{"id":6208,"date":"2020-12-13T02:44:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-13T01:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/?p=6208"},"modified":"2022-02-10T13:07:46","modified_gmt":"2022-02-10T12:07:46","slug":"we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/","title":{"rendered":"We are deeply aware of our shared history"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Ignazio Silone, the Italian socialist writer who had been seduced by communism years before, wrote: „Their struggle shall not be in vain as there is a lot to suggest that it has sent reverberations as far as Rostock and K\u00f6nigsberg.” Although it would be hard to measure the impact of December 1970 in neighbouring countries, it is certain that each rebellion left its mark \u2013 what started as a small scratch on the monolith of the Soviet empire would develop into a deepening fissure, albeit not immediately visible.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The awareness of common history shared by the nations behind the Iron Curtain is imprinted in many moving memories. In the autumn of 1956, Polish freedom protests awakened Hungarian dreams of independence. When those dreams were being crushed by Soviet tanks in Budapest, Poland responded with a wave of aid, medicines and blood, offering words of comfort and support. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

To this day, consciences are stirred by the gesture of eight Russian dissidents who were the only ones to rally in Moscow\u2019s Red Square in August 1968. They were arrested at once, put on trial and then spent the following years behind bars and in forced labour camps. They protested against the suppression of the Prague Spring, a Czech and Slovak push for freedom that was quashed by almost a quarter of a million Soviet soldiers supported by troops from the Polish People\u2019s Republic, German Democratic Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria. It was then that Natalya Gorbanevskaya unfurled a banner with the words „For our freedom and yours.” The slogan appeared for the first time in Poland during the November Uprising of 1830\u20131831 when it was written on banners in Polish and Russian. It accompanied our struggle for freedom on many occasions thereafter to acquire a new meaning at the end of the twentieth century.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

This act of defiance carried out by a handful of Russians \u2013 lost in the sea of almost 250 million indifferent or hostile Soviet citizens \u2013 was as important as the strike of the thousands of Russian workers in Novocherkassk in June 1962 that was ended by volleys of machine-gun fire. It marked out the road that was taken in each of the nations within the Soviet empire by those few unbowed people who reached for the „simplest, most-accessible key to our deliverance which is NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN THE LIE! Should the lie come to the world, should it dominate everything, let us stick to the minimum: let it reign supreme but NOT THROUGH ME!” to quote the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author of the <\/span>Gulag Archipelago<\/i><\/span> and Nobel Prize laureate. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The road that was „hard on the body, but the only one for the soul” was always followed by the Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky who spent 12 years in prisons, labour camps and psychiatric hospitals. He explained his choices in the following way: „<But why me?> wonders every person in a crowd. All alone, I am powerless. And thus, all of them are lost. <If it won\u2019t be me, who will it be?> wonders the cornered man. And he saves them all. This is how man starts building his own castle.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Such castles were erected by the founders of Helsinki groups in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania or the signatories of „Charter 77” in Czechoslovakia, all of whom often spoke up together in support of the common cause. In Poland there were the members of the Workers\u2019 Defence Committee, Movement for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights, Free Trade Unions, Student Committees of Solidarity, Committees for the Self-Defence of Peasants, Confederation of Independent Poland, publishers of such samizdat journals as: „Kronika Wydarze\u0144 Bie\u017c\u0105cych” [Chronicle of Current Events], „Kronika Ko\u015bcio\u0142a Katolickiego na Litwie” [Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania] and „Ukrai\u0144skie Wie\u015bci” [Ukrainian News] as well as numerous independent Polish publishing houses, notably the Niezale\u017cna Oficyna Wydawnicza [Independent Publishing House], all of which used free speech to crush the wall of lies. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The power of truth was witnessed first-hand by the millions of people who rallied during John Paul II\u2019s pilgrimage to Poland in June 1979 when he cited the shared, centuries-old heritage of Christianity \u2013 Europe\u2019s „eastern lung\u201d including Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia and Lithuania.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

