Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Poland's first post-communist PM, dies aged 86
Tributes poured in for the shy former dissident intellectual who was famously photographed making a victory sign in August 1989 after his appointment by the Soviet-backed Polish president, General Wojciech Jaruzelski.
Polish statesman Tadeusz Mazowiecki, whose appointment as the first non-communist prime minister in the Soviet bloc helped usher in democratic change across eastern Europe, died yesterday aged 86.
Tributes poured in for the shy former dissident intellectual who was famously photographed making a victory sign in August 1989 after his appointment by the Soviet-backed Polish president, General Wojciech Jaruzelski.
By the end of that year, the Berlin Wall had fallen, communist regimes in Moscow's other satellite states had collapsed and the Cold War division of the continent was over.
"It is a shame that such a person has passed away," Lech Walesa, who replaced Jaruzelski as Poland's first post-war non-communist head of state in 1990, told public broadcaster TVP.
"Polish democracy is failing a bit these days and we could do with him here, but it seems he is also needed on the other side," added Walesa, a devout Catholic.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who grew up in communist East Germany, praised Mazowiecki for his contribution to the reunification of Europe and of Germany.
"With his tireless dedication to freedom and self-determination, he made an unforgettable contribution to overcoming authority and injustice and also to unifying Europe," Merkel said.
"As prime minister of Poland at a time when Germany was undergoing big changes, he promoted and supported both the fall of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of our country."
Jaruzelski, 90, also praised his old adversary Mazowiecki, with whom he negotiated Poland's transition from a one-party state in the "Round Table Talks" that led to partially free elections in June 1989 won by the Solidarity trade union.
"I have always admired his calmness, his resoluteness and his decisiveness," Jaruzelski told news channel TVP Info.
Poland's current president, Bronislaw Komorowski, also paid tribute to Mazowiecki's "wise and calm will", saying he had set the course for Poland's democratic transformation.
Mazowiecki oversaw Poland's "shock therapy" reforms, he said, and sought to improve ties with western Europe.
