The Pope

Many people in this country credit Ronald Reagan for ending the Cold War.  (I'm sure his previous six predecessors would have something to say about that.)  In reality, the Soviets were already on borrowed time as the 70s ended.  Two things happened in 1979 that I think signaled the beginning of the end.  In December, the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan;  and on June 2 the Pope visited Poland.

Karol Wojtyla, John Paul II, had been elected to the papacy the previous fall after the death of John Paul I, who'd only been pope himself for 33 days.  Wojtyla was the first non-Italian pope since the 16th century, a native of Poland.  (He was also the youngest in over a century.)  First ordained in the year after the war, he was elevated up to Archbishop of Poland in the early 60s and by the early 70s was in Rome in the College of Cardinals.  A fervent anti-communist, he made it a point to visit his homeland in the first year of his papacy.

He was greeted by adoring throngs when he knelt and kissed the ground upon his arrival, a gesture that would become his trademark.  His visit had been opposed by the current Polish regime, as well as by Leonid Brezhnev as being too inflammatory.  They were right.  This visit encouraged the Poles to organize and inspired many in the country to begin pushing back against the communist regime.

The next year strikes erupted first at Lublin and then in Gdansk, which would emerge as the birthplace of Solidarity.  In 1983, JPII would meet with Lech Walesa, who won the Nobel Peace Prize that year.  By 1989, Walesa would form the first non-communist government in the Soviet Bloc and the USSR itself would collapse in 1991.  The Pope's visit in 1979 proved to be a tear in the Iron Curtain that became a mortal wound.