A dozen or so months later, all eyes turned to Poland. In the summer of 1980, Gdansk and Szczecin, the same cities where strikes erupted ten years before, became the leading centres of the emerging „Solidarity” movement. One of the first demands made on the Polish Coast was to erect monuments commemorating those who were killed in December 1970. Unveiled on the tenth anniversary of the rebellion, the three powerful, over-forty-metre-high Gdansk crosses with anchors on top have remained one of the city symbols.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The words of a December song from 1970 were coming true: „Mothers do not cry, it is not in vain \/ A black ribbon’s flying over the shipyard today \/ For bread, freedom and a new Poland \/ Janek Wi\u015bniewski fell.” Janek Wi\u015bniewski\u2019s real name was Zbigniew Godlewski and he was an eighteen-year-old student shot dead in Gdynia. The picture of his body carried on a door with bloodied white-and-red flags at the head of a protest march became a symbol of December 1970.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The emerging „new Poland” brought hope to other nations enslaved by Moscow. It was already during the August strikes of 1980 that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sent greetings to Polish workers: „I admire your spirit and dignity. You are setting a wonderful example to all nations living under the yoke of communism.” <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

„Solidarity” was aware that it crowned the struggle to resist communism carried out not only in Poland, but also in the entire Soviet bloc and that the fight continued. Hence, in the summer of 1981, during a convention of „Solidarity”, which had almost 10 million members at the time, a message was sent to the working people of Eastern Europe to ensure them that „we are deeply aware of our shared history.” Even though it triggered a hysterical reaction in Moscow, the document provided moral support to all those who, undeterred, had held up the banner of freedom for years. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The feeling of shared history also motivated the many words of consolation and encouragement after the introduction of martial law in Poland in 1981. Russian writers such as Vladimir Bukovsky, Vladimir Maksimov, Viktor Nekrasov and Natalya Gorbanevskaya were again proud to cite the „slogan born a hundred and fifty years ago during the Polish uprising of 1830: <For our freedom and yours!> Long live free and independent Poland! Long live \u00bbSolidarity\u00ab!”. Similar voices were heard from the representatives of other nations in the Soviet empire: Czechs and Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians and Belarusians\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

It was specifically moving to read the words sent by the imprisoned Ukrainian dissident Vasyl Stus tortured to death in 1985 in the Soviet labour camp in Perm: „It is so uplifting to see Polish defiance in the face of Soviet despotism (\u2026). Poland sets an example to Ukraine (\u2026). Poland opens a new era in the totalitarian world to prepare its downfall. I wish all the best to the Polish fighters, hoping that the police state will not put out the holy fire of freedom on the 13 December.” Indeed, the fire kept growing and soon brought freedom to millions of people in the Soviet empire.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Author: Jaros\u0142aw Szarek, President the Institute of National Remembrance<\/p>\n

The text is published simultaneously with the Polish journal of opinion „Wszystko Co Najwa\u017cniejsze” as part of the project „We are telling the world about Poland”.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ignazio Silone, the Italian socialist writer who had been seduced by communism years before, wrote: „Their struggle shall not be in vain as there is a lot to suggest that it has sent reverberations as far as Rostock and K\u00f6nigsberg.” Although it would be hard to measure the impact of December 1970 in neighbouring countries, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":6209,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-istorie"],"yoast_head":"\nWe are deeply aware of our shared history - Instytut Polski w Bukareszcie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"pl_PL\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"We are deeply aware of our shared history - Instytut Polski w Bukareszcie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ignazio Silone, the Italian socialist writer who had been seduced by communism years before, wrote: „Their struggle shall not be in vain as there is a lot to suggest that it has sent reverberations as far as Rostock and K\u00f6nigsberg.” Although it would be hard to measure the impact of December 1970 in neighbouring countries, […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Instytut Polski w Bukareszcie\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-12-13T01:44:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-02-10T12:07:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"667\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"rutkowskip\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Napisane przez\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"rutkowskip\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Szacowany czas