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Informationen zum Autor Rebecca Stefoff Klappentext Witness history in the making as you turn the pages of time and discover the fascinating lives of famous explorers! leaders of twentieth-century politics and government! and great Americans. One August day in 1980! Lech Walesa pushed his way past the Polish police! climbed over a twelve-foot wall! and jumped onto a bulldozer! calling to Polish shipyard workers to continue their strike for higher wages and other demands. Walesa's fiery speech inspired the workers and kept the strike alive. His call to action that day ultimately brought about important changes in Poland and established his leadership of the movement that became known as Solidarity. Lech Walesa: The Road to Democracy chronicles Walesa's dramatic role as the leader of his country's democratic future and its transformation from a communist regime to a democratic government. The son of a farmer and an electrician by trade! Walesa overcame police oppression and imprisonment to lead Solidarity and win the Nobel Prize. In 1990! Lech Walesa became Poland's first democratically elected noncommunist president. 1 A Strike at the Lenin Shipyard AS DARKNESS BEGAN to fall on July 31, 1980, bringing the long summer evening to an end, a 36-year-old man named Lech Walesa returned to his home in the city of Gdansk, Poland. It was an apartment on Wrzosy Street in a neighborhood called Stogi, a working-class district hemmed in by factories on one side and a shipping canal on the other. Crowded tenement buildings lined the streets. Next to them were small plots of sandy soil where people grew vegetables. Some had even built ramshackle sheds to house a few chickens or a pig. All in all, Stogi spoke of hard work and hard times. It was a neighborhood, Walesa reflected later, full of people “just waiting for things to improve.” Returning home that evening, however, Lech Walesa may have been wondering whether things would ever get better. Although he was a skilled electrician, he was out of work. He had been fired from three jobs in four years because of his political activities. Walesa was an “oppositionist”—someone who spoke and acted against Poland’s ruling Communist party. Over the years, he had witnessed the failure of countless government programs that were supposed to improve people’s standard of living. Prices went up while basic items like milk, matches, and sugar grew scarce on store shelves. Sometimes, the police and the army killed workers who protested against unfair working conditions and low wages. Now, Lech Walesa was one of many Poles in Gdansk and elsewhere who spent their afternoons passing out oppositionist leaflets and newspapers that criticized government policies. He had been arrested more than once for this and had grown used to being held in jail for up to 48 hours at a time. Walesa arrived at the apartment, where he lived with his wife and their five children. It consisted of two small rooms and a tiny kitchen. Several of the children slept in the smaller room, which was only five feet wide. The larger room contained a sofa, a cot, a table, and a sewing machine. Like most working-class Poles, Walesa had waited for years for a better apartment, but Poland was in the grip of a severe housing shortage and the Walesas could afford nothing better on their tight budget. The little apartment was about to become even more crowded. Walesa’s wife, Danuta, was pregnant with their sixth child and close to giving birth. That night, not long after Walesa’s return, Danuta went into labor. At almost the same moment there came a loud knocking on the door. “Open the door, Walesa!” a voice cried. “You are under arrest.” Panic and confusion followed this announcement. Danuta and the children started to cry. Walesa opened the door. Outside stood a commander of the local militia, or military police, with several deputies. T...
