Solidarity (, pronounced ), a Polish non-governmental trade union, was founded on August 14, 1980, at the Lenin Shipyards (now Gdańsk Shipyards) by Lech Wałęsa and others. In the early 1980s, it became the first independent labor union in an Eastern Bloc country. Solidarity gave rise to a broad, non-violent, anti-Communist social movement that, at its height, claimed some 9.4 million members. It is considered to have contributed greatly to the Revolutions of 1989.
The People's Republic of Poland attempted to destroy the union by instituting martial law on December 13 1981, followed by several years of political repression but in the end was forced into negotiation. The Roundtable Talks (February 6 to April 5 1989) between the Communist government and the Solidarity-led opposition resulted in semi-free elections of 1989. By the end of August 1989, a Solidarity-led coalition government had been formed, and Wałęsa was elected president in December 1990. This was soon followed by the dismantling of the Communist governmental system and by Poland's transformation into a modern democratic state. Solidarity's early survival represented a break in the hard-line stance of the Communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), and was an unprecedented event; not only for the People's Republic of Poland — a satellite of the Soviet Union ruled by a one-party Communist state — but for the whole of the Eastern Bloc. Solidarity's example led to the spread of anti-Communist ideas and movements throughout the Eastern Bloc, weakening Communist governments. This process later culminated in the Revolutions of 1989.
In the 1990s, Solidarity's influence on politics of Poland waned. A political arm of the Solidarity movement, Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS), was founded in 1996 and would win the 1997 Polish parliamentary election, only to lose the subsequent 2001 Polish parliamentary election. Thereafter, Solidarity had little influence as a political party, though it became the largest trade union in Poland.
Pre-1980 roots (1970s)
In the 1970s and 1980s, the initial success of Solidarity in particular, and of dissident movements in general, was fed by a deepening crisis within Soviet-influenced societies. There was declining morale and worsening economic conditions (a shortage economy). After a brief boom period, from 1975 the policies of the Polish government, led by Party First Secretary Edward Gierek, precipitated a slide into increasing depression, as foreign debt mounted. In June 1976, the first workers' strikes took place, involving violent incidents at factories in Płock, Radom and Ursus. When these incidents were quelled by the government, the worker's movement received support from intellectual dissidents, many of them associated with the Committee for Defense of the Workers (, abbreviated KOR), formed in 1976. The following year, KOR was renamed the Committee for Social Self-Defence (KSS-KOR).
On October 16, 1978, the Bishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyła, was elected Pope John Paul II. A year later, during his first pilgrimage to Poland, his masses were attended by hundreds of thousands of his countrymen. The Pope called for the respecting of national and religious traditions and advocated for freedom and human rights, while denouncing violence. To many Poles, he represented a spiritual and moral force that could be set against brute material forces, he was a bellwether of change, and became an important symbol—and supporter—of changes to come.
Early strikes (1980) Strikes did not occur merely due to problems that had emerged shortly before the labor unrest, but due to governmental and economic difficulties spanning more than a decade. In July 1980, Edward Gierek's government, facing economic crisis, decided to raise prices while slowing the growth of wages. At once there ensued a wave of strikes and factory occupations, with the biggest strikes taking place in the area of Lublin. The first strike started on July 8, 1980 in the State Aviation Works in Świdnik. Although the strike movement had no coordinating center, the workers had developed an information network to spread news of their struggle. A "dissident" group, the Workers' Defence Committee (KOR), which had originally been set up in 1976 to organize aid for victimized workers, attracted small groups of working-class militants in major industrial centers. At the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, the firing of Anna Walentynowicz, a popular crane operator and activist, galvanized the outraged workers into action.
On August 14, the shipyard workers began their strike, organized by the Free Trade Unions of the Coast (Wolne Związki Zawodowe Wybrzeża). The workers were led by electrician Lech Wałęsa, a former shipyard worker who had been dismissed in 1976, and who arrived at the shipyard late in the morning of August 14. The strike committee demanded the rehiring of Walentynowicz and Wałęsa, as well as the according of respect to workers' rights and other social concerns. In addition, they called for the raising of a monument to the shipyard workers who had been killed in 1970 and for the legalization of independent trade unions. The workers may have timed the strike to coincide with the nearby Intervision Song Contest, which many international journalists attended. On August 16, an agreement had been reached under which the government agreed to raise wages at the Lenin shipyard and reinstate several sacked workers, which the union agreed to accept in exchange for ending the occupation of the Lenin shipyard while the issue of free trade unions was left unresolved. When the agreement was announced, there was a grass-roots revolt led by several of the striking women workers who demanded the right to free trade unions being guaranteed as a number of strikes in the 1970s had been ended with similar agreements only for the state to renege later on.
