The union's membership peaked at 10 million in September 1981,[1][2] representing one-third of the country's working-age population.[6] In 1983 Solidarity's leaderLech Wałęsa was awarded theNobel Peace Prize, and the union is widely recognized as having played a central role in theend of communist rule in Poland. This led to the appointment of the first noncommunist Prime Minister since the 1940s.[7]
Operating underground, with substantial financial support from theVatican and theUnited States,[9] the union survived and in the late 1980s had entered into negotiations with the government.
The 1989round table talks between the government and the Solidarity-led opposition produced an agreement for the1989 legislative elections, the country's first pluralistic election since 1947. By the end of August, a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed, and in December 1990 Wałęsa was electedPresident of Poland.
Following Poland's transition toliberal capitalism in the 1990s and the extensive privatization of state assets, Solidarity's membership declined substantially. By 2010, 30 years after its founding, the union had lost more than 90% of its original membership.
In the 1970s Poland's government raised food prices while wages were stagnant. This and other stresses led toprotests in 1976 and a subsequent government crackdown on dissent. TheKOR, theROPCIO and other groups began to form underground networks to monitor and oppose the government's behaviour. Labour unions formed an important part of this network.[10] In 1979, the Polish economy shrank for the first time sinceWorld War II, by two percent. Foreign debt reached around $18 billion by 1980.[11]
Anna Walentynowicz was fired from theGdańsk Shipyard on 7 August 1980, five months before she was due to retire, for participation in the illegal trade union. This management decision enraged the workers of the shipyard, who staged a strike action on 14 August, defending Walentynowicz and demanding her reinstatement. She andAlina Pienkowska transformed a strike over bread and butter issues into a solidarity strike in sympathy with strikes on other establishments.
Solidarity emerged on 31 August 1980 at the Gdańsk Shipyard when the Communist government of Poland signedthe agreement allowing for its existence. On 17 September 1980, over twenty Inter-factory Founding Committees of independent trade unions merged at the congress into one national organisation, NSZZ Solidarność (Solidarity).[6] It officially registered on 10 November 1980.[12]
In the year leading up to martial law,Reagan Administration policies supported the Solidarity movement, waging a public relations campaign to deter what theCarter administration had seen as "an imminent move by large Soviet military forces into Poland."[18] Michael Reisman from Yale Law School named operations in Poland as one of the covert regime change actions of the CIA during theCold War.[19] ColonelRyszard Kukliński, a senior officer on the Polish General Staff, was secretly sending reports to CIA officerDavid Forden.[20] TheCentral Intelligence Agency (CIA) transferred around $2 million yearly in cash to Solidarity from 1982 onwards, for a total of $10 million over five years. There were no direct links between the CIA and Solidarność, and all money was channeled through third parties.[21] CIA officers were barred from meeting Solidarity leaders, and the CIA's contacts with Solidarność activists were weaker than those of theAFL–CIO, which raised $300,000 from its members, which were used to provide material and cash directly to Solidarity, with no control of Solidarity's use of it. The U.S. Congress authorized theNational Endowment for Democracy to promote democracy, and the NED allocated $10 million to Solidarity.[22]
The Polish government enactedmartial law in December 1981, however, Solidarity was not alerted. Potential explanations for this vary; some believe that the CIA was caught off guard, while others suggest that American policy-makers viewed an internal crackdown as preferable to an "inevitable Soviet intervention."[23] CIA support for Solidarity included money, equipment and training, which was coordinated by Special Operations.[24]Henry Hyde, U.S. House intelligence committee member, stated that the USA provided "supplies and technical assistance in terms of clandestine newspapers, broadcasting, propaganda, money, organizational help and advice".[25]
30th anniversarymural depicting the murdered priestJerzy Popiełuszko who publicly supported Solidarity during the 1980s
In 2017, Solidarity backed a proposal to implementblue laws to prohibitSunday shopping, a move supported by Polish bishops.[26] A 2018 new Polish law banning almost all trade on Sundays has taken effect, with large supermarkets and most other retailers closed for the first time since liberal shopping laws were introduced in the 1990s. TheLaw and Justice party passed the legislation with the support of Prime MinisterMateusz Morawiecki.[27][28][29][30]
