A decade later, that is exactly what happened. Reagan and Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the U.S.S.R., are widely credited with pivotal roles in bringing down the Iron Curtain: the American with his massive military buildup and unrelenting political pressure, the Russian with his restraint in the face of spreading dissent throughout the Soviet bloc, and his internal perestroika reforms. But it was John Paul II, savvy diplomat, champion of human rights, Gandhian proponent of nonviolence, who skillfully sidestepped and outmaneuvered the Warsaw regime and became the catalyst for the revolution.
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Our photo gallery spans the pope's youth to his last days at the vatican.
It began with his first papal visit to Poland, led to the formation of the Solidarity union movement, from there to free elections, then spread like wildlife throughout Eastern Europe. Even before his triumphant 1979 pilgrimage that drew an estimated 13 million people, the pope had predicted to a group of German bishops that the Iron Curtain would eventually collapse, mostly under its own weight. Communism, he believed, had been initially viewed as an alternative to "unbridled, savage capitalism" and might improve the quality of life for those who lived under it. But it soon proved to be an economic failure, an ideologically bankrupt system whose leaders were interested only in staying in power.
Spurred by the pope's message of religious freedom and human rights and by their deep dissatisfaction with the threadbare economy and a repressive Warsaw regime, the huge crowds that gathered during that first visit could easily have turned to violence and bloodshed. What sprang from their passion, however, was Solidarity, the trade union born a year later in August of 1980 during a strike at the Gdansk shipyards and led by a canny and charismatic electrician named Lech Walesa. John Paul's spirit and the symbols of his church were omnipresent in Gdansk. Workers erected a huge wooden cross as a memorial to workers killed there during a 1970 strike. Photographs of the pope and of the Polish Black Madonna were displayed on the locked shipyard gates. Priests heard confessions behind the barricades, and strikers knelt in prayer.
Across the country, workers joined with Catholic intellectuals in support of the events in Gdansk. In Rome, John Paul publicly blessed the strike when he recited prayers to a group of Polish pilgrims in St. Peter's Square. "These two prayers show that all of us here in Rome are united with our compatriots in Poland, with the church in Poland, whose problems are so close to our heart," said the pontiff. With prominent Catholics playing key roles in Solidarity's strategic leadership, the historic Gdansk Accords were signed on Aug. 31, 1980, establishing the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc. But Solidarity was committed to far more than workers' rights. As the union-cum-political juggernaut spread throughout Poland, its goals expanded beyond traditional concerns over wages and healthcare to demands for the release of political prisoners and an end to censorship. Within a few months of its founding, the movement had gathered up to 10 million members. As strikes wracked the nation, the frightened government granted huge concessions and the Kremlin expressed deep concern. "We must not lose Poland: The Soviet Union lost 600,000 soldiers and officers in the fight to liberate Poland from the Nazis," warned Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko. "We cannot allow a counterrevolution." The following January, Solidarity leader Walesa, by now a national hero, led a delegation to the Vatican. "Without the church, nothing could happen in the Polish resistance movement," Walesa would tell an Italian journalist. It was a tribute that the Polish labor leader would repeat on many occasions. The pope invited the visitors to morning mass in his private chapel and reiterated his support for their independence movement. "The immense efforts which were made during the autumn, and which must continue, were not directed against anyone," said Wojtyla in a pointed message to the Communist hierarchy. "They were directed toward, not against, the common good." Through his words and actions, the pope was legitimizing a political movement and consciously undermining the Warsaw regime. A few days later in Moscow, the Politburo heard the dismaying message from its fact-finding mission to Poland: Solidarity was becoming the dominant power in the nation.
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