Kamila Pajer has this article at Tech Central Station about something that happened 25 years ago today:
In the summer of 1980, after years of suffering under a regime that wasted their energy and suppressed their wills and minds, thousands of Polish workers in Warsaw, Swidnik, the Silesia region, Poznan, Lodz, Gdynia and many other cities and regions went on strike. By mid-August, when the shipyard workers in Gdansk joined and called for reemploying Anna Walentynowicz, who had been recently dismissed for supporting the Free Trade Unions, the entire country experienced “breaks at work” as the Communists euphemistically called the strikes.
On August 31, 1980 the ruling Communists signed an agreement with the protesting workers in Gdansk. That summer the Solidarity movement was created as a result of the nation’s solidarity towards the common oppression. But at that time — only ten years after a tragedy in Gdansk when several protesters were killed by the secret service — no one was sure if the Communist regime would refrain from using violence against the people
More than anything, it was the Solidarity movement that was the beginning of the end of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and, eventually, of the Soviet Union itself. At the time, one wondered whether the Soviets understood what was really happening around them. Apparently, they did:
When Polish Communists were negotiating with the workers, the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union appointed a special Commission for Poland to be sure Poland wouldn’t try to gain independence. And Polish General Wojciech Jaruzelski — who established martial law a year later killing the Polish hope for freedom — warned:
“One should be sensitive to things Soviet, to safeguard them. Our friends are highly disquieted by what is taking place in our country”.
For a time, the world wondered whether the Soviets would send in tanks and troops like they did in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. They didn’t, and the movement grew.
Pope John Paul II (The Great) said it best:
“Solidarity opened the gate of freedom in the countries enslaved by the totalitarian regimes; it destroyed the Berlin wall and contributed to unification of Europe divided since the Second World War. ? The work of Solidarity belongs to our national heritage and we shall never obliterate it in our memory”.
Fortunately, the Internet ensures that it is always present in the world’s memory.
