Poland: Tightening Belts at Gunpoint

Riots in Gdansk and shock at the supermarket

If Poland's ill-fated democratic experiment had a capital city, it was surely the Baltic port of Gdansk. Solidarity, the independent trade union, was born in the city's sprawling Lenin shipyard in August 1980. When the government of General Wojciech Jaruzelski crushed that movement last Dec. 13, it died hardest in Gdansk. Three days after martial law was declared, protesters there engaged security forces in pitched battles that, according to the government, left at least nine civilians dead. Gdansk continues to resist. The government announced last week that new street clashes near the Lenin...

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