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In his book The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli mentions a certain rule of history. He writes, not without a touch of irony, that “all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed.” But to every rule there is an exception, and unarmed prophets have been vindicated by history more than once. Even though the vindication usually comes late, it is no less emphatic. A perfect example of that is the historic victory of the Polish Solidarity movement and its extraordinary “Appeal to the Working People of Eastern Europe” proclaimed 40 years ago. ....
Solidarity's appeal: The power of 'unarmed prophets' thepeninsulaqatar.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from thepeninsulaqatar.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Strategic Europe. More > Here, in this apartment in a Warsaw suburb, Åuczywo introduced me to so many special people. One of them was Jan LityÅski. This feisty, funny, and warm intellectual was like his dissident friends indefatigable. In the late 1970s, with Jacek Kuron, he founded the Workers’ Defense Committee. This was, in some ways, the precursor to the independent Solidarity trade union movement, which was established in August 1980 in GdaÅsk. Poland’s dissidents paid a very heavy price for activities aimed at challenging the communist regime’s monopoly. In March 1968, during student protests at Warsaw University, LityÅski, then twenty-two years old, and many others were expelled. He was given a two-year jail sentence. At the same time, the regime unleashed a vicious anti-Semitic campaign, forcing many intellectuals to emigrate to Paris, London, or Stockholm. ....