pact
It was July 6, the day before the Warsaw Pact summit was set to begin in Bucharest, Romania. The Hungarian delegation, headed by Prime Minister Németh and the new party chairman, Rezsö Nyers, was prepared to face criticism from those Eastern bloc states that had remained orthodox: East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Romania and Bulgaria.
The Hungarian had already cleared away the Iron Curtain at the Austrian border, but only after carefully sounding out the Russians. After meeting with KGB Chairman Kryuchkov in Moscow, Interior Minister István Horváth reported: "Our border fences are currently their least concern."
Minister of State Imre Pozsgay had already committed his next breach of taboo when, on May 26 in West Berlin, he told journalists that the East Germany's "anti-fascist protective wall" was a "disgrace." Three weeks later, the remains of Imre Nagy and other leaders of the 1956 Hungarian revolution were ceremoniously reburied in Budapest.
Time Was Rushing Ahead
On that Thursday, July 6, Pozsgay received a call in his office: János Kádár was dead. Kádár had been Moscow's man in Budapest, the head of the party for 33 years after the Hungarian revolution. He died in the intensive care unit of a party hospital at precisely the historic moment when Hungary's highest court was deliberating on an appeal of the verdicts against Nagy and his fellow revolutionaries. Time seemed to be rushing ahead in Hungary.
Prime Minister Németh, who had received the news of Kádár's death in his office at the parliament, immediately went with Pozsgay and two other party officials to the "old man's" village on Rózsadomb, or Rose Hill, to offer their condolences to Kádár's widow Maria. It was Németh's first visit to the home of the long-time Communist Party leader. He could hardly hide his astonishment over how puritanical "Uncle János's" lifestyle was.
The next day, the Warsaw Pact leaders arrived in Bucharest; it was unbearably hot that day. At the airport, the Hungarian delegation was met with a cool welcome by Romanian President and party leader Nicolae Ceausescu, who addressed Németh as "Mister" -- practically a death sentence among comrades.
The cracks in the Warsaw Pact were unmistakable. On the one side, there was the immovable faction headed by East Germany and represented by Honecker, SED General Secretary Egon Krenz and Prime Minister Willi Stoph. The East Germans, like their Czechoslovak, Bulgarian and Romanian comrades, were expecting a signal against the dissenters, Hungary and Poland.
Final Scenes of an Arranged Marriage
And where did the Soviets stand? Gorbachev kept Ceausescu waiting for an hour at the airport, later sought out the reformists in conversation and, when he finally addressed the entire auditorium, was the only one to discuss the possibility of an end to the Cold War.
What followed were the final scenes of an arranged marriage. Honecker, undaunted, warned against the "forces of imperialism" and their attempt "to destabilize socialism." Hungarian party leader Nyers, on the other hand, called for an "open exchange of views" with an emphasis on "human rights issues" and "democratization. " Ceausescu, the host, countered that anyone who jeopardized the common cause "in the name of so-called human rights" was guilty in the face of history. "The unity of socialist countries is a historic necessity," Ceausescu said.
Gorbachev dignified the leaders of the Hungarian delegation with a one-hour private meeting. He made it clear who was calling the shots, who was the master of ceremonies in Bucharest, speaking with whomever he pleased, and remaining silent or even grimacing in the plenary assembly when something displeased him.
In the final communiqué of the Bucharest summit, the Soviet leader, and with him the Hungarian party leadership, achieved yet another partial victory. The document codified the "strict consideration of national independence, sovereignty and equality of all countries, and the right of every nation to self-determination. "

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Leading Poland out of its State of Collapse
Jaruzelski was inaugurated as the "President of all Poles" on July 19. But it was a paltry victory. The general received a majority of only one vote, and only because some members of the opposition abstained. One month later, Jaruzelski charged Tadeusz Mazowiecki with the formation of a new government, but Mazowiecki came into office under completely different circumstances. On Aug. 24, 378 members of the Sejm voted for and only 4 against him. A practicing Catholic was now the prime minister of an Eastern Bloc country, and his message was one of reconciliation. "We will draw a thick line under the past," he said. "And we will be solely responsible for what we have done to lead Poland out of its current state of collapse."
The Communist Party, which had miscalculated so drastically, was almost relieved to be able to relinquish responsibility for the ailing economy. The mood in the Central Committee was "relaxed," and even The Internationale was now being "sung more cheerfully than before," wrote former Prime Minister Mieczysaw Rakowski, who, like many other party members, had lost his seat in the parliament.

