WARSAW — "Poland — ten years, Hungary — ten months, East Germany — ten weeks, Czechoslovakia — ten days."
So chirped many in Prague in November 1989, reflecting the pride and the joy of the Velvet Revolution, but also the sustained effort that was needed to end communism, whose demise began in Warsaw the previous February.
Indeed, communism's breakdown had begun 10 years earlier in Poland during Pope John Paul II's first pilgrimage to his homeland, a visit that shook communist rule to its foundation. Within a year, Polish workers were striking for the right to establish independent trade unions, staging two weeks of sit-ins at state-owned factories to achieve their goal. Karl Marx would have been proud of them, but it was the pope's portrait that hung on the gate of Gdansk's Lenin Shipyard during the strike.