Primary Sources
Browse Items: Lech Walesa
Plans for Reorganizing Solidarity
Prior to the historic roundtable talks that took place between February and April 1989 in Poland, preparations took place on many levels. In this letter dated January 20, 1989, a couple of weeks before the beginning of the roundtable talks, Andrzej Stelmachowski, a Solidarity activist, provided suggestions to Solidarity leader Lech Walesa on how to prepare for the upcoming discussions. In….
Report from the Working Conference of Opposition Leaders
This report, from September 1, 1988, details the meeting of a diverse coalition of Polish opposition members, consisting of trade unionists, academics, journalists and representatives of the Solidarity movement. They agreed that their major priorities were for talks with the government regarding the status of unions, pluralism, and economic and political reforms. They agreed to the….
Letter by Lech Walesa to the Council of State
By 1986, reforms associated with Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union had begun to affect political and economic life in Poland. Lech Wałesa, leader of the Polish trade union movement Solidarity, and a veteran organizer of illegal strikes and demonstrations, wrote to the Polish Council of State (the most powerful branch of government in the Republic of Poland) requesting the end of martial….
President Reagan Discusses the crisis in Poland
In August 1980, a worker's strike began in Gdansk, Poland in reaction to the struggling economy and massive shortages. In a compromise, the Communist government legalized Solidarity, but this only increased tensions. Imports from the Soviet Union and the West failed to improve the economy, with more strikes becoming endemic throughout 1980 and 1981. Fearing a Soviet military invasion to restore….
Statement by Press Secretary Fitzwater on Economic Assistance for Poland and Hungary
After Poland formed a new coalition government in August led by the noncommunist Catholic intellectual and longtime Solidarity adviser Tadeusz Mazowiecki, factions within the Bush administration hotly debated an aid policy to help stabilize the faltering Polish economy. The new government faced a foreign debt of $40 billion and hyperinflation running at nearly 1,000 percent. The rising budget….
President Bush's Remarks to the Polish National Assembly
President George H. W. Bush visited Poland and Hungary in July 1989 after June elections in which Solidarity candidates won 160 of the 161 seats in the Sejm that were available to them and 92 of the 100 seats of the Polish Senate. In addition, many leaders of the Communist Party failed to secure enough votes to be elected to the parliament they had controlled for four decades. Pursuing….
President Bush's Remarks at the Solidarity Workers Monument
President George H. W. Bush visited Poland and Hungary in July 1989 after June elections in which Solidarity candidates won 160 of the 161 seats in the Sejm that were available to them and 92 of the 100 seats of the Polish Senate. In addition, many leaders of the Communist Party failed to secure enough votes to be elected to the parliament they had controlled for four decades. Pursuing….
President Bush's Interview with Polish Journalists
During the spring of 1989, the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union, George H. W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, issued contrasting visions for the future of Europe. In a series of speeches during April and May, Bush called for a Europe “whole and free” and envisioned a shift “beyond containment,” the fundamental strategy of preventing Soviet expansion that had guided US….