Lech Walesa, the shipyard electrician who helped topple Poland's communist regime by founding the Solidarity movement in 1980, credited the late Pope John Paul II as his inspiration at 25th anniversary celebrations Monday.
Walesa, who became his country's first postwar democratic president, said John Paul's visit to his native Poland in 1979 gave his countrymen the courage to stand up to the communist leaders.
"He did not tell us to make a revolution, he did not call for a coup, but he was so suggestive that we all had to define ourselves,'' Walesa told an international conference on Solidarity's legacy." The Polish nation and many other nations awoke.''
The Solidarity trade union movement was born through strikes in the Baltic Polish city of Gdansk and elsewhere in Poland in the summer of 1980.
Its emergence as Eastern Europe's first independent trade union is credited with sparking events throughout the region which led to the demise of communism in a large part of Europe.
"It was in us, in our hearts and minds that something started that changed the face of this earth,'' Walesa, 61, told a joint gathering of both houses of parliament before his speech to the international conference.
"Irrespective of today's judgment and the price we had to pay in this generation, we were able to close an epoch of divisions, different blocs and borders, opening the way for an era of globalization,'' Walesa said.
Poland's President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former communist, said Walesa and other Solidarity leaders deserved the gratitude of all Poles for ushering in the democracy that led to Poland becoming a NATO and European Union member.
"We all live in a free Poland, and there would be no free Poland without you,'' Kwasniewski said, addressing Walesa. "Twenty-five years ago, I did not stand on the same side together with you, but today I have no doubts that it was your vision of Poland which led us in the right direction.''
Parliament speaker Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz welcomed Walesa to the podium by saying his name has become the "universally recognizable symbol of Poland.''
"Today's ceremonial meeting of lawmakers from the upper and lower houses is to commemorate the events of the 'Polish August,' pay homage to the millions of its participants, express respect and gratitude to all those who made the first step toward Poland regaining its independence,'' Cimoszewicz said.
As the official celebrations got under way, a splinter group of other Solidarity activists, including Anna Walentynowicz - the shipyard worker whose dismissal sparked the strikes that led to Solidarity - held their own parallel event in protest.
They are critical of Walesa, saying he has betrayed Solidarity's ideals by compromising with communists in the past and today, and are galled he is taking part in events joined by former communists such as Cimoszewicz.
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