People of the Revolution and the USSR

Poland Dissident 1927–2013 ○ Natural causes

Catholic intellectual of Solidarity who became the Eastern Bloc's first non-communist prime minister

We split away the history of our recent past with a thick line. We will be responsible only for what we have done to help extract Poland from her current predicament, from now on.

A Polish Catholic lay intellectual, he founded and edited the independent monthly Więź in 1958 and served in parliament from 1961 to 1971 as part of the Znak Catholic deputies' circle, practicing conscientious opposition within the system. He led Solidarity's board of experts during the Gdańsk strike of 1980, became the first editor of Tygodnik Solidarność, was interned for a year under martial law, and emerged as a key architect of the 1989 Round Table negotiations. On 24 August 1989 he was appointed prime minister, the first non-communist head of government in the Eastern Bloc in over forty years, and launched radical market reforms through the Balcerowicz Plan while declaring a 'thick line' separating the new government from the past. After losing the 1990 presidential election to Lech Wałęsa, he founded the Democratic Union and led it through the post-communist transition.

Solidarity (Solidarność) Dissident 1943–

Electrician who became president as the leader of Solidarity

If somebody had told me that I would be the leader to bring down communism... I never would have believed them. That is why I am the happiest man in the whole galaxy.

A shipyard electrician in Gdańsk, he led the 1980 strike that founded the independent trade union Solidarity and forced the communist government to sign the Gdańsk Agreement. Imprisoned under martial law and awarded the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize, he served as the unofficial opposition leader at the 1989 Round Table talks that negotiated Poland's peaceful transition from one-party rule. Elected Poland's first president by popular vote in 1990, he steered the country toward a market economy and secured the withdrawal of Soviet troops, but lost reelection in 1995 and retired from politics. One labour activist's victory became the signal that cracked the Soviet bloc.