Solidarność

Origins: Gdańsk, August 1980

Solidarity grew out of the accumulated economic crisis of the Polish People's Republic in the 1970s. The government raised food prices while wages stagnated, and the 1976 protests and the crackdown that followed produced underground opposition networks such as KOR and ROPCIO. In 1979 the Polish economy shrank for the first time since the Second World War, by two percent, and foreign debt reached around $18 billion by 1980. On 7 August 1980 the Gdańsk Shipyard dismissed Anna Walentynowicz five months before her retirement for her activity in the illegal trade union, and on 14 August workers struck to demand her reinstatement.

The twenty-one demands and the August agreement

On 17 August the Inter-Factory Founding Committee issued twenty-one demands: free trade unions independent of the party and of enterprises, the right to strike, the release of political prisoners and freedom of expression. A strike that began over economic grievances had expanded into political demands, which was new in the Eastern bloc. Fearing that a general strike would become a national revolt, the government signed the Gdańsk Agreement on 31 August, legalising the union; on 17 September 1980 more than twenty inter-factory founding committees merged into one national organisation.

It registered officially on 10 November 1980, and its first national congress in September 1981 elected Wałęsa president and adopted the "Self-governing Republic" programme. Membership peaked at ten million in September 1981, one-third of the country's working-age population. The union was organised on industrial lines by region rather than craft, with 38 regions and two districts.

Martial law and repression

On 13 December 1981 General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law and formed the Military Council of National Salvation (WRON). Solidarity was outlawed, its leadership and regional delegates were detained, and thousands of opposition activists were imprisoned without trial. Censorship was imposed on media and correspondence, and travel and curfews were restricted. On 16 December ZOMO units pacified a pro-Solidarity miners' strike at the Wujek coal mine in Katowice, killing nine. Ninety-one deaths are counted across the martial law period, a figure historians still debate. Martial law was suspended at the end of 1982 and lifted on 22 July 1983, but many political prisoners were not released until a general amnesty in 1986. In this period the Soviet Union cut oil supplies to Poland by 64 percent and gas by 47 percent to press the authorities to suppress the movement.

Underground survival and international conditions

Solidarity survived as an underground network. It received substantial financial support from the Vatican and the United States: the CIA channelled about $10 million over five years from 1982 through third parties, and the AFL-CIO raised $300,000. Wałęsa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. Western government backing complicated relations with trade unions in capitalist countries. During the UK miners' strike of 1984-85 Wałęsa advised compromise, while David Jastrzębski, president of Upper Silesia Solidarity, supported the striking miners. Arthur Scargill, president of the British National Union of Mineworkers, condemned Solidarity as an "anti-socialist organization which desires the overthrow of a socialist state".

Round Table and 1989

After the strike wave of 1988 the government began negotiating. The Round Table talks of 6 February to 5 April 1989 led to the semi-free elections of 4 June 1989. With all 100 Senate seats and 161 contested Sejm seats in play, Solidarity took 99 Senate seats and every contested Sejm seat, and by the end of August a coalition government was formed under Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Wałęsa was elected president in December 1990 and resigned the union chairmanship. The election set off a chain reaction across the bloc, the Revolutions of 1989.

Afterwards

Since 1989 Solidarity has become a more traditional trade union with less political influence in the early 1990s. Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS), founded in 1996, won the 1997 parliamentary election but lost in 2001. Membership exceeded 400,000 in 2010, and in the 2020 and 2025 Polish presidential elections the union endorsed the Law and Justice (PiS) candidates.