The end of World War II and the onset of the Cold War, which saw the super powers of the United States and the Soviet Union at odds, brought a dark night to eastern Europe, which almost overnight seemed to come under the control of the Soviets and their ideology of Communism. The Iron Curtain, as it came to be known, seemed impenetrable. In 1980, however, at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, some brave workers, seeking rights and freedom, provided the catalyst to bring this dark night to an end.

The Independent Self-Governing Trade Union — or, as it was better known, "Solidarity" — formed in the summer of 1980. Initially organized to protest the government's raising of meat prices, the union, under the leadership of Lech Walesa, quickly became a broad anti-Communist movement and was a…