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.