Countdown to freedom: John Paul II’s place in history 

"How many divisions does the pope have?"

Joseph Stalin's famous rhetorical question, asked during the Potsdam conference in 1945, came as a contemptuous reaction to Winston Churchill who remarked that the communist takeover in Poland was not to the Pope's taste.

The real answer to Stalin's question came much later however, years after the Soviet dictator’s death, when the entire Polish nation lined up behind the Pope.

To be sure, the flurry of events that took place in Poland in the 80’s and in Eastern Europe in 1989, would not have taken place without John Paul II’s catalyst role.

Janusz Reykowski, a sociologist who was a former representative of the communist regime and a protagonist of the so-called Polish 'Round Table' in the spring of 1989, says that "the first brick of the Berlin Wall" was removed by John Paul II during his first visit to Warsaw in his new capacity in 1979.

"For the first time such huge masses of people have organised themselves, they gathered together under their own banners. For the first time, they noticed 'How numerous we are!'. The events in the 1980's -- the strikes in Gdansk and the beginning of Solidarność -- were "the consequences of the changes in people’s mentality," Reykowski explains in the book 'Historia ruszyła z kopyta' ("History was off like a shot").

Michael Reagan, the son of the former US-president, says "the Berlin Wall came crashing down and Eastern Europe came out from behind the Iron Curtain" thanks to Pope John Paul II, his father Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher – "the phalanx that drove a spike through the heart of Soviet tyranny."

"Pope John Paul II had no military divisions, but he had a huge army of people yearning for freedom who responded to his message that united they could prevail over a master who commanded vast military forces. Those forces eventually proved helpless in the face of the people’s determination and will," Michael Reagan writes, remembering the famous Stalin phrase.

Citizens remember Pope's election

Agata Stachowiak, a 47-year old Warsaw citizen, remembers the 16th of October 1978 very well. On that day, Karol Wojtyła, the cardinal of Cracow, unexpectedly got elected to become the Vatican's supreme pontiff. "Everyone in the streets was happy," she recalls. "But the faces of TV-speakers were different – they were as sad as they had to report on a funeral".

Indeed, this turned out to be the beginning of the end for Soviet communism. Lech Wałęsa, the former Solidarność leader and the first non-communist Polish president after the war, said in an interview with the website Europolityka.pl that the Holy Father influenced the nation’s revival "by 50%".

But in in 1979, there were no revolutionary words, says Tomasz Lorek, a young student at the time. Like a majority of Poles, Lorek mostly  remembers one sentence from the Pope. Staying in front of a cheering crowd at the – nomen omen – Victory Place in Warsaw, the Holy Father prayed: "May your spirit come down and renew the face of the earth. This earth."

Shortly after that the Pope flew back to the Vatican. The communists in Poland and in the Soviet Union breathed freely. But the Pope's phrase had sunk deep into Polish souls.

Birth of Solidarność

Lech Wałęsa remembers these days very well too: "Almost the entire nation took part in these meetings. The Pope didn’t say 'Overthrow communism', but he was so suggestive that we began to think. Until the Holy Father came, I could only succeed to find 5-10 people to fight communism. In a 40-million people country. And then, suddenly, after the Pope's pilgrimage to Poland, I was able to gather 10 million people in a single year," Wałęsa said.

Jan Górski from Warsaw was 57 when almost every adult wanted to join Solidarność, the trade union led by Wałęsa. "After decades, we started to gain hope again," remembers Górski, a former Polish soldier who fought during World War II against the German army in France and Italy.

In the fall of 1980, Solidarność, the first non-communist trade union in Eastern Europe and the only opposition force, was born. John Paul II was already far away in the Vatican but he watched the events very closely.

"Maybe the moment has arrived," he told his private secretary Stanisław Dziwisz, watching the masses of workers in the Gdańsk 'Lenin Shipyard'.

After a while John Paul II added: "There was never something like that! The workers react in the interest of a rightly affair, they protest against the governments labour law abuse. They do it peacefully! By praying!"

Cardinal Dziwisz, who described his time by the pope’s side in the book Testimony, noticed: "I can remember that the Holy Father breathed freely. He was very pleased not only because of the positive effect of negotiations [between the communist government and Solidarność] but also because they have been achieved in a peaceful way, without bloodshed. He admired the way that the workers, aware of their force and rights, conducted this battle for freedom."

Destabilisation attempts

No wonder then that the Pope started attracting antipathy. 

On 13 May 1981, Ali Agca, a Turkish terrorist, fired at John Paul II. Agata Stachowiak was attending her Russian classes at Poznan's Economical University that afternoon. Suddenly their lecturer got a phone call, stared at the class in shock and told them about the the assassination attempt in the Vatican. Everyone, including the lecturer, left the university immediately and headed for the nearest church. The huge Dominican monastery was already crowded, she recalls.

On 13 December 1981, the communists led by General Wojciech Jaruzelski attempted to crush the democratisation process, introducing martial law and outlawing Solidarność.

Meanwhile Ronald Reagan’s economical sanctions on Poland had led to the disintegration of the Polish economy. And East-West relations were tense over the US military programme known as Star Wars.

But then, the Kremlin decided to push forward a young apparatchik as first secretary. Mikhail Gorbachev proclaimed the 'Glasnost' and 'Perestroika'. Already some saw the green light for further developments.

In the end of the 1980's, the Polish economy was in such a bad condition that the government decided to seek the opposition’s support for reforms.

Solidarność was allowed back into legality and its charismatic leader Lech Wałęsa became persona grata again. Aleksander Kwaśniewski, the former Polish president, is convinced that the Polish 'Round Table' held in the spring of 1989 was "phenomenal". Kwaśniewski took part in this unprecedented event, when the representatives of the communist government negotiated the political changes with the representatives of Solidarność.

Point of no return

In an interview with EurActiv.pl last year, Kwaśniewski, who was still in government at the time, said: "I don’t know what kind of bigger words I should use to describe what happened in Poland then. Voilà, that’s Poland, the world master in defeated revolutions and uprisings, carrying out a peaceful transformation that ends the undemocratic system and changes it into a democratic one. There was no revolution, no uprising but talks and a successful transformation."

The direct result of the 'Round Table' was the half-democratic election of 4 June 1989, when Solidarność won all possible seats in the parliament. It was the last call for Polish communists to realise that there was no return to their one-party regime.

In November 1989, Poland was already on the way to regain its whole sovereignty. The former Solidarność activist Tadeusz Mazowiecki and then Prime Minister welcomed German chancellor Helmut Kohl during his visit to Poland. He also accompanied him to the airport when Kohl was urgently called back to Berlin where the first tangible bricks were taken out of the Berlin Wall. 

In his Warsaw hotel, Kohl cried, watching the Berlin Wall collapse.