czytania\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minut\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"event\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/\",\"name\":\"We are deeply aware of our shared history\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":[\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2-200x300.jpg\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg\",\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg\"],\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-12-13T01:44:00+02:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-02-10T12:07:46+02:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/#\/schema\/person\/980fdccff6ea3f1cab069becadecca5b\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/\"]}],\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"startDate\":\"2020-12-13\",\"endDate\":\"2020-12-13\",\"eventStatus\":\"EventScheduled\",\"eventAttendanceMode\":\"OfflineEventAttendanceMode\",\"location\":{\"@type\":\"place\",\"name\":\"\",\"address\":\"\",\"geo\":{\"@type\":\"GeoCoordinates\",\"latitude\":\"\",\"longitude\":\"\"}},\"description\":\"Ignazio Silone, the Italian socialist writer who had been seduced by communism years before, wrote: \\\"Their struggle shall not be in vain as there is a lot to suggest that it has sent reverberations as far as Rostock and K\u00f6nigsberg.\\\" Although it would be hard to measure the impact of December 1970 in neighbouring countries, it is certain that each rebellion left its mark \u2013 what started as a small scratch on the monolith of the Soviet empire would develop into a deepening fissure, albeit not immediately visible.\\nThe awareness of common history shared by the nations behind the Iron Curtain is imprinted in many moving memories. In the autumn of 1956, Polish freedom protests awakened Hungarian dreams of independence. When those dreams were being crushed by Soviet tanks in Budapest, Poland responded with a wave of aid, medicines and blood, offering words of comfort and support. \\nTo this day, consciences are stirred by the gesture of eight Russian dissidents who were the only ones to rally in Moscow\u2019s Red Square in August 1968. They were arrested at once, put on trial and then spent the following years behind bars and in forced labour camps. They protested against the suppression of the Prague Spring, a Czech and Slovak push for freedom that was quashed by almost a quarter of a million Soviet soldiers supported by troops from the Polish People\u2019s Republic, German Democratic Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria. It was then that Natalya Gorbanevskaya unfurled a banner with the words \\\"For our freedom and yours.\\\" The slogan appeared for the first time in Poland during the November Uprising of 1830\u20131831 when it was written on banners in Polish and Russian. It accompanied our struggle for freedom on many occasions thereafter to acquire a new meaning at the end of the twentieth century.\\nThis act of defiance carried out by a handful of Russians \u2013 lost in the sea of almost 250 million indifferent or hostile Soviet citizens \u2013 was as important as the strike of the thousands of Russian workers in Novocherkassk in June 1962 that was ended by volleys of machine-gun fire. It marked out the road that was taken in each of the nations within the Soviet empire by those few unbowed people who reached for the \\\"simplest, most-accessible key to our deliverance which is NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN THE LIE! Should the lie come to the world, should it dominate everything, let us stick to the minimum: let it reign supreme but NOT THROUGH ME!\\\" to quote the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author of the Gulag Archipelago and Nobel Prize laureate. \\nThe road that was \\\"hard on the body, but the only one for the soul\\\" was always followed by the Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky who spent 12 years in prisons, labour camps and psychiatric hospitals. He explained his choices in the following way: \\\"<But why me?> wonders every person in a crowd. All alone, I am powerless. And thus, all of them are lost. <If it won\u2019t be me, who will it be?> wonders the cornered man. And he saves them all. This is how man starts building his own castle.\\\"\\nSuch castles were erected by the founders of Helsinki groups in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania or the signatories of \\\"Charter 77\\\" in Czechoslovakia, all of whom often spoke up together in support of the common cause. In Poland there were the members of the Workers\u2019 Defence Committee, Movement for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights, Free Trade Unions, Student Committees of Solidarity, Committees for the Self-Defence of Peasants, Confederation of Independent Poland, publishers of such samizdat journals as: \\\"Kronika Wydarze\u0144 Bie\u017c\u0105cych\\\" [Chronicle of Current Events], \\\"Kronika Ko\u015bcio\u0142a Katolickiego na Litwie\\\" [Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania] and \\\"Ukrai\u0144skie Wie\u015bci\\\" [Ukrainian News] as well as numerous independent Polish publishing houses, notably the Niezale\u017cna Oficyna Wydawnicza [Independent Publishing House], all of which used free speech to crush the wall of lies. \\nThe power of truth was witnessed first-hand by the millions of people who rallied during John Paul II\u2019s pilgrimage to Poland in June 1979 when he cited the shared, centuries-old heritage of Christianity \u2013 Europe\u2019s \\\"eastern lung\u201d including Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia and Lithuania.