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Walking Through the Wooden Gate
Aug. 19 was the day of the Pan-European Picnic on the Hungarian-Austrian border. Opposition politicians from the cities of Sopron and Debrecen had been planning the event for some time, and activist Pozsgay was to be the sponsor. Pozsgay had already been the force behind the establishment of an opposition party, the Hungarian Democratic Forum, in 1987 -- and that at a time when would-be escapees were still being shot at the Wall in East Berlin and the "Genius of the Carpathians" was still being celebrated in Bucharest.
Pozsgay cancelled his attendance at the festival on the Hungarian-Austrian border at the last minute. Camps in Budapest and camping sites at Lake Balaton were filled with East German refugees, and Pozsgay was reluctant to risk alienating the Honecker regime ever further. But even though the border guards were reporting that a "large crowd" of East German free riders were to be expected at the picnic, Pozsgay had already taken precautions.
He had reached an agreement with his friend, Interior Minister István Horváth, that Hungary's armed forces, particularly the border guards, were to hold their fire in case of an emergency. Prime Minister Németh was also kept informed. He had seen the flyer that had been distributed several days earlier in the East German refugee camps to advertise the trip to the picnic near Sopron. He had also put in a call to the border guard command, and told them: "If, during the course of the picnic, a few hundred Germans were to make it across the border, we would have no objection."
Both Pozsgay and Németh felt that the Hungarian state should not be perceived as a participant but as the victim of the first mass emigration to the West since the beginning of the Cold War. But the final outcome was not as they had planned.
The border guards were not notified. Somewhere, a link in the chain of command had broken. In the end, it was only because the officers on duty were courageous enough to look the other way that within a few hours more than 600 East Germans could enter Austria unharmed, by simply walking through a wooden gate.
East Germany Enters the Picture
By that time, Moscow was paying little heed to the decisions of its former satellite states. Ironically, it was KGB Chairman Kryuchkov who went to Warsaw in late August to give Moscow's blessing to the Polish Communists' coalition with the opposition. Prime Minister Mazowiecki was a "reliable man," Kryuchkov said, adding: "Everything is good. There is nothing to be concerned about." It was a sentence that would infuriate Romanian President Ceausescu, who (as it was later learned) had requested that the Warsaw Pact intervene in Poland.
The rate at which structures that had seemed cast in stone fell apart in Eastern Europe in 1989 is breathtaking. The key players in Warsaw and Budapest felt like actors in a film. Looking back on those months today, they should be grateful that there was no time to reflect.
In September, the man who had been instrumental in initiating change was overcome by serious doubts over whether the approach he had taken was the right one. Only a few more weeks would pass before Gorbachev would suddenly accuse the Polish communists of having "abandoned the positions of socialism."
The magician was feeling a loss of control over his apprentices. On the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, tens of thousands of people formed a 600-kilometer (375-mile) human chain from Tallinn, Estonia to Vilnius, Lithuania: a symbol of the Baltic states' goal of secession. There were strikes in the coal mines of Ukraine, in Baku Azerbaijani troops prepared for war against Armenia, and in Tbilisi the Georgians took the streets, chanting "Down with the rotten Russian Empire."
A German Confederation?
But now, suddenly, the Kremlin leader was demanding "stability" (as Chernyayev writes: "Stability means stagnation and the end of perestroika! "). He called for a fundamental article on "socialism and its revival" in the theoretical monthly journal of the Communist Party (Chernyayev: "Marxism-Leninism -- that is the 19th century. Gorbachev is losing control over the levers of power in the country. He must decide whether he wants to be the leader of perestroika or the nomenklatura! ").
It was at that moment that East Germany also became a problem.
It had hardly played a role at all in Moscow during the first nine months of 1989. The Kremlin had largely tolerated the exodus of East German refugees through Warsaw, Prague and Budapest. And it had been clear to the Kremlin for some time that East Germany could not be held onto in the long run. If Shevardnadze is to be believed, the Soviet leadership had already written off East Germany in 1986. In 1987, Valentin Falin, Moscow's former ambassador to Bonn, said: "The signs of decline in the GDR are more intensive and deeper than was previously assumed." In the spring of 1989, the politburo was presented with a memorandum discussing a confederation of two equal German states
When Gorbachev visited West Germany in June 1989, both sides still believed that the possibility of reunification was "nonsense." Otherwise, however, Gorbachev gave Chancellor Kohl carte blanche, saying: "Do what you can with the GDR."

