Key Figures of the 20th Century: Wałęsa, Allende, Gorbachev
Lech Wałęsa: A Polish Leader
Lech Wałęsa was born on 29 September 1943 in Popowo, Poland, the son of a carpenter. He attended primary and vocational training before entering the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk as an electrical technician in 1967. In 1969, he married Danuta Gołoś, and the couple had eight children.
He was a member of the committee during the illegal strike in the Gdańsk shipyard in 1970. After the bloody end to the strike, which resulted in the deaths of approximately 80 workers by riot police, Wałęsa was arrested and convicted for “antisocial behavior,” spending a year in prison.
There are claims suggesting collaboration between Wałęsa and the Polish communist secret services in the seventies, before his move to the opposition, according to a book edited by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) in 2008. However, it should be noted that, due to political reasons, many accusations have been made against politicians in Poland. This charge is not widely accepted by the public.
In 1976, Wałęsa lost his job at the shipyard in Gdańsk for collecting signatures for a petition to build a memorial for the workers killed. Due to his inclusion on an informal blacklist, he could not find another job and was supported for a time by close personal friends.
The Six-Day War: A Turning Point
After the Suez Crisis (1956), UN peacekeepers separated Egyptian and Israeli troops, creating a very unstable peace. During this time, the two superpowers consolidated their positions in the Middle East.
On 18 May 1967, Nasser requested that the then-UN Secretary-General, U Thant, withdraw UN forces stationed on Egyptian territory. In an atmosphere of increasing tension, Egypt received Soviet support and other Arab countries, while the U.S. strongly supported Israel.
Israel ended the tension by launching a surprise attack on 5 June 1967. The war was swift and decisive for the Israeli army. The Egyptian Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the West Bank, the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Syrian Golan Heights fell into Israel’s hands in just six days. The territory occupied by the Jewish state grew from just over 20,000 square kilometers to 102,400. Despite protests from the UN and the disagreement of the great powers, the Israeli Parliament on 23 June agreed to annex the Arab part of Jerusalem.
Salvador Allende: A Chilean Socialist
Salvador Allende Gossens (Valparaiso, June 26, 1908 – Santiago, 11 September 1973) was a Chilean socialist doctor and politician.
Allende was a prominent politician from his university studies at the University of Chile. He served as deputy minister of Health in the government of Pedro Aguirre Cerda, and as a senator from 1945 to 1970, serving as chair of the chamber of Congress between 1966 and 1969.
He ran for the Presidency of the Republic on four occasions: in the 1952 elections, his result was meager; in 1958, he reached the second plurality after Jorge Alessandri; in 1964, he won 38% of the vote, which was not enough to beat Eduardo Frei; and finally, in a tight three-way election, he won the first plurality of 36.3%, being elected by Congress. Thus, he became the first Marxist president in the world to come to power democratically.
Mikhail Gorbachev: Reformer of the USSR
Born on 2 March 1931 in Privolnoye (Stavropol Krai) within a peasant family. He joined the Communist Youth League in 1946 and worked for four years as an assistant operator in a wheat crop in the machine and tractor station of the locality. In 1952, he joined the Communist Party and three years later married Raisa Maksimovna Titarenko, with whom he had a daughter, Irina. That same year, he obtained his law degree at the University of Moscow. Between 1956 and 1958, he served as first secretary of the city committee of the Komsomol. Then he was elected first secretary of the Komsomol of the whole territory.
In 1962, he was promoted to chief of department of the CPSU committee of Stavropol territory. In 1966, he moved to the post of first secretary of the Party committee of the urban area. In 1967, he completed a correspondence course in the Stavropol Agricultural Institute. In 1968, he was elected second secretary of the territorial committee of the CPSU, and in 1970, he took over as the first secretary of that committee. In 1971, he joined the CPSU Central Committee. In 1978, he was elected secretary of Agriculture in the Communist Party Central Committee, and a year later, he became the youngest member of the Politburo (at age 49).