As the battle for history rages between Moscow and Warsaw, an exhibition showing how Poland turned the page on communist rule twenty years ago is taking place in Brussels.

Europarl Today: Polish history in the making

An exhibition tells   the history of the Polish movement

which led to the first non-communist   government east of the Iron Curtain,

as Tadeusz Mazowiecki, first Prime   Minister, testifies:

We had to take this brave step   without taking too dangerous a risk

to make possible what   politicians thought impossible.

Using images the exhibition shows the   various stages between 1945 and 1989,

marking the history of   Soviet-occupied Poland until its liberation,

such as the 1983 Nobel Prize awarded to   trade-union leader Lech Wałęsa.

The history of Poland and its neighbours   following the same route to independence

up to the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1991   is shown.

We know what happened after the first   non-communist government in Poland:

a great revolution, the fall of the Berlin   Wall, Bulgaria, Romania,

the opening of the   Austro-Hungarian border...

And miraculously, 3 Baltic States, former   parts of the USSR were free.

Twenty years on, Jerzy Buzek, an   ex-opponent to the Communist regime,

is now President   of the European Parliament

whilst most of the former USSR   satellite states joined the EU.