When America’s Enemies Experience Domestic Unrest

By Leslie S. Lebl, AT:

In 1980, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, a joke circulated in Warsaw: “What’s the difference between Afghanistan and Poland? Answer: Afghanistan begins with an “A” and Poland with a “P”. In other words, Poland might be Western and more prosperous but, in the end, it was just as vulnerable as Afghanistan to Soviet coercion.

That joke, however, has resonance today. The summer of 1980 saw the birth of Solidarity, a unique worker’s movement within and against the “worker’s paradise” of the People’s Republic of Poland. The philosophical and psychological impact of a working class rebellion was tremendous; it was in fact fundamental to the subsequent demise of the Soviet Union.

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