16. The Walesa quote is from the proceedings of “The Failure of Communism: The Western Response,” a conference sponsored by Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, November
15, 1989, in Munich Germany.
17. Interview with Lech Walesa, April 25, 2005.
18. Interview with Jan Winiecki, March 11, 2003.
19. Pipes, Vixi, 167, 183. Secretary of State Shultz in particular did not see the Poland situation through the same ideological lens as Reagan, Pipes, Clark, and others. Pipes notes that Shultz pushed to lift the sanctions on Poland and prodded Reagan to a more conciliatory position.
20. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, “Miracle of Solidarity Ended Communism,” Human Events, September 26, 2005, 9.
21. Bernstein and Politi, His Holiness, 260.
22. “President Reagan’s political support helped it survive martial law to become the decisive catalyst in the eventual chain reaction of communist collapse at the end of the 1980s.” James H. Billington, “The Foreign Policy of President Ronald Reagan,” Address to the International Republican Institute Freedom Dinner, Washington, DC, September 25, 1997, 2. 23. Arch Puddington, “Voices in the Wilderness: The Western Heroes of Eastern Europe,” Policy Review, Summer 1990, 34–35.
24. Piecuch was interviewed by Schweizer. Schweizer, Reagan’s War, 236. 25. Arch Puddington found that Poles liked Reagan’s vitality, sense of humor, and willingness to call a spade a spade. They admired his anti-Soviet rhetoric, particularly the “Evil Empire” speech. That explosive remark, as well as the president’s prediction that Communism would end up on the “ash heap of history,” thrilled Poles. Reagan had spoken their language. Bartak Kaminski, a Polish emigre teaching at the University of Maryland, explained that Reagan was the first world leader in the post-detente era who was willing to express ideas about the Soviets that were shared by most Poles. Kaminski pointed to the strong policy response to the declaration of martial law. He said that this was imperative in undermining the legitimacy of the Jaruzelski government. It stood in marked contrast to the shameful friendliness that the West and Nixon administration extended to the odious regime of Nicolai Ceausescu in Romania. In Romania, notes Kaminski, such accommodation had the effect of undercutting the opposition. Jerzy Warman, a student activist in Polish politics, agreed. Warman pointed to the Reagan defense buildup and aid to anti- Communist forces in the Third World, which he believed sent a signal to the entire Soviet bloc that the Communists “simply could not hope to win.” Puddington, 34–35.
Poles applauded Reagan’s verbal cruise missiles launched at Soviet Communism. “He was right, 100% right,” said Polish citizen Joseph Dudek of Reagan’s labeling the USSR an “Evil Empire.” “For the oppressed in Poland it was relief that someone had the courage to stand up for the right thing and name the Communist system as it really was….Most of the people in Poland were hoping he’d do something to expose Russia and the Communists and end it [Soviet domination of Poland]. They wanted him to fix the mistakes Churchill and Roosevelt made after World War II.” Dudek also pointed to Reagan’s “Tear-Down-This-Wall” speech. For Dudek and other Poles, Reagan’s Cold War candor was both a symbol and a weapon, and his choice phrases gave them hope. A native of Krakow who is careful to also emphasize the role of the Pope, Dudek says that Reagan was among the few outside of Poland who understood the Communists, and that his “confident speaking” gave the Solidarity leaders support. Dudek assures: “He was a part of keeping alive the hopes of Polish freedom.” He said Poles viewed Reagan as someone who would say almost anything in standing up to the Communists. Interview with Joseph Dudek.
Credit to Reagan also came from Boguslaw W. Winid. Winid has a doctorate in history from Warsaw University and served at the Polish Embassy in Washington, DC. He was a researcher at Warsaw University’s American Studies Center. Asked what role, if any, the United States played in Solidarity’s victory over Communism, Winid replied: “I think it played quite an important role. This was particularly true with President Ronald Reagan… who clearly defined the Soviet Union as an Evil Empire. And though many arguments have been made about the value of his approach, I believe it was important that he portrayed situations as right or wrong and not as a gray area. Moral issues were important in dealing with a country like the Soviet Union. Reagan’s hard approach toward the Soviet Union was very helpful from the Polish point of view and made him very popular in Poland.” Winid’s talk February 24, 1994, in Kenneth W. Thompson, ed., The Presidency and Governance in Poland: Yesterday and Today (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1997), 115.
