Candles in Solidarity

This time 31 years ago, December 23, 1981, President Ronald Reagan delivered a moving Oval Office address to the nation. The subject was Christmas and events in Poland.

As to Poland, martial law had been imposed by the communist government in coordination with Moscow. Poles were aghast, as was Ronald Reagan.

Reagan, in the words of NSC official Richard Pipes, was “livid.”He immediately sought to assist the Polish people in any way he could. At that very moment, Reagan committed to save and sustain Poland’s Solidarity movement as the wedge that could splinter the entire Soviet bloc. That effort included many actions inside and outside Poland, too numerous to detail here, but one of the earliest relates to Christmas 1981.

Read more at the American Spectator