[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 14]
[Senate]
[Page 19192]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        COMMEMORATING THE 25TH ANNIVERSARY OF POLISH SOLIDARITY

  Mr. BROWNBACK. Mr. President, at the end of World War II, Poland, 
like other Central European countries, fell behind the Iron Curtain. As 
the country struggled to recover from the brutal ravages of war and 
occupation, Soviet-backed communist elements seized the reigns of 
power. For many decades, those who sought to be free fought what seemed 
to be a losing, even hopeless, battle. Many were sent to prison, others 
were murdered or executed.
  The light of freedom in Poland was never truly extinguished. Year 
after year, decade after decade, disparate individuals pursued separate 
paths towards the same goal: a free Poland, a free people.
  By 1980, these individuals had learned much. First, they had learned 
to build bridges, bridges that would unite disparate segments of 
society. By 1980, workers and intellectuals, who had separately fought 
for reform, and separately failed, came together: electricians and 
factory workers, writers and teachers. And they learned, following the 
historic visit of Pope John Paul II to his homeland, in 1979, to ``be 
not afraid.'' Together, Poles could carve out a space of independence 
from the regime that sought to control them. Together, in the shipyards 
of Gdansk, they gave birth to the Solidarity movement.
  1980 was not, of course, the first time Polish workers had gone on 
strike, nor would it be the last. But it was the strike that, for 
Poland and beyond, demonstrated the capacity of a nonviolent movement 
to stare down a seemingly more powerful force.
  Of course, the imposition of martial law on December 13, 1981, was a 
dark and shadowy detour on the path to freedom. Introduced to stave off 
a Soviet invasion, it could not, ultimately, stave off the inevitable 
march of democracy: Solidarity had let the genie out of the bottle, and 
there was no getting it back. In 1983, Lech Walesa, the electrician who 
bravely scaled the shipyard wall in August 1980, to join his fellow 
striking workers, was awarded the Nobel peace prize. Elsewhere in 
Central Europe, dissident movements intensified their demands for human 
rights. Economic reform moved from an option to a necessity. Even in 
Moscow, a pro-reform apparatchik, Mikhail Gorbachev, rose to lead his 
country.
  By 1989, Solidarity leaders sat across the table from Wojtech 
Jaruzelski, the general who had imposed martial law. They negotiated 
what had seemed to most of the world impossible: the peaceful 
transition from communism to free and fair elections. In August of 
1989, less than a decade after the Gdansk shipyard strikes that gave 
birth to Solidarity, Poland would elect its first non-communist prime 
minister since the fall of the Iron Curtain.
  Today, we remember and honor those events, not only because of what 
it meant for Poland, but for what it means for all of us, and for 
people round the globe who continue to struggle to live in freedom and 
dignity. The Solidarity movement represented the culmination of 
enormous, powerful, even irresistible ideals, ideals that we must seek 
to spread to the dark corners of the globe that have yet to see their 
light.

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