Solidarność

Beginnings

At the time of Communist Poland, no trade union independent of the organizations of the capacity was authorized. Concerned of the needs for the workmen of the shipyards of Gdansk, Anna Walentynowicz created the first independent association what was worth to him to be laid off on August 7th, 1980, losing its right to the retirement in five months of this one. The decision of the direction involved a strike which burst on August 14th, 1980 and gave rise to the trade union NSZZ Solidarność of which it is Co-founder with Lech Walesa.

In the years 1980, this trade union succeeds in gathering broad a Social movement against the Communist regime in place, implying inter alia the Roman Catholic church. It had a program in 21 points. The trade union was supported by a group of dissenting Polish intellectuals (: Komitet Obrony Robotników (KOR) and was based on the rules of the Non-violence.

The survival of Solidarity was an event without precedent, not only in Poland, but in all the countries of the Warsaw Pact.

That meant break in the hard line of the Party which had before caused a blood bath to repress another protest movement: dozen killed people and more than one thousand of wounded in 1970. (Cf also 1956 in Hungary or 1968 - the revolt of the Spring of Prague).

The principal factors having contributed to initial successes of the movement Solidarity and other dissenting movements are:

the crisis interns socialist modes (loss of faith towards the socialist model, economic crisis…)
failures on the face of the Cold war (see Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan and the Collapse of the Soviet Union)

The ideas of the Solidarité movement were very quickly spread through the Poland; more and more of Syndicat S were made and joined the federation. Its program, although centered on the trade-union claims, was perceived everywhere like the first stage to cause the dismantling of the Monopole Polish Communist party.

“Rural Solidarity”, a trade union of farmers, was created in May 1981. In 1981, KOR voluntarily dissolves, its members then playing the part of experts of the trade union. This role will reinforce the tendencies preaching the conciliation with the capacity: " There should not be claims which would encourage the government to use violence or which would lead to its collapse. We must leave them emergency doors. We need more than economic and political revndications négociables." (Bogdan Borusewicz, historian and member of KOR, in Gdansk).

August 31st, 1980, at the conclusion 14 days of strike to the shipyard Lénine de Gdansk, the Deputy Prime Minister Mieczyslaw Jagielski cosigne with Lech Walesa, before the general meeting of delegated companies in strike in the area, an agreement which opens the way with the constitution of the independent trade unions. The strike committee between firms changes into provisional direction of the new trade union.

This agreement is the culminating point of a started wave of strikes in July following the raising of prices of the food products. A rupture occurs then in the consensus in fact between the Polish bureaucracy and the workers. Strikes with occupation are equipped, progressively, of increasingly broad structures of car-organization. The negotiations carried out with the capacity public, are recorded by the delegates of companies and make it possible to the workers to refine the mandates of their delegates, to change some if necessary.

The Solidarité trade union, resulting from this fight which quickly gathered 10 million paid on 13 that then counted Poland, is presented in the form of a more advanced form of the working car-organization. With the image of the strike committees of August 1980, it is a democratic structure, within which the leaders are revocable. Held in September 1981, the first congress of Solidarity seems a true working Parliament of the country. Its meetings, retransmises in the large companies of the country, attest intense discussions on the future and of the pressures of the base on the delegates so that the latter represent the development of the collective intelligence accurately. The fruit of this development was the project of self-managed republic, the demanding congress " a reform self-management and democratic on all the levels of management, a new social order and economic, which will bind the plan, self-management and the marché." It was a deepening of the positions worked out as of the autumn 1980, such those of the working commission between firms of Szczecin: " We are in favor of a socialism progressist, workman, for an harmonious development and equitable of Poland, collectively given by the whole of the work world (...) We do not want to change system, but we direct ourselves towards the realization of an social order which would be authentically workman and socialiste."

Since the middle of the Eighties

Starting from the middle of the years 1980, Solidarité remained only like clandestine movement, supported by the Roman Catholic church and the CIA. The influence of Walesa will contribute to give him a role of " fireman social": " The Church advises us to be always moderate, to be conscious, to find a compromise… It is we who moderate people. It is thanks to us that one does not draw on the capacity, if the capacity were not rejected yet… Without us there would be already the popular revolt. And it is besides a capacity conscious of dimensions of the economic crisis which perhaps allowed the creation of Solidarność by knowing that we would play a part of reasonable shock absorber which will protect even the capacity and the Party against anger populaire" (Walesa at a meeting of Solidarnosc). However, at the end of the years 1980, Solidarité was become again sufficiently powerful to thwart the policy of Jaruzelski. Nation-wide strikes in 1988 forced the government to open the dialog with Solidarité.

Solidarity was legalized in April 1989 and could take part in the elections. The triumph of the candidates of the trade union to these elections started an avalanche of peaceful revolutions anticommunists in Central Europe and Europe of the East. As of the end of August, a coalition government carried out by Solidarité was formed. In December, Wałęsa left its station in Solidarité and was elected President.

Consequently, the organization became a more traditional trade union. Its political branches, founded in 1996 as “an electoral Action of Solidarity” (in Polish: “Akcja wyborcza Solidarność”/ AWS ), has nothing any more but one marginal influence in the current political life. The trade union counts approximately 1,5 million members.

In 2005, the trade union counts 500.000 members. At the time of its 25e birthday, the day of its foundation, the August 31st became one bank holiday in Poland. The August 22nd 2006, its founder symbolic system Lech Walesa announced its resignation of the trade union, of which he denounces the too manifest support for the hard Right, and in particular the official support at the time of the elections legislative and presidential of the autumn 2005, with the party Droit and Justice (Worse) of the twins Kaczynski.

The logo

Graphically, the logo created by Jerzy Janiszewski (above) is formed of the 11 letters of “Solidarność” welded between them and tightened the ones counter the others, like participants in the forefront of a demonstration: the required impression is the feeling of solidarity, common front and people making block against the capacity. One of the letters/demonstrators holds up the Polish flag.

The anthem

Mury is the anthem of Solidarność. Created in 1978 by Jacek Kaczmarski, the Polish poet takes as a starting point the Estaca, anthem libertarian Catalan writes by the Catalan poet Lluís Llach. This song became a symbol of the fight against the oppression of the Soviