He Dared to Hope

(5 of 18)

like Walesa would never have suited Carlyle's elitist view of greatness. Walesa is a completely different kind of hero: a common man who has taken his fling at changing history not by leading governments, winning great battles or writing books, but by embodying the hopes, faith, courage, even the foibles, of the vast majority of his countrymen.

The national ideals that Walesa represents have their roots in more than 1,000 years of Polish history. "They are accustomed to liberty," wrote an anonymous Byzantine historian about the Slavs in the 6th or 7th century. Perhaps because they were so open to invasion by the Germans and the Russians, the Poles early developed a fierce sense of national unity. In addition to repeated foreign invasions, Poland suffered three partitions in the 18th century that wiped it off the map as a separate state until 1918.

Poles have revolted countless times against their oppressors, only to fail heroically. Almost every generation of Poles for the past century and a half has risen in arms. This penchant for rebellion—evident again in Solidarity—prompted Karl Marx to call Poland the "thermometer of the intensity and vitality of all revolutions since 1789." Successive occupations and uprisings, moreover, gave Poles a deep-rooted mistrust of foreign-imposed governments and sharpened their skills at organizing broad-based conspiracies. It also increased their pride in the past. Many of Solidarity's buttons show the Polish eagle adorned with the crown that was banned by the Communists.

The result of the defeated uprisings has left a scar on the national psyche, a kind of ambivalence and fear that endure to this day. "On the one hand," says Social Historian Wiktor Osiatynski, "the Pole applauds the drive for democratic freedoms. On the other hand, not far below the surface roils the thought that previous such efforts for national salvation have ended in catastrophe."

Polish patriotism has been closely bound up with religion ever since the baptism in 966 of the nation's first ruler, Prince Mieszko I. During occupation periods, the Catholic Church kept Polish language and culture alive and served as the main bastion of nationalism. After the 0 Communist takeover in 1945, the church provided a unique alternative to a "godless" Marxist regime. Going to Mass became not only a religious act but a quiet sign of rebellion against the state. Today, 75% to 80% of Poland's 36 million people are practicing Catholics. A deeply religious man, Walesa always wears on his lapel a badge depicting the so-called Black Madonna, a portrait of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child that is in the Czestochowa monastery, 125 miles southwest of Warsaw.

Religion, patriotism and a tragic history fed a current of romantic fatalism that runs deep in the Polish character.

Grand gestures and heroic sacrifices come naturally to the Poles, along with an alarming capacity for martyrdom. The 19th century playwright Stanislaw Wyspianski called long-suffering Poland "the Christ of nations" because of its capacity for anguish. Joseph Stalin is said to have remarked that bringing Communism to Poland was "like trying to saddle a cow." He did it anyway, but a nation of rebellious, romantic anti-Russian Catholics proved to be troublesome from the beginning. Most Poles never