\\nA dozen or so months later, all eyes turned to Poland. In the summer of 1980, Gdansk and Szczecin, the same cities where strikes erupted ten years before, became the leading centres of the emerging \\\"Solidarity\\\" movement. One of the first demands made on the Polish Coast was to erect monuments commemorating those who were killed in December 1970. Unveiled on the tenth anniversary of the rebellion, the three powerful, over-forty-metre-high Gdansk crosses with anchors on top have remained one of the city symbols.\\nThe words of a December song from 1970 were coming true: \\\"Mothers do not cry, it is not in vain \/ A black ribbon's flying over the shipyard today \/ For bread, freedom and a new Poland \/ Janek Wi\u015bniewski fell.\\\" Janek Wi\u015bniewski\u2019s real name was Zbigniew Godlewski and he was an eighteen-year-old student shot dead in Gdynia. The picture of his body carried on a door with bloodied white-and-red flags at the head of a protest march became a symbol of December 1970.\\nThe emerging \\\"new Poland\\\" brought hope to other nations enslaved by Moscow. It was already during the August strikes of 1980 that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sent greetings to Polish workers: \\\"I admire your spirit and dignity. You are setting a wonderful example to all nations living under the yoke of communism.\\\" \\n\\\"Solidarity\\\" was aware that it crowned the struggle to resist communism carried out not only in Poland, but also in the entire Soviet bloc and that the fight continued. Hence, in the summer of 1981, during a convention of \\\"Solidarity\\\", which had almost 10 million members at the time, a message was sent to the working people of Eastern Europe to ensure them that \\\"we are deeply aware of our shared history.\\\" Even though it triggered a hysterical reaction in Moscow, the document provided moral support to all those who, undeterred, had held up the banner of freedom for years. \\nThe feeling of shared history also motivated the many words of consolation and encouragement after the introduction of martial law in Poland in 1981. Russian writers such as Vladimir Bukovsky, Vladimir Maksimov, Viktor Nekrasov and Natalya Gorbanevskaya were again proud to cite the \\\"slogan born a hundred and fifty years ago during the Polish uprising of 1830: <For our freedom and yours!> Long live free and independent Poland! Long live \u00bbSolidarity\u00ab!\\\". Similar voices were heard from the representatives of other nations in the Soviet empire: Czechs and Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians and Belarusians\u2026\\nIt was specifically moving to read the words sent by the imprisoned Ukrainian dissident Vasyl Stus tortured to death in 1985 in the Soviet labour camp in Perm: \\\"It is so uplifting to see Polish defiance in the face of Soviet despotism (\u2026). Poland sets an example to Ukraine (\u2026). Poland opens a new era in the totalitarian world to prepare its downfall. I wish all the best to the Polish fighters, hoping that the police state will not put out the holy fire of freedom on the 13 December.\\\" Indeed, the fire kept growing and soon brought freedom to millions of people in the Soviet empire.\\nAuthor: Jaros\u0142aw Szarek, President the Institute of National Remembrance\\nThe text is published simultaneously with the Polish journal of opinion \\\"Wszystko Co Najwa\u017cniejsze\\\" as part of the project \\\"We are telling the world about Poland\\\".\\n \"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg\",\"width\":667,\"height\":1000},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"We are deeply aware of our shared history\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/\",\"name\":\"Instytut Polski w Bukareszcie\",\"description\":\"Instytuty Polskie\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/#\/schema\/person\/980fdccff6ea3f1cab069becadecca5b\",\"name\":\"rutkowskip\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"pl-PL\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a44cb0329dc71f58530e0890a10f5e4d?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a44cb0329dc71f58530e0890a10f5e4d?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"rutkowskip\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/author\/rutkowskip\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"We are deeply aware of our shared history - Instytut Polski w Bukareszcie","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/","og_locale":"pl_PL","og_type":"article","og_title":"We are deeply aware of our shared history - Instytut Polski w Bukareszcie","og_description":"Ignazio Silone, the Italian socialist writer who had been seduced by communism years before, wrote: „Their struggle shall not be in vain as there is a lot to suggest that it has sent reverberations as far as Rostock and K\u00f6nigsberg.” Although it would be hard to measure the impact of December 1970 in neighbouring countries, […]","og_url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/","og_site_name":"Instytut Polski w