Episode of Series “Famous lives”.
Lech Walesa, the fly, feisty, mustachioed electrician from Gdansk, shaped the 20th century as the leader of the Solidarity movement that led the Poles out of communism. It is one of history’s great ironies that the nearest thing we have ever seen to a genuine workers’ revolution was directed against a so-called workers’ state. Poland was again the icebreaker for the rest of Central Europe in the “velvet revolutions” of 1989. Walesa’s contribution to the end of communism in Europe, and hence the end of the cold war, stands beside those of his fellow Pole, Pope John Paul II, and the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Narrated by Lucy Longhurst.
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Collection
In ACMI's collection
Credits
Collection metadata
ACMI Identifier
310027
Language
English
Audience classification
G
Subject categories
Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → Poland
Anthropology, Ethnology, Exploration & Travel → Warsaw (Poland)
Documentary → Documentary films - Great Britain
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Labor and laboring classes
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Poland - Politics and Government
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Poland - Social conditions
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Politicians - Biography
Economics, Philosophy, Politics, Religion & Sociology → Solidarity
Sound/audio
Sound
Colour
Colour