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Hungary's Communists Remove themselves from Power
On the evening of Oct. 7, the Palace of the Republic in downtown East Berlin was as brightly lit as the Titanic was just before it hit the iceberg.
Not far away, crowds surrounding the world time clock on Alexanderplatz chanted "Gorbi" and protested against the fraudulent municipal elections held in East Germany on May 7 -- a vote which triggered initial, tentative anti-regime protests in the DDR. Stasi officers and members of the Free German Youth tried to beat the people into silence.
Meanwhile, officials at the Palace of the Republic, over canapés and petits fours, were expecting the Hungarian delegation at an event to mark the 40th anniversary of the founding of East Germany. In the company of Honecker, Gorbachev, Ceausescu and Bulgarian leader Todor Zhivkov, the inexperienced Bruno Ferenc Straub, chairman of the Hungarian presidential council, seemed like an actor in a fringe event who had lost his way.
On that evening, the key members of the Hungarian Communist Party and government were unavailable to attend the last significant gathering of Warsaw Pact leaders. They had come together in the large convention ballroom at the Budapest Novotel for the 14th convention of the Hungarian Socialist Workers' Party. While Honecker and Gorbachev raised their glasses of champagne in a toast in East Berlin, and while Erich Mielke, the East German minister of state security, left the banquet to restore order in front of the Palace, their Hungarian counterparts were already another step ahead.
At 8:24 on that Saturday evening, they announced in Budapest the radical restructuring of their party, which had controlled the country unopposed for almost 40 years, and its renaming as the "Hungarian Socialist Party." Close to 84 percent of all delegates voted in favor of the unprecedented step the Communists were taking to remove themselves from power.

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A Storm on the Wall?
A day earlier, Gorbachev expressed vehement opposition to making the trip to East Germany. He called his loyal assistant Chernyayev twice to assure him that he would not utter a single word of support for Honecker in Berlin.
"We have information that the Wall will be stormed in Gorbachev's presence," Chernyayev noted. The Kremlin was prepared for it to come down. "Soviet troops will not intervene," former Ambassador Falin assured West Berlin Mayor Walter Momper on Sept. 30.
But the Wall did not come down on Oct. 7 -- not yet. Everything else Chernyayev had written in his diary on Oct. 5, however, did come true: "The party convention of the USAP in Budapest will announce the self-dissolution of the socialist Hungarian People's Republic. There is not even any point to discussing Poland. The PVAP is not only no longer in power, but will hardly survive its convention in February. In other words, this is the total dismantling of socialism."
And SED leader Honecker? He protested one last time during Gorbachev's visit. When he was forced to listen, before the assembled politburo in Berlin's Niederschönhausen district, to the Moscow guest's admonitions to finally reform his country, he defiantly rebuked Gorbachev by saying: "Not even salt and matches are to be had in your shops."
"He refuses to concede anything," Egon Krenz, the heir apparent, told Falin at the end of the event. "Perhaps he will have to be replaced at the plenary session on Oct. 10. Or else there will be a storm on the Wall after all."