From inside the Polish Communist government that tried to smash Solidarity, General Kiszczak, who was Poland’s Interior Minister in the 1980s, later said: “The assistance from [the] American government for Solidarity was essential.” Kiszczak interviewed by Schweizer, Schweizer, Reagan’s War, 276.
Vladimir Bukovsky agrees. For twelve years Bukovsky languished in the Communist gulag, where he was shifted back and forth among prisons, work camps, and, as was the cruel Communist custom, even lunatic asylums. He now lives in Cambridge, England. By the time of Solidarity’s struggles, he was a free man living in the West, albeit one intimately informed of the Poland situation. Asked about the Reagan administration’s importance to the survival of Solidarity, he remarked succinctly: “It was crucial.” Interview with Vladimir Bukovsky, March 8, 2003. From within Solidarity, a telling testimony comes from Jan Winiecki, a Warsaw native who earned doctorates in economics and public administration at the University of Warsaw and was an economic adviser to the Solidarity underground in the 1980s. “Of all the things most key to Solidarity’s survival, most important was the sheer will, sheer desire, of the Polish people,” Winiecki stresses. Yet, he says the Reagan impact on Solidarity was significant: “It’s very important for those underground to know they’ll have support diplomatically if they’re repressed. They knew they could count on Reagan and his administration for this rhetorical, moral, public support—this political support. It raised their spirits that they could survive.” Winiecki believes that the three main external impetuses to Solidarity were, in order of happenstance, the pope’s 1979 visit, 1981 martial law, and Reagan’s advocacy from 1981–89. He believes that Reagan’s role was fundamental to the Soviet collapse, and that the Reagan administration accelerated the implosion by at least a decade. He points to not only Reagan’s support of Solidarity but also to SDI and the arms race. “This was because the USSR tried to meet the Reagan challenge through the arms race, the technological competition of SDI,” said Winiecki, who also cites aid to Solidarity among causal factors. Interviews with Jan Winiecki, March 17, 1998, March 4, 1999, and March 7, 2000.
26. Walesa spoke at a conference on “The Reagan Legacy,” held at the Reagan Library on May 20, 1996. Mack Reed, “Walesa Hails Reagan at Daylong Seminar,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1996, A1, A18.
27. For his part, Reagan called Walesa a heroic figure. Reagan, “Remarks on Signing the Human Rights Day, Bill of Rights Day, and Human Rights Week Proclamation,” December 8,
1988, in John O’Sullivan, “Friends at Court,” National Review, May 27, 1991, 4. 28. In April 2005, Walesa told me that Reagan had “emboldened” and “encouraged” him in the 1980s. He spoke of Reagan’s “testimony to the truth and liberty” and “his understanding of life as living in light without a lie,” which “was always an inspiration for me.” Walesa’s words were translated by Tomasz Pompowski, a senior editor and reporter at Fakt, the largest newspaper in Poland. As he translated, Pompowski could not help but add that Reagan had meant a “great deal” to him as well. Interview with Lech Walesa, April 25, 2005. 29. Walesa spoke at a conference on “The Reagan Legacy,” held at the Reagan Library on May 20, 1996. Mack Reed, “Walesa Hails Reagan at Daylong Seminar,” Los Angeles Times, May 21, 1996, A1, A18.
30. Lech Walesa, speech at the conference, “The Reagan Legacy,” Ronald Reagan Library, Simi Valley, California, May 20, 1996.
31. Reagan, An American Life, 303.
32. Ibid., 301.
33. Reagan, “Address at Commencement Exercises at Eureka College,” Eureka, Illinois, May 9, 1982.
34. A reader can literally count on one hand the total number of references to Solidarity in Edmund Morris’ Dutch and Lou Cannon’s Role of a Lifetime and still have two fingers two spare. Incredibly, Lech Walesa is not mentioned even once in either 870-plus-page work. 35. Clark said, “In Afghanistan, the Soviets lost face; in Poland, they lost an empire.” He said this twice. See “The Pope and the President: A key adviser reflects on the Reagan Administration,” interview with Bill Clark, Catholic World Reporter, November 1999; and Bill Clark, “President Reagan and the Wall,” Address to the Council of National Policy, San Francisco, California, March 2000, 8.
36. See Radek Sikorski, “Christmas Day in Romania,” National Review, January 22,
1990, 23–24.
37. Maciek Gajewski, “In Solidarity’s Cradle, Poles Applaud Reagan,” United Press International, September
