Gdansk is also the city where the Second World War started (first battle) and where the Solidarity movement arose tearing down the Iron Curtain.
The Solidarity movement caused a huge domino effect over the Eastern Europe in general for democracy and free elections. And it ended the Cold War. See the coming movie about Lech Walesa and his efforts for independent labor unions. He become later the president in Poland.
Watch photos of Solidarity monuments and Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland on Travel Explorations` Facebook page.
The movie tells the story about Lech Walesa, the trade organisation Solidarity and Poland`s battle to bring down the irion curtain. It was amazing for me stand on this historical site looking back in history where dramatic events happened. It caused a big domino effects in East Europa. Thinking about how Lech Walesa and his Solidarity movement started the changes that turned East Euorpa almost upside down, from being a totalityr controlled communism system to a more libral democratic rights.
Photo. Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, Poland -The East European domino effect.
When Lech Walesa received the Peace Prize for his campaign for freedom of organisation in Poland, he had just been released from internment. The Communist party had tried in vain to break him, the symbol of the revolt against the party's monopoly on power. Walesa was employed as a marine electrician at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk. He was fired for having participated in demands for independent labor unions. These were wanted by the workers after several of them had been killed by police and soldiers while demonstrating for better living conditions. During a strike in 1980, Walesa managed to enter the Lenin yard, and led the negotiations with the authorities. These ended in a victory for the Solidarity union because workers, intellectuals and the Catholic church had formed a united front. In 1981 the Polish authorities banned Solidarity, alleging that this was the only way of preventing a Soviet invasion.
After a couple of years they abandoned that policy, and Poland was gradually liberalized. In 1989 Solidarity won free elections, and in the following year Walesa was elected President of Poland. Lech Walesa`s strong leadership of Poland’s Solidarity movement punched the first cracks in the Soviet Union’s Iron Curtain almost ten years before the fall of the Berlin Wall (9th November 1989). The fall of the Soviet Union happened in in December of 1991, as the world watched in amazement, the Soviet Union disintegrated into fifteen separate countries. Its collapse was hailed by the west as a victory for freedom, a triumph of democracy over totalitarianism, and evidence of the superiority of capitalism over socialism. And it ended the Cold War.
Stein Morten Lund, 11th December 2013
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