The retrospective history of the Republic of Polan

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Poland mourns communist reformer
BBC News Online, Monday 30 July 2001. Edward Gierek, the communist leader who opened Poland to the outside world, has died aged 88. Gierek ruled the country for 10 years before being swept from office in 1980, in a wave of food price protests that led to the emergence of Solidarity, the Soviet bloc's first trade union.
Lidia Ciolkosz
Obituary, The Times Online, 28 June 2002. Lidia Ciolkosz, who died just two weeks short of her 100th birthday, was from her earliest student days in Poland a democratic socialist opposed to totalitarian communism and to fascism in all its forms.
Solidarity's legacy
The Irish Times, Wednesday 17 August 2005. Lech Walesa scaled the walls of the Gdansk shipyards and founded a trade union after a strike over poor conditions. Its agenda rapidly expanded over the following year to embrace a mass movement involving many layers of Polish society united by a call for bread and freedom.