POLAND: World leaders gathered in the Baltic port of Gdansk yesterday to remember the birth of Solidarity 25 years ago, and praise Poland for delivering a stunning blow to the then-mighty Soviet empire.
In dazzling sunshine, tens of thousands of Poles made their way through the cobbled streets of Gdansk to the shipyard where Solidarity began, when a strike for workers' rights snowballed into a nationwide pro-democracy movement in August 1980.
In an open-air Mass at the former Lenin shipyard, worshippers heard a message from Pope Benedict which recalled the role of his Polish predecessor inspiring Solidarity's struggle.
"I know how much it warmed the heart of my great predecessor - God's servant John Paul II - that this act of historic justice happened and that Europe was able to breathe with two lungs, an eastern one and a western one.
"The Solidarity movement not only brought unimaginable political change to Poland . . . but also showed others in the eastern bloc that it was possible to repair the historic injustice that left them trapped behind the Iron Curtain."
Among dozens of dignitaries, the leaders of Ukraine and Georgia hailed Solidarity as an inspiration for the peaceful revolutions that recently brought them to power, at the expense of Soviet-era allies of Moscow.
"For the Ukrainian people the idea of Solidarity was symbolic," said its president Viktor Yushchenko. "For millions it was a banner of independence."
Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili agreed: "Solidarity was the best thing that happened in the 20th century."
Gdansk was decked out in the Polish red-and-white colours that Solidarity adopted as it became a force to unite workers, intellectuals and the Catholic Church against a loathed regime and their Kremlin masters.
Young and old celebrated after a month of nationwide events and TV documentaries recalling August 1980 and its aftermath.
Solidarity's staggering momentum forced the communist government to legalise the movement, but after a crackdown in late 1981 it was again suppressed until 1989.
Many of Solidarity's leaders were imprisoned, including former electrician Lech Walesa, who became president after Poland's first free elections in 1990. "Why did we do all of it?" Mr Walesa asked yesterday. "To launch a new epoch, one without divisions. Without one shot, our generation was able to do it."
However, there were reminders that all is not rosy for EU-member Poland, and not everyone admires Mr Walesa.
About 200 workers at the shipyard camped out overnight to protest the dire state of the docks, which is a fraction of its former size, and economic problems that have left almost one in five Poles without a job.
"After 25 years, I think we have found ourselves in a morass," said Andrzej Gwiazda, a co-leader of the 1980 strikes. He accused his former ally Mr Walesa of "compromising the idea of Solidarity but reaping all the profits," by effectively calling a truce with the former communists.