Bukareszcie","article_published_time":"2020-12-13T01:44:00+00:00","article_modified_time":"2022-02-10T12:07:46+00:00","og_image":[{"width":667,"height":1000,"url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"rutkowskip","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Napisane przez":"rutkowskip","Szacowany czas czytania":"8 minut"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"event","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/","name":"We are deeply aware of our shared history","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/#primaryimage"},"image":["https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2-200x300.jpg","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg","https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg"],"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg","datePublished":"2020-12-13T01:44:00+02:00","dateModified":"2022-02-10T12:07:46+02:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/#\/schema\/person\/980fdccff6ea3f1cab069becadecca5b"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"pl-PL","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/"]}],"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","startDate":"2020-12-13","endDate":"2020-12-13","eventStatus":"EventScheduled","eventAttendanceMode":"OfflineEventAttendanceMode","location":{"@type":"place","name":"","address":"","geo":{"@type":"GeoCoordinates","latitude":"","longitude":""}},"description":"Ignazio Silone, the Italian socialist writer who had been seduced by communism years before, wrote: \"Their struggle shall not be in vain as there is a lot to suggest that it has sent reverberations as far as Rostock and K\u00f6nigsberg.\" Although it would be hard to measure the impact of December 1970 in neighbouring countries, it is certain that each rebellion left its mark \u2013 what started as a small scratch on the monolith of the Soviet empire would develop into a deepening fissure, albeit not immediately visible.\nThe awareness of common history shared by the nations behind the Iron Curtain is imprinted in many moving memories. In the autumn of 1956, Polish freedom protests awakened Hungarian dreams of independence. When those dreams were being crushed by Soviet tanks in Budapest, Poland responded with a wave of aid, medicines and blood, offering words of comfort and support. \nTo this day, consciences are stirred by the gesture of eight Russian dissidents who were the only ones to rally in Moscow\u2019s Red Square in August 1968. They were arrested at once, put on trial and then spent the following years behind bars and in forced labour camps. They protested against the suppression of the Prague Spring, a Czech and Slovak push for freedom that was quashed by almost a quarter of a million Soviet soldiers supported by troops from the Polish People\u2019s Republic, German Democratic Republic, Hungary and Bulgaria. It was then that Natalya Gorbanevskaya unfurled a banner with the words \"For our freedom and yours.\" The slogan appeared for the first time in Poland during the November Uprising of 1830\u20131831 when it was written on banners in Polish and Russian. It accompanied our struggle for freedom on many occasions thereafter to acquire a new meaning at the end of the twentieth century.\nThis act of defiance carried out by a handful of Russians \u2013 lost in the sea of almost 250 million indifferent or hostile Soviet citizens \u2013 was as important as the strike of the thousands of Russian workers in Novocherkassk in June 1962 that was ended by volleys of machine-gun fire. It marked out the road that was taken in each of the nations within the Soviet empire by those few unbowed people who reached for the \"simplest, most-accessible key to our deliverance which is NOT TO PARTICIPATE IN THE LIE! Should the lie come to the world, should it dominate everything, let us stick to the minimum: let it reign supreme but NOT THROUGH ME!\" to quote the words of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the author of the Gulag Archipelago and Nobel Prize laureate. \nThe road that was \"hard on the body, but the only one for the soul\" was always followed by the Russian dissident Vladimir Bukovsky who spent 12 years in prisons, labour camps and psychiatric hospitals. He explained his choices in the following way: \"<But why me?> wonders every person in a crowd. All alone, I am powerless. And thus, all of them are lost. <If it won\u2019t be me, who will it be?> wonders the cornered man. And he saves them all. This is how man starts building his own castle.\"\nSuch castles were erected by the founders of Helsinki groups in Russia, Ukraine and Lithuania or the signatories of \"Charter 77\" in Czechoslovakia, all of whom often spoke up together in support of the common cause. In Poland there were the members of the Workers\u2019 Defence Committee, Movement for the Defence of Human and Civil Rights, Free Trade Unions, Student Committees of Solidarity, Committees for the Self-Defence of Peasants, Confederation of Independent Poland, publishers of such samizdat journals as: \"Kronika Wydarze\u0144 Bie\u017c\u0105cych\" [Chronicle of Current Events], \"Kronika Ko\u015bcio\u0142a Katolickiego na Litwie\" [Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania] and \"Ukrai\u0144skie Wie\u015bci\" [Ukrainian News] as well as numerous independent Polish publishing houses, notably the Niezale\u017cna Oficyna Wydawnicza [Independent Publishing House], all of which used free speech to crush the wall of lies. \nThe power of truth was witnessed first-hand by the millions of people who rallied during John Paul II\u2019s pilgrimage to Poland in June 1979 when he cited the shared, centuries-old heritage of Christianity \u2013 Europe\u2019s \"eastern lung\u201d including Croatia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Russia and Lithuania.