Lech Wałęsa has said thatPope John Paul II, and more specifically, his 1979 visit to Poland, was a significant factor in the creation of Solidarity.[31] As John Paul II was a Poland native, he was a figure that the citizens in Poland could identify with personally, but was beyond the reach of the Communist regime. For his actions regarding Poland and Solidarity during his pontificate, he has been named by many world leaders, including Wałęsa himself, to be one of the main causes of the downfall of not just the Polish regime, but Communism as a whole in Europe.[32]
AlthoughLeszek Kołakowski's works were officially banned in Poland, and he lived outside the country from the late 1960s, his philosophical ideas nonetheless exerted an influence on the Solidarity movement.Underground copies of his books and essays shaped the opinions of the Polish intellectual opposition. His 1971 essayTheses on Hope and Hopelessness, which suggested that self-organised social groups could gradually expand the spheres of civil society in a totalitarian state, helped inspire the dissident movements of the 1970s that led to the creation of Solidarity and provided a philosophical underpinning for the movement.[citation needed]
According to Kołakowski, aproletarian revolution has never occurred anywhere, as theOctober Revolution in Russia had nothing to do withMarxism in his view because it was achieved under the "Peace, Land and Bread" slogan. For Kołakowski, Solidarity was "perhaps closest to the working class revolution" thatKarl Marx had predicted in the mid-1800s, involving "the revolutionary movement of industrial workers (very strongly supported by the intelligentsia) against the exploiters, that is to say, the state. And this solitary example of a working class revolution (if even this may be counted) was directed against a socialist state, and carried out under the sign of the cross, with the blessing of the Pope."[33]
The logo ofSolidarność painted on an overturned Soviet eraT-55 inPrague in 1990Students in Scotland collect signatures for a petition in support of Solidarity in 1981Solidarity, ETUC Demonstration—Budapest 2011
The survival of Solidarity was an unprecedented event not only in Poland, asatellite state of theUSSR ruled in practice by a one-partyCommunist state, but the whole of theEastern bloc. It meant a break in the hard-line stance of the CommunistPolish United Workers' Party, which had bloodily ended a 1970 protest with machine-gun fire (killing over thirty and injuring over 1,000), and the broader Soviet Communist government in the Eastern Bloc, which had quelled both the 1956Hungarian Uprising and the 1968Prague Spring with Soviet-led invasions.
Solidarity's influence led to the intensification and spread of anti-Communist ideals and movements throughout the countries of the Eastern Bloc, weakening their Communist governments. As a result of theRound Table Agreement between the Polish government and the Solidarity-led opposition, elections were held in Poland on 4 June 1989, in which the opposition was allowed to field candidates against the Communist party—the first free elections in any Soviet bloc country. A new upper chamber (the Senate) was created in the Polish parliament and all of its 100 seats were contestable in the election, as well as one-third of the seats in the more important lower chamber (the Sejm). Solidarity won 99 of the 100 Senate seats and all 161 contestable seats in the Sejm—a victory that also triggered a chain reaction across the Soviet Union's satellite states, leading to a mostly bloodless chain ofanti-communist events inCentral and Eastern Europe[13] known as theRevolutions of 1989 (Polish:Jesień Ludów,lit. 'Autumn of Nations'), which ended in the overthrow of each Moscow-imposed regime, and ultimately to thedissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Given the union's support from many western governments, relations with trade unions in capitalist countries could be complicated. For example, during theUK miners' strike of 1984–85, Wałęsa said that "The miners should fight, but with common sense—not with destruction" and said of Margaret Thatcher "With such a wise and brave woman, Britain will find a solution to the strike." However, David Jastrzębski, the president of Upper Silesia Solidarity, voiced his support of the striking miners: "Neither the British government's mounted police charges nor its truncheon blows, any more than the Polish junta's tanks or rifle fire, can break our common will to struggle for a better future for the working class."[35] This was despite the fact thatArthur Scargill, president of the BritishNational Union of Mineworkers had been highly critical of Solidarity, condemning it as an "anti-socialist organization which desires the overthrow of a socialist state".[36] In 2005, the trade unionSolidarity – The Union for British Workers was created by the far-rightBritish National Party in honour of the original Polish union.