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The German Question
On Oct. 25, Bronislaw Geremek received a visit. East German Ambassador to Poland Jürgen von Zwoll had requested a meeting with Geremek, the head of the opposition group in the Sejm. He wanted to know how the new Warsaw felt about the future of the Germans.
The GDR had always been a guarantor that, "the German question would not pose any dangers for the Polish nation," Geremek said blandly to the ambassador." But, Geremek added, he now saw "integration processes happening between the GDR and West Germany" and, in the future, a "confederation of two German states."
Germany was a sore subject for the Poles, whose government propaganda machine had conjured up the "German threat" for decades. For the government, only a communist Poland allied with the Soviet Union was capable of preventing the Germans from returning to Silesia.
People like Geremek had always rebelled against this view. They never saw German partition as a permanent condition, but as the consequence of the power-sharing agreement the victorious powers had reached at the Yalta Conference in 1945, and as a condition that was to be overcome. Despite the atrocities the Nazis had committed against Poles, the opposition admitted that the Germans deserved "what we claim for ourselves -- the right to our own state."
"It was never discussed at the Round Table," says Aleksander Kwasniewski today. If the negotiators had intended for their reforms to promote German reunification, "it would have been considerably more difficult to come to terms. There were many sitting at the table who had experienced the Nazi occupation."

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Two More Years for the Soviet Union
Hungarian Prime Minister Németh experienced the night the Berlin Wall fell in the company of his Spanish counterpart, Felipe Gonzalez. Pozsgay, the man without whose courage everything may have been different, watched the images from Berlin while at home. Both men, Németh and Pozsgay, felt "carried away by enthusiasm" and "overwhelmed, " but they also felt confirmed. All barriers in Europe now seemed to have been torn open.
Both men, Németh and Pozsgay, were still unaware that the rapid current of change in the heart of Europe would also sweep them away. Less than 11 months later, on the day of German reunification, they had already become irrelevant on Hungary's political stage.
And what lessons did Gorbachev draw for his own country from the events in Berlin?
None, apparently. In Moscow -- with his endorsement -- the same scenario eerily unfolded on Nov. 7 that Gorbachev had derided in East Berlin only a month earlier.
His country was celebrating the 72nd anniversary of the Russian Revolution -- as if nothing at all had happened between Kaliningrad and Vladivostok in the last few months. There was a parade in the old style, complete with tanks and missiles at the front and the people (under orders) bringing up the rear with flowers and balloons, still chanting slogans in favor of the "Great Socialist October Revolution."
Three kilometers away from Red Square, a counter-demonstrati on took place, with protestors carrying banners bearing slogans like "72 years on the road to nowhere" and "Proletarians of the world, forgive us!"
It would take another two years before the Soviet Union imploded.

[pjotr]

www.rnw.nl/english/radioshow/impact-communism-poland-today

[uncltim]

Great link Peter! Thanks for posting it.

[pjotr]

Dec 11, 2010 2:23:56 GMT 1 uncltim said:

Great link Peter! Thanks for posting it.

You are welcome Tim!

[Bonobo]

Poll - one-in-four Poles would prefer communist state
04.06.2013 10:42
As Poland marks the 24th anniversary of the democratic elections of June 1989, a poll has estimated that 25 percent of the populace believe the country would be better off under a communist regime.

President
President Komorowski takes part in the opening of the "Shared Victory" exhibition on Sunday in Warsaw, commemorating the 24th annivsary of the democraric elections of 4 June 1989.

In the survey by Poland's Public Opinion Research Centre (CBOS), respondents were asked whether they thought it had been worth changing from a communist system to a democratic one in 1989.

Some 25 percent were of the opinion that Poland should not have made the changes, although 60 percent backed the revolution (the remainder said they did not have an opinion on the matter).

In a similar survey just three years ago, 83 percent had said they supported the changes, and just 9 percent claimed to be against them.

Meanwhile, in a separate question this year, 59 percent of respondents said they felt that “since 1989, Poland and the Poles have not taken advantage of the opportunities that were provided by the political changes.”

Some 27 percent of those surveyed claimed that Poland had indeed “taken advantage of the changes as far as was possible.”

Statistics show that those most happy with the changes are Poles born between 1972 and 1977 (currently 36-41 years-old).

Commemorations are taking place in Poland today marking the 24th anniversary of the 4 June 1989 elections.