The Polish government enforced censorship, and official media said little about the "sporadic labor disturbances in Gdańsk"; as a further precaution, all phone connections between the coast and the rest of Poland were soon cut. Nonetheless, the government failed to contain the information: a spreading wave of samizdats (), including Robotnik (The Worker), and grapevine gossip, along with Radio Free Europe broadcasts that penetrated the Iron Curtain, ensured that the ideas of the emerging Solidarity movement quickly spread. The strike attracted immense media attention in the West and Western journalists swarmed into Poland to cover the crisis.
On August 16, delegations from other strike committees arrived at the shipyard. Delegates (Bogdan Lis, Andrzej Gwiazda and others) together with shipyard strikers agreed to create an Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee (Międzyzakładowy Komitet Strajkowy, or MKS). On August 17 a priest, Henryk Jankowski, performed a mass outside the shipyard's gate under a Polish flag, at which 21 demands of the MKS were put forward. The list went beyond purely local matters, beginning with a demand for new, independent trade unions and going on to call for a relaxation of the censorship, a right to strike, new rights for the Church, the freeing of political prisoners, and improvements in the national health service. The crisis in Gdańsk was considered sufficiently serious that Edward Gierek hastily ended his vacation in the Crimea to head back to Warsaw.
On August 22 1980, a delegation of KOR intelligentsia, including Tadeusz Mazowiecki, left Warsaw and made their way past roadblocks to arrive in Gdańsk to offer their assistance with negotiations. A bibuła news-sheet, Solidarność, produced on the shipyard's printing press with KOR assistance, reached a daily print run of 30,000 copies. Meanwhile, Jacek Kaczmarski's protest song, Mury (Walls), gained popularity with the workers.
On August 18, the Szczecin Shipyard joined the strike, under the leadership of Marian Jurczyk. A tidal wave of strikes swept the coast, closing ports and bringing the economy to a halt. With KOR assistance and support from many intellectuals, workers occupying factories, mines and shipyards across Poland joined forces. Within days, over 200 factories and enterprises had joined the strike committee. By August 21, most of Poland was affected by the strikes, from coastal shipyards to the mines of the Upper Silesian Industrial Area (in Upper Silesia, the city of Jastrzębie-Zdrój became center of the strikes, with a separate committee organized there, see Jastrzębie-Zdrój 1980 strikes). More and more new unions were formed, and joined the federation. In September 1980 in Prudnik, over 1500 workers of ZPB "Frotex" along with other factories and firefighters from Prudnik's fire brigade went on the biggest anti-Communist strike in Opole Voivodeship.
Thanks to popular support within Poland, as well as to international support and media coverage, the Gdańsk workers held out until the government gave in to their demands. On August 21 a Governmental Commission (Komisja Rządowa) including Mieczysław Jagielski arrived in Gdańsk, and another one with Kazimierz Barcikowski was dispatched to Szczecin. On August 30 and 31, and on September 3, representatives of the workers and the government signed an agreement ratifying many of the workers' demands, including the right to strike. This agreement came to be known as the August or Gdańsk agreement (Porozumienia sierpniowe). Other agreements were signed in Szczecin (the Szczecin Agreement of August 30), and Jastrzębie-Zdrój on September 3. It was called the (Porozumienia jastrzebskie) and as such is regarded as part of the Gdańsk agreement. Though concerned with labor-union matters, the agreement enabled citizens to introduce democratic changes within the Communist political structure and was regarded as a first step toward dismantling the Party's monopoly of power. The workers' main concerns were the establishment of a labor union independent of Communist-party control, and recognition of a legal right to strike. Workers' needs would now receive clear representation. Another consequence of the Gdańsk Agreement was the replacement, in September 1980, of Edward Gierek by Stanisław Kania as Party First Secretary.
First Solidarity (1980–1981)
Encouraged by the success of the August strikes, on September 17 workers' representatives, including Lech Wałęsa, formed a nationwide labor union, Solidarity (Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy (NSZZ) "Solidarność"). It was the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country. Its name was suggested by Karol Modzelewski, and its famous logo was conceived by Jerzy Janiszewski, designer of many Solidarity-related posters. The new union's supreme powers were vested in a legislative body, the Convention of Delegates (Zjazd Delegatów). The executive branch was the National Coordinating Commission (Krajowa Komisja Porozumiewawcza), later renamed the National Commission (Komisja Krajowa). The Union had a regional structure, comprising 38 regions (region) and two districts (okręg). On December 16, 1980, the Monument to Fallen Shipyard Workers was unveiled in Gdańsk, and on June 28, 1981, another monument was unveiled in Poznan, which commemorated the Poznań 1956 protests. On January 15, 1981, a Solidarity delegation, including Lech Wałęsa, met in Rome with Pope John Paul II. From September 5 to 10, and from September 26 to October 7, Solidarity's first national congress was held in Hala Olivia, Gdańsk, and Lech Wałęsa was elected its president. The last accord of the congress was the adoption of the republican program "Self-governing Republic".Piotr Gliński, The Self-governing Republic in the Third Republic, "Polish Sociological Review", 2006, no.1