During the late 1980s, Solidarity had attempted to establish connections with theinternal resistance to apartheid in South Africa. However, according to Wałęsa, attempts to develop links between the two forces were hampered by their geographical distance, the dearth of media coverage of events outside Poland's borders and especially in South Africa. As a result, relatively little engagement took place between the two groups.[37]
In late 2008, several democratic opposition groups in the Russian Federation formeda Solidarity movement.[38]
In a 2011 essay "The Jacobin Spirit" in the American magazineJacobin, philosopherSlavoj Žižek called Solidarność' one of the "free spaces at a distance from state power" that used "defensive violence" to protect itself from state control. The notion of "defensive violence" runs in the vein of ideas postulated byAlain Badiou.[40] In a conflict summary commissioned by theInternational Center on Nonviolent Conflict, Maciej Bartkowski wrote that "Solidarity always pursued its political objectives with a high degree of nonviolent discipline as well as self-imposed limitations."[41]
The union was officially founded on 17 September 1980,[3] the union's supreme powers were vested in alegislative body, theConvention of Delegates (Zjazd Delegatów). Theexecutive branch was theNational 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). At its highest, the Union had over 10 million members, which became the largest union membership in the world. During the Communist era, the 38 regional delegates were arrested and jailed when martial law came into effect on 13 December 1981 under GeneralWojciech Jaruzelski. After a one-year prison term the high-ranking members of the union were offeredone way trips to any country accepting them (including Canada, the United States, and nations in the Middle East).
In 2010, Solidarity had more than 400,000 members.[1] National Commission of Independent Self-Governing Trade Union is located inGdańsk and is composed of Delegates from Regional General Congresses.
Solidarity is divided into 37 regions, and the territorial structure to a large degree reflects the shape of Polish voivodeships, established in 1975 and annulled in 1998 (see:Administrative division of People's Republic of Poland). The regions are:
The network of Solidarity branches of the key factories of Poland was created on 14 April 1981 in Gdańsk. It was made of representatives of seventeen factories; each stood for the most important factory ofevery voivodeship of the pre-1975 Poland. However, there were two exceptions. There was no representative of theKoszalin Voivodeship, and theKatowice Voivodeship was represented by two factories:
^Paczkowski, Andrzej; Byrne, Malcolm; Domber, Gregory F.; Klotzbach, Magdalena (2007)."1970s".From Solidarity to Martial Law: The Polish Crisis of 1980–1981. Central European University Press. p. xxix.ISBN978-963-7326-96-7.
^Gehrz, Chris (16 August 2016)."Could the U.S. Finally Get a Significant Christian Democratic Party?".Patheos. Retrieved16 August 2016.The nominees of the American Solidarity Party (ASP), which takes its name from the Polish movement of the late Cold War and calls itself "the only active Christian Democratic party in the United States."
Garton Ash, Timothy (2012).Solidarity with Solidarity: Western European Trade Unions and the Polish Crisis, 1980–1982. Lexington Books.ISBN978-0739150719.
Kenney, Patrick (2003).A Carnival of Revolution : Central Europe 1989. Princeton University Press.ISBN0-691-11627-X.
Kenney, Patrick (2006).The Burdens of Freedom. Zed Books Ltd.ISBN1-84277-662-2.
Kubik, Jan (1994).The Power of Symbols Against the Symbols of Power: The rise of Solidarity and the fall of state socialism in Poland. The Pennsylvania State University.ISBN0-271-01084-3.
Ledger, Robert. "From Solidarity to 'Shock Therapy'. British Foreign Policy Towards Poland Under the Thatcher Government, 1980–1990."Contemporary British History 30#1 (2016): 99–118.
Paczkowski, Andrzej.Revolution and Counterrevolution in Poland, 1980–1989: Solidarity, Martial Law, and the End of Communism in Europe (Boydell & Brewer, 2015).[ISBN missing]
Shaw, Tamsin, "Ethical Espionage" (review of Calder Walton,Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West, Simon and Schuster, 2023, 672 pp.; andCécile Fabre,Spying Through a Glass Darkly: The Ethics of Espionage and Counter-Intelligence, Oxford University Press, 251 pp., 2024),The New York Review of Books, vol. LXXI, no. 2 (8 February 2024), pp. 32, 34–35. "[I]n Walton's view, there was scarcely a UScovert action that was a long-term strategic success, with the possible exception of intervention in theSoviet-Afghan War (a disastrous military fiasco for theSoviets) and perhaps support for the anti-Soviet Solidarity movement in Poland." (p. 34.)
Staniszkis, Jadwiga (1984).Poland's Self-Limiting Revolution. Princeton University Press.
Smolar, Aleksander,"'Self-limiting Revolution': Poland 1970–89", inAdam Roberts andTimothy Garton Ash (eds.),Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.ISBN978-0-19-955201-6.[2].
Szporer, Michael (2014).Solidarity: The Great Workers Strike of 1980. Lexington Books.ISBN978-0739192801.
Weigel, George (1992).The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism. Oxford University Press.ISBN0-19-516664-7.
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