\nA dozen or so months later, all eyes turned to Poland. In the summer of 1980, Gdansk and Szczecin, the same cities where strikes erupted ten years before, became the leading centres of the emerging \"Solidarity\" movement. One of the first demands made on the Polish Coast was to erect monuments commemorating those who were killed in December 1970. Unveiled on the tenth anniversary of the rebellion, the three powerful, over-forty-metre-high Gdansk crosses with anchors on top have remained one of the city symbols.\nThe words of a December song from 1970 were coming true: \"Mothers do not cry, it is not in vain \/ A black ribbon's flying over the shipyard today \/ For bread, freedom and a new Poland \/ Janek Wi\u015bniewski fell.\" Janek Wi\u015bniewski\u2019s real name was Zbigniew Godlewski and he was an eighteen-year-old student shot dead in Gdynia. The picture of his body carried on a door with bloodied white-and-red flags at the head of a protest march became a symbol of December 1970.\nThe emerging \"new Poland\" brought hope to other nations enslaved by Moscow. It was already during the August strikes of 1980 that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn sent greetings to Polish workers: \"I admire your spirit and dignity. You are setting a wonderful example to all nations living under the yoke of communism.\" \n\"Solidarity\" was aware that it crowned the struggle to resist communism carried out not only in Poland, but also in the entire Soviet bloc and that the fight continued. Hence, in the summer of 1981, during a convention of \"Solidarity\", which had almost 10 million members at the time, a message was sent to the working people of Eastern Europe to ensure them that \"we are deeply aware of our shared history.\" Even though it triggered a hysterical reaction in Moscow, the document provided moral support to all those who, undeterred, had held up the banner of freedom for years. \nThe feeling of shared history also motivated the many words of consolation and encouragement after the introduction of martial law in Poland in 1981. Russian writers such as Vladimir Bukovsky, Vladimir Maksimov, Viktor Nekrasov and Natalya Gorbanevskaya were again proud to cite the \"slogan born a hundred and fifty years ago during the Polish uprising of 1830: <For our freedom and yours!> Long live free and independent Poland! Long live \u00bbSolidarity\u00ab!\". Similar voices were heard from the representatives of other nations in the Soviet empire: Czechs and Slovaks, Hungarians, Romanians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Ukrainians and Belarusians\u2026\nIt was specifically moving to read the words sent by the imprisoned Ukrainian dissident Vasyl Stus tortured to death in 1985 in the Soviet labour camp in Perm: \"It is so uplifting to see Polish defiance in the face of Soviet despotism (\u2026). Poland sets an example to Ukraine (\u2026). Poland opens a new era in the totalitarian world to prepare its downfall. I wish all the best to the Polish fighters, hoping that the police state will not put out the holy fire of freedom on the 13 December.\" Indeed, the fire kept growing and soon brought freedom to millions of people in the Soviet empire.\nAuthor: Jaros\u0142aw Szarek, President the Institute of National Remembrance\nThe text is published simultaneously with the Polish journal of opinion \"Wszystko Co Najwa\u017cniejsze\" as part of the project \"We are telling the world about Poland\".\n "},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"pl-PL","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2020\/12\/Jaroslaw-Szarek-2.jpg","width":667,"height":1000},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/2020\/12\/13\/we-are-deeply-aware-of-our-shared-history\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"We are deeply aware of our shared history"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/#website","url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/","name":"Instytut Polski w Bukareszcie","description":"Instytuty Polskie","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"pl-PL"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/#\/schema\/person\/980fdccff6ea3f1cab069becadecca5b","name":"rutkowskip","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"pl-PL","@id":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a44cb0329dc71f58530e0890a10f5e4d?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/a44cb0329dc71f58530e0890a10f5e4d?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"rutkowskip"},"url":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/author\/rutkowskip\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6208"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6208\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7656,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6208\/revisions\/7656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/instytutpolski.pl\/bucuresti\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}