Solidarity: The Movement And It’s Causes Essay, Research Paper
name = Lukasz Cholodecki
email = lcholode@athena.valpo.edu
publish = yes
subject = Modern European History 315
title = Solidarity: The Movement and It’s Causes
papers =
Solidarity:
The Movement and It’s
Causes
History 315/515
Prof. Startt
Essay #2
The Solidarity movement in Poland was one of the most
dramatic developments in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. It
was not a movement that began in 1980, but rather a continuation
of a working class and Polish intelligentsia movement that began
in 1956, and continued in two other risings, in 1970 and 1976.
The most significant of these risings began in the shipyards of
the ‘Triple City’, Gdansk, Sopot and Gdynia in 1970. The first
and by far the most violent and bloody of the workers revolts
came in June of 1956, when at least 75 people died in the
industrial city of Poznan. The third uprising took place in
1976 with workers striking in Warsaw, and rioting in the city of
Radom.
What made the Solidarity movement peaceful and far more
successful in comparison to that of the previous three? The
Solidarity movement originated in the working class, but unlike
the previous three risings it also worked with and was involved
with the Polish intellectual community. Was this the reason
behind its success? Or was it instead the result of the U.S.S.R.
losing it’s hold in the Eastern bloc, and the fledgling economy
of Poland that made such a movement inevitable? While everyone
of these points was a factor, the strongest and most compelling
argument can be made for the unification and working together of
Poland’s most influential social classes, the Polish
intelligentsia, the workers, and the Church. This strategy
eventually led to the infamous ’roundtable’ talks, and the
collapse of communism itself in Poland.
The Beginnings of a Movement
The ‘Polish October’ of 1956 did not begin with Stalin’s
death in 1953, in fact Poland was quite calm, in stark contrast
with other Eastern bloc countries. While demonstrations took
place in Plzen, Czechoslovakia, and a revolt was taking place in
East Germany in mid-June, Poland was slow to follow the ‘New
Course’ that was being offered by neighboring countries. This
was a result of a much slower relaxation than the other countries
experienced. Regardless, social and intellectual unrest began
building up, with collectivization being slackened and censorship
showing cracks, the nation had a sense that a new start must be
made.
The Polish intelligentsia was one of the most important
groups to emerge during this period. The Polish intelligentsia
is, and remains, a distinct social class that is composed of
those with a higher education, or those who at least share
similar tastes. The Polish intelligentsia originates in the
nineteenth-century, when Polish nobility moved to the cities to
occupy itself with literature, art, and revolutionary politics,
due to it’s loss of estates and land. This distinct social
group was feared and recognized by both Stalin and Hitler, 50
percent of Polish lawyers and doctors and 40 percent of Polish
university professors where murdered in World War II. The
reemergence of this group leading to the ‘Polish October’ is
significant in that it would play a crucial role 25 years later.
Unfortunately for Poland, the Polish intelligentsia and the
working class often led separate uprisings, and had trouble
connecting in the causes that they were fighting for.
Many events and reasons, many similar to that of 1980
culminated to the uprisings in October, and the crackdown that
followed. The focus has to be put primarily on the fact that it
was only in part a workers rebellion, because the workers’
movement in Poznan had no central structure or leadership. It
was instead a rebellion of the intelligentsia, which was in a
system that denied them access to the elite. The intelligentsia
did not put both movements together, the different social classes
were divided in what they wanted. It is incredulous that the
intelligentsia did not look to make a concerted effort with the
workers, as it would not do in 1970 or 1976.
The New Power
The following events were the prelude to 1980, and they are
tragic. On the twelfth of December 1970, a series of unexpected
price changes were announced. Consumer goods only rose a small
percentage in price, but certain foods had huge price increases.
Flour rose by sixteen percent, sugar rose by fourteen percent,
and meat cost seventeen percent more. On the next morning
three thousand workers from the Lenin shipyard at Gdansk marched
on the provincial party headquarters. The workers were ordered
back to work, the maddened workers incited a riot. With fires
started and stones thrown, the city militia could not hold the
masses back. On Tuesday, December fifteenth, the workers at the
Paris Commune Shipyard in Gdynia stopped work and demonstrated in
the main streets. A general strike was announced in Gdansk, and
the police opened fire on demonstrators. Men on both sides were
killed. In the fighting the Party building and the railway
station was burned down. The next day the rebellion spread to
the towns of Slupsk and Eblag, and the workers at the Warski
Shipyards in Szczecin were preparing to strike. Reports were
coming in of supportive strikes in other cities.
On Wednesday workers began occupation strikes in factories.
On Thursday morning, workers walking to the Paris Commune yard
were fired on, at least thirteen were killed. Later that day
workers from the Szczecin shipyard surged out into the city, and
street fighting, costing at least sixteen lives, continued
through Friday. By Saturday it appeared a nation-wide strike
would inssue. Twenty-one demands were drawn up by the workers,
one of which asked for ‘independent trade unions under the
authority of the working class’. Although this was not
achieved in 1970, it is apparent that this was clearly a marking
of a new era in the thought process of the Polish workers. The
course of action that Prime Minister Gomulka took cost him his
job, he was the one who ordered the use of fire arms against
workers. Brezhnev himself advised a political rather than a
military solution. Gomulka’s fate was sealed, and the reign of
Gierek ensued.
The movement was far from over, but the most important parts
had already happened. The lack of the Polish intelligentsia was
apparent in a face to face meeting with Gierek, and other party
officials, that the workers at the shipyards in Sczecin and
Gdansk had on the twenty-fourth of January, 1971. Gierek coerced
the workers to stop the strike by appealing himself as a Polish
patriot, and a man that wanted to keep Poland from collapse.
