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The rapid demise of communism in Poland took most of its citizens by surprise. Although the system was rotting away during the whole 1980s decade, it seemed that such a rotten state of affairs would go on forever. When a relatively feeble wave of strikes in 1988 led to Round Table talks between the government and the opposition, the result - a free election in June 1989 and, soon after that, the first democratic government in the whole Soviet block formed by Solidarity - was something no one could expect even two years before. In fact, the death of system exposed its main raison d'être: the moment Soviet Russia was too weak to support it with its tanks, it was doomed to die. |
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©2000 Jan Rybicki |