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Solidarity

(Encyclopedia)Solidarity, Polish independent trade union federation formed in Sept., 1980. Led by Lech Wałęsa, it grew rapidly in size and political power and soon posed a threat to Poland's Communist government ...

Jaruzelski, Wojciech Witold

(Encyclopedia)Jaruzelski, Wojciech Witold vōĭˈchĕkh vēˈtōld yäro͞ozĕlˈo͞oskē [key], 1923–2014, Polish military and political leader. His family fled the 1939 German invasion to Lithuania, and were de...

Wałęsa, Lech

(Encyclopedia)Wałęsa, Lech lĕkh väwĕnˈzə [key], 1943–, Polish labor and political leader. He worked as an electrician at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk but was dismissed in 1976 for his antigovernment prote...

Mazowiecki, Tadeusz

(Encyclopedia)Mazowiecki, Tadeusz tädāˈo͞osh mäzōvēĕtˈskē [key], 1927–2013, Polish journalist and political leader, prime minister of Poland (Aug., 1989– Jan., 1991). He attended Warsaw Univ. and from...

Castex, Jean

(Encyclopedia)Castex, Jean, 1965–, French government official and political leader. A member of the center-right Republicans (and its predecessor, the Union for a Popular Movement), Castex has held a variety of c...

Matovič, Igor

(Encyclopedia)Matovič, Igor, 1973–, Slovakian political leader. A businessman before he entered politics, he founded a publishing house that acquired control of a number of regional newspapers and also invested ...

Chartier, Alain

(Encyclopedia)Chartier, Alain älăNˈ shärtyāˈ [key], b. c.1385, d. c.1433, French writer, secretary to Charles VII. His most popular work was the love poem La Belle Dame sans mercy (1424), which provided Keats...

Morawiecki, Mateusz Jakub

(Encyclopedia)Morawiecki, Mateusz Jakub, 1968–, Polish economist, banker, and political leader, b. Wrocław, grad. Univ. of Wroclaw, 1992, Wrocław Univ. of Science and Technology, 1993, M.B.A. Wrocław Univ. of ...

ceremony

(Encyclopedia)ceremony, expression of shared feelings and attitudes through more or less formally ordered actions of an essentially symbolic nature performed on appropriate occasions. A ceremony involves stereotype...

Tusk, Donald

(Encyclopedia)Tusk, Donald to͞osk [key], 1957–, Polish political leader, prime minister of Poland (2007–14), b. Gdańsk. After studying history at Gdańsk Univ., he became active in the Solidarity movement in ...

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