These workers’ neither had the thought nor the conceptualization
that a collapse could very well be what Poland needed. The
intellectuals could have done exactly what was done in 1980, the
opportunity was just as ripe, but it passed, and another
opportunity would not arise for another five years.
The government could do nothing but appeal to the workers to
help them out, otherwise more demands would have to have been met
by them. In mid-February, with uneasiness in the country, Gierek
restored the old prices. This was the first time a decision by a
communist government was overturned by the working class, the
class that theoretically was in power.
Although a larger victory could have been had, the workers
had no concept of overthrowing socialism, they merely wanted a
better socialism. In 1976 another price increase went into
affect, this time raising meat prices by sixty-nine percent, and
sugar prices by one hundred percent. With memories of the
successful 1970 campaign, on June twenty-fifth work stopped all
over the country. Almost immediately Gierek repealed the
increases. It was clear the working class had a lot of power,
power that it had not yet maximized. Power that the
intelligentsia was only beginning to see as a source for future
social change.
Solidarity
So far most of the work in revolutionizing Poland was done
by the workers. So where was the Polish intelligentsia that
seemed to disappear from the landscape after the 1950’s? It was
always there, but while it was respected by the workers, the
Polish intelligentsia had not worked very hard to unite itself
with them. A social split existed that made the intelligentsia
feel somewhat superior to the workers, feeling a change could
only be made by intellectuals at the top.
That view and feeling slowly changed, the biggest of these
changes in social thought appeared when the printings of illegal,
uncensored leaflets and books by a group of intellectuals calling
themselves the Committee for the Defense of Workers’ Rights (KOR)
and the Movement for the Defense of Civil and Citizens’ Rights
(ROPCiO) emerged. In September of 1979, a press briefing by the
Ministry of the Interior listed twenty-six ‘anti-socialist’
groups. These groups were not publicly denounced, but they were
open to beatings and imprisonment by the secret police. One of
the major events to occur in 1977 was an informal alliance
between the Catholic Church and the opposition. The Church
would be instrumental in uniting the cause of workers in the
Baltic to those in other regions of the country.
On the other side of the coin, Poland’s economy was
disastrous. In fact the national income fell by two percent in
1979. Industrial output was showing negative growth of five
percent. From having one of the highest growth rates in the
world, only five years later Poland had an economy in such
shambles that it was dependent on Western banks to keep
functioning. The time was perfect to strike.
On the fourteenth of August 1980 the members of a little
group called the Free Trade Union conspired to start a strike at
the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, which employed 17,000 workers. The
pretext was so a crane driver named Anna Walentynowicz, would get
her job back after being fired. The reason behind this was that
she was one of the most powerful orator’s in the whole strike
movement. They had tried to start a strike a month before under
the pretext of a meat price increase, but they had failed. This
time they brought posters and leaflets, which they promptly put
up. They declared ‘We Demand the Reinstatement of Anna
Walentynowicz and a Cost of Living Rise of 1,000 Zlotys’.
Men quickly gathered around to read the signs and leaflets,
ignoring the party officials calls to go back to work. A mass
meeting formed at one of the gates. Klemens Gniech, the manager,
argued and pleaded the workers not to form a strike committee.
The meeting was starting to loose steam as some workers began to
go back to their jobs. At that moment, a man embittered by the
deaths of the strikes of 1970, maddened by being imprisoned over
one hundred times, stepped out. This was a man who was still
furious over being fired four years earlier from that very
shipyard, a man who had a keen understanding of the workers
struggles, he jumped up to the bulldozer roof and yelled at
Gniech “Remember me? I gave ten years to this shipyard. But you
sacked me four years ago!” His name was Lech Walesa. He
turned to the men and women below him and shouted that an
occupation strike would begin now. He was cheered loudly, and
soon they were asking for him to be reinstated also.
No one realized what this would set off. By the next day
strikes began to spread throughout the ‘Triple-City’. The
demands were far bigger now, even asking for the right to
establish free trade unions. The leaders began to negotiate with
Gniech, but what they had not realized was that the whole city
basically gone on strike. The strike committee agreed on a 1,500
zloty pay raise, and was ready to return to work. Walesa went
outside and announced the news, to his surprise he was jeered.
He had misread the mood. Instantaneously he changed his mind and
went around the shipyard pleading everyone to continue
striking. The strike continued and it spread. One of the
biggest developments in the history of Polish strikes and
uprisings happened soon after. Intellectuals came in to help out
the workers in drafting documents and demands. They began what
eventually led to the legalization of trade unions. They played
for the high stakes, they issued ultimatums that said that they
would not negotiate until all political prisoners were freed.
These were demands that previously would not have been made.
With both groups working together, both benefited. The
government, having no choice, complied. The rest, as they say,
is history.
The Solidarity Union would soon have ten million members,
one-third of the Polish workforce. The changes that ensued
promised the downfall of socialism in Poland. Although martial
law slowed down the process in 1981, Solidarity was working in
the underground. Solidarity forced the roundtable talks that led
to free elections in 1989, and the eventual fall of communism,
not only in Poland, but in all the Soviet bloc countries.
The work of the Polish worker, and that of the Polish
intellectual accomplished what many thought would never happen.
Poland is a country with a history of uprisings, all of which
failed, except for this one. No other movement connected the
Polish intelligentsia and the Polish worker. Would Polish
insurrections have worked earlier in history if this was also the
case? One can always second guess, but it is clear the changes
that occurred in Poland, occurred because of the intellectuals
working with the workers. They had the vision, the workers had
the mass to demand that vision to become a reality.
Endnotes: