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Solidarity (Polish trade union)

Solidarity (Polish: „Solidarność”, pronounced [sɔliˈdarnɔɕt͡ɕ] ), full name Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity"[4] (Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy „Solidarność”, abbreviated NSZZ „Solidarność” [ɲɛzaˈlɛʐnɨ samɔˈʐɔndnɨ ˈzvjɔ̃zɛɡ‿zavɔˈdɔvɨ sɔliˈdarnɔɕt͡ɕ]), is a Polish trade union founded in August 1980 at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland.[1] Subsequently, it was the first independent trade union in a Warsaw Pact country to be recognised by the state.[5]

"Solidarność" redirects here. For other uses, see Solidarność (disambiguation).

Founded

31 August 1980 (1980-08-31) (recognised)
17 September 1980 (1st Congress)[1]
10 November 1980 (registered)

Gdańsk, Poland

  • Poland

Almost 10 million at the end of the first year; over 400,000 in 2011[2] (680,000 in 2010)[3]

The union's membership peaked at 10 million in September 1981,[2][3] representing one-third of the country's working-age population.[6] In 1983 Solidarity's leader Lech Wałęsa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the union is widely recognized as having played a central role in the end of communist rule in Poland.


In the 1980s, Solidarity was a broad anti-authoritarian social movement, using methods of civil resistance to advance the causes of workers' rights and social change.[7] The Government attempted in the early 1980s to destroy the union through the imposition of martial law in Poland and the use of political repressions.


Operating underground, with substantial financial support from the Vatican and the United States,[8] the union survived and by the later 1980s had entered into negotiations with the government.


The 1989 round table talks between the government and the Solidarity-led opposition produced agreement for the 1989 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 elected President of Poland.


Following Poland's transition to liberal 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.

Secular philosophical underpinnings[edit]

Although Leszek 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 essay Theses 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.


According to Kołakowski, a proletarian revolution has never occurred anywhere, as the October Revolution in Russia had nothing to do with Marxism 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" that Karl 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."[32]

(1980–1991)

Lech Wałęsa

(1991–2002)

Marian Krzaklewski

(2002–2010)

Janusz Śniadek

(2010–present)

Piotr Duda

1981 warning strike in Poland

1988 Polish strikes

31 August 1982 demonstrations in Poland

80 Million

Conference of Solidarity Support Organizations

European Solidarity Centre

Fighting Solidarity

Hungarian Solidarity Movement

Jastrzębie-Zdrój 1980 strikes

Lublin 1980 strikes

Polish 1970 protests

Summer 1981 hunger demonstrations in Poland

Barker, Colin (1986). Festival of the Oppressed: Solidarity, Reform and Revolution in Poland 1980–81. Bookmarks.  978-0906224274.

ISBN

Barker, Colin. "" International Socialism 108 (2005).

The Rise of Solidarnosc

Domber, Gregory G. (2016). Empowering Revolution: America, Poland, and the End of the Cold War. Dodd Mead.  978-1469629810.

ISBN

(1982). Strike for Freedom: The Story of Lech Wałęsa and Polish Solidarity. The University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-396-08065-0.

Eringer, Robert

Goddeeris, Idesbald (2002). . Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09568-6.

The Polish Revolution: Solidarity

(2012). Solidarity with Solidarity: Western European Trade Unions and the Polish Crisis, 1980–1982. Lexington Books. ISBN 978-0739150719.

Garton Ash, Timothy

Kaminski, Marek M. (2004). . Princeton University Press. ISBN 0-691-11721-7. Archived from the original on 4 November 2015. Retrieved 19 August 2006.

Games Prisoners Play

Kenney, Patrick (2003). A Carnival of Revolution : Central Europe 1989. Princeton University Press.  0-691-11627-X.

ISBN

Kenney, Patrick (2006). The Burdens of Freedom. Zed Books Ltd.  1-84277-662-2.

ISBN

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.  0-271-01084-3.

ISBN

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.

Matynia, Elzbieta (2009). Performative Democracy. Paradigm.  978-1594516566.

ISBN

Osa, Maryjane (2003). Solidarity and Contention: Networks of Polish Opposition. University of Minnesota Press.  0-8166-3874-8.

ISBN

Ost, David (2005). (ebook). Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-4318-0.

The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe

Paczkowski, Andrzej. Revolution and Counterrevolution in Poland, 1980-1989: Solidarity, Martial Law, and the End of Communism in Europe (Boydell & Brewer, 2015).

Penn, Shana (2005). . University of Michigan Press. ISBN 0-472-11385-2.

Solidarity's Secret : The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland

Perdue, William D. (1995). Paradox of Change: The Rise and Fall of Solidarity in the New Poland. Praeger/Greenwood.  0-275-95295-9.

ISBN

Sollicitudo rei socialis, on Vatican website

Pope John Paul II

Shaw, Tamsin, "Ethical Espionage" (review of Calder Walton, Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West, Simon and Schuster, 2023, 672 pp.; and , 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 US covert action that was a long-term strategic success, with the possible exception of intervention in the Soviet-Afghan War (a disastrous military fiasco for the Soviets) and perhaps support for the anti-Soviet Solidarity movement in Poland." (p. 34.)

Cécile Fabre

(1984). Poland's Self-Limiting Revolution. Princeton University Press.

Staniszkis, Jadwiga

Smolar, Aleksander, "'Self-limiting Revolution': Poland 1970–89", in and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-19-955201-6.[2].

Adam Roberts

Szporer, Michael (2014). Solidarity: The Great Workers Strike of 1980. Lexington Books.  978-0739192801.

ISBN

(1992). The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-516664-7.

Weigel, George

Official website

Presentation on The Solidarity Phenomenon

FAES The Polish trade Union Solidarity and the European idea of freedom

Solidarity 25th Anniversary Press Center

Who is Anna Walentynowicz?, a documentary film about Solidarity

at L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University. Contains materials about Wojciechowicz's participation in the Solidarity movement.

Katherine Kenning collection of Joanna Wojciechowicz papers, MSS 8081

International Conference 'From Solidarity to Freedom'

Advice for East German propagandists on how to deal with the Solidarity movement

The Birth of Solidarity on BBC

Solidarity, Freedom and Economical Crisis in Poland, 1980–81

Solidarność collection at the Libertarian Communist library

by Colin Barker and Kara Weber (1982)

Solidarność from Gdańsk to Military Repression

Arch Puddington, How American Unions Helps Solidarity Win

the European Parliament on the 25th anniversary of Solidarity and its message for Europe

Motion for a resolution

by Daniel Singer

Solidarity Lost

(In Polish)

Solidarity Center Foundation – Fundacja Centrum Solidarności

A radio programme about the song "Mury", the anthem of Solidarność. In Russian with English transcript

A Simple Way to Learn an Old Song

on Culture.pl

The Solidarity Movement: Anti-Communist, Or Most Communist Thing Ever?