BERLIN - Poland's former president Lech Walesa said ex-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was a "weak politician" and that helped the movement which led to the collapse of communism, in an interview ahead of celebrations to mark the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989.
"The first wall to fall was pushed over in 1980 in the Polish shipyards," said Walesa, 65, to Spiegel-Online, alluding to the August strikes in 1980 and the birth of Solidarity, the first independent labour union in the communist bloc.
"We defeated communism, and the people in East Germany began to flee via the embassies of other countries. The Berlin Wall fell because of these deserters," said Walesa, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.
"I was worried that Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev would decide to block the mass escape and thus destroy our victory. The game was a dangerous one. It is good that Gorbachev was a weak politician and that everything went well."
"We began mobilising the masses and Gorbachev didn't know what to do," Walesa explained, who believes "the politicians have merely toyed with the memory of the event."
Walesa and Gorbachev are both due to attend the anniversary events in the German capital on Monday, but it is uncertain who will tip the first of the thousand giant dominoes standing in Berlin to symbolise the Wall falling down.