Solidarność

연대(솔리다르노시치)

The independent self-governing trade union born in the strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk in August 1980. Its full name was the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity", and it was the first mass organisation in the Eastern bloc outside communist party control. The government accepted the twenty-one demands of the inter-factory strike committee led by Lech Wałęsa in the Gdańsk Agreement of 31 August, legalising the union, and within a year it had ten million members. A million members of the Polish United Workers' Party joined it as well, which is why it was a question about the system as much as a trade union. Outlawed with the declaration of martial law on 13 December 1981 and its leaders interned, it survived underground, and through the Round Table talks and the semi-free elections of 4 June 1989 it formed the first government in the bloc not led by communists.