Lenin Shipyards and Solidarność

Before lunch, we went out to the former Lenin Shipyards, so famously on tv at the beginning of the 1980s as the scene of the Solidarność strikes.  On the way, we happened upon a 'Roads to Freedom' underground exhibition - an excellent, moving account of that historical moment.  Watching Wałęsca, Jaruzelski, John Paul II etc brought it all back.  It's hard to credit absolutely the exhibition's claim that the Solidarity strikes 'led directly' to the fall of the Berlin Wall, but undoubtedly they showed (a) that something could be done and (b) that communist totalitarianism did not go completely unchallenged.  Very poignant to see the 'dominos' of the former iron curtain states that fell - and we appreciated again the exceptionality of Gorbachev.  There's a monument down at the shipyards themselves - incongruously we found ourselves there at the same time as three nuns.