Rifts remain as nation remembers Solidarity union

GDANSK - At what could be described as the crucible of modern eastern Europe, young revolutionaries, old rebels and world leaders stood to remember the formation of the Solidarity union and its influence on history.

As brilliant sunshine lit the streets of Gdansk, Georgia's President, Mikhail Saakashvili, hailed the "second wave of Solidarity" that brought him to power in 2003.

President Viktor Yushchenko, the leader of the "Orange Revolution" in neighbouring Ukraine, told everyone that "Solidarity has become a road for everyone".

"Poles freed not just themselves, they launched a process which radiates until today," said German President Horst Koehler. "The fact that Poland threw off the yoke of communism led to the unification of Europe and a united Germany."

It was at Gdansk's Lenin shipyard that the Solidarity movement was born in 1980. The group - at the time eastern Europe's only independent trade union - was created to argue for better work conditions.

Over the course of a decade, it was able to steer the nation's communist regime towards democracy without bloodshed.

Its former leader, Lech Walesa, was elected President in 1990, and its model has served the so-called Rose, Tulip, Orange and Cedar revolutions that have taken place in the former Soviet bloc and beyond, over the last two years.

Poland's President, Aleksander Kwasnieswki - a former communist himself - brought the memorial vividly into the present.

Motioning to another former communist, Yushchenko, Kwasnieswki referred to the poison-scarred hero as the latest to reap the rewards of the Solidarity legacy.

Yushchenko in turn referred to Solidarity as a "banner of independence" that was "symbolic for the Ukrainian people".

Georgia's President added Solidarity "was the best thing which happened in the 20th century".

But not everyone in Gdansk was ready to join the celebrations.

Many are still coming to terms with life in the European Union, which Poland joined last year, and the harsh realities of capitalism.

"What we have in Poland today is not what my parents fought for," said Gdansk city councillor Grzegorz Sieletycki, who at 25 was born just days after Solidarity was created on 31st August 1980.

"Once we were the slaves of Moscow; now we are the slaves of Washington and Brussels. The workers fought Communism because they wanted honourable working conditions," he said. "Those working conditions have got worse, and there's no solidarity if Polish lawyers go to wash English dishes for want of work."

Anna Walentynowicz, the Gdansk shipyard worker whose dismissal sparked the creation of Solidarity, staged a counter-commemoration, and maintained Walesa made too many compromises with communists.

Within the shipyard and in earshot of the dignitaries, 200 Gdansk shipyard workers staged a protest against poor working conditions, low income and job insecurity.

Walesa acknowledged that "freedom came, but it is still hard to get bread", but Poland could not "lose sight of the victory capital which we gained ... so that the next generation can benefit from that capital".

At an open-air Mass led by Archbishop of Krakow Stanislaw Dziwisz, the former secretary of Solidarity's spiritual inspiration Pope John Paul II, thousands of veterans gathered to hear a statement from the new Pope, Benedict XVI.

"I know how much it warmed the heart of my great predecessor, that this act of historic justice happened and that Europe was able to breathe with two lungs, an eastern one and a western one."

In the congregation was Monika Wicka, a 48-year-old shop worker. "The miracle that we always prayed for happened. Our prayers were answered, so I keep praying," she said.

Poland's transition

* The Soviet Union brought a new communist government to Poland after World War II.

* Poland turned towards Stalinism in 1948 and the People's Republic of Poland was officially proclaimed in 1952.

* Poland sent troops to help quell Czechoslovakia's Prague Spring uprising in 1968.

* Labour turmoil in 1980 led to the formation of the independent trade union "Solidarity", which became a political force.

* By 1989 it had triumphed in elections, and Lech Walesa became President in 1990.

* Poland joined Nato in 1999 and the European Union last May.

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