Lech Wałęsa

[GracchusBabeuf]

.

[Stranger Than Paradise]

I used to think he was cool when I was a little naive about stuff like this. He was president of poland '90-'95. No president can be good.

[Lord Testicles]

Wasn't solidarity anti-communist?

[rednordman]

Wasn't solidarity anti-communist?Yep, and look at Poland now.

[Yehuda Stern]

Lech Walesa was the reformist leader of a working class movement. Therefore, he had no personal problem with capitulating to either Western or Soviet imperialism, as he showed both in his anti-Communist and catholic rhetoric and in his later deals with the Stalinist party. However, Solidarity was still a working class movement, and revolutionaries would be duty bound to intervene in it.

[Leo]

I think it would be wrong to identify the 1980 mass strike in Poland either with Lech Walesa or with the Solidarnosc organization. More or less enough was said about Walesa himself, but I would like to add a few things on Solidarnosc. As it was declared in a leaflet of the Solidarnosc published and distributed in Szczecin:

“Solidarnosc means:


the way to get the country back on its feet
social calm and stability
maintenance of standards and good organisation”

I think it is clear that structurally also this organization was a barrier to the striking workers rather than an organ of theirs. It is completely true that revolutionaries would be duty bound to intervene inthe mass strike, but the only possible intervention regarding solidarnosc would be an intervention against it, exposing how it structurally attempted to sabotage workers struggle and collaborated with the stalinist regime. Here's a good article on the events:

http://en.internationalism.org/ir/103_poland80.htm

[brigadista]

fervent catholic and virulently anti abortion

[el_chavista]

He is just another name in the CIA payroll since Reagan's campaign to overthrow east Europe communist country governments.
Now a day he still earns some money with his press declarations against Chávez.