Down with Big Brother by Michael Dobbs Read Free Book Online

shipyardgate included Andrzej Wajda, who had just come up with an idea for a new film, to be called Man of Iron .
    As the cheering died down, Wałęsa told the crowd that he had been unable to achieve anything by himself. “We did this together. Everybody together, that is power. That is strength.” He then reminded his listeners why he kept coming back to gate number two. “My actions are connected to December 1970. Perhaps someone will accuse me of being a dictator, but I say we must always meet here on December 16. Always, always. We must always remember those who were killed.” 100
    The chants of “Le-szek, Le-szek” started up again, this time with even greater force. Workers in yellow hard hats flung open the shipyard gates, and the strikers streamed out into the sun-filled streets of Gdańsk. At that moment everything seemed possible. August had been a triumph of memory over forgetting. In fact, the storm clouds were just beginning to gather.

GDAŃSK
December 12–13, 1981
    I T SHOULD HAVE BEEN a moment of triumph. Lech Wałęsa was back in the Lenin Shipyard, sitting on the podium of the same conference hall where he had negotiated the Gdańsk agreement with Poland’s Communist authorities. The conference hall was bathed in television arc lights. In the space of five hundred days Wałęsa had been transformed from an unsung dissident in a corner of the Soviet empire to an international media celebrity. He had traveled to Japan and France, received the acclaim of the International Labor Organization in Geneva, held talks with Pope John Paul in the Vatican. His exploits were followed with close attention in the Kremlin and the White House; his pithy turns of phrase were dissected by journalists from all over the world. He had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and chosen as “Man of the Year” by Time magazine.
    Usually Wałęsa enjoyed the media attention. He played up to the paparazzi, who followed him around Poland. He allowed himself to be photographed taking a bath, praying in church, scolding his children, thrusting his fists into the air in a gesture of victory.
    On this occasion he was uncharacteristically somber and passive. He seemed oblivious of the dramatic debate whirling around him on how to respond to the latest government “provocations.” Sitting slightly to one side,he leafed through a pile of newspapers, making paper airplanes and fiddling with his new Czech pipe. His face looked swollen and white. He took no part in the voting as his colleagues passed a series of hard-line resolutions. Kuroń, the organizational brains behind Poland’s political opposition, called for the formation of a coalition government. One of the radicals began to bait the Solidarity leader, insisting that he should at least take the floor.
    “Leszek, you sit there like a maharaja, saying nothing. Speak to us.”
    “You’re all talking so much rubbish here that we’d better check to see if someone has added anything to your food,” Wałęsa snapped back. 166
    The endless arguments, with both the government and his own Solidarity colleagues, had worn Wałęsa down. He sensed that an approaching cataclysm would severely test the strength of the first free trade union in the Communist world. At his last meeting with Jaruzelski, in early November, the general had seemed unyielding. The balance of power within the regime appeared to be shifting in favor of the advocates of force. Several of Wałęsa’s own advisers had warned him that the government was preparing for a showdown.
    Bronisław Geremek, a medieval historian who had been advising Wałęsa since August 1980, voiced the fears of the intellectuals at the meeting of Solidarity’s national commission. “We cannot win an all-out confrontation with the government,” he told Solidarity leaders. “We’re not prepared for one, but they are. Remember, it’s they who will choose the time and place for such a confrontation, not we.”
    His words were