The gaunt, gentlemanly Mazowiecki had served as an adviser to Lech Wałęsa, the leader of the Solidarity movement. He had seen the movement swell to more than nine million members in the heady days after the August 1980 Gdansk Shipyard strike – and, like the rest of the movement’s leadership, had been interned when General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law and banned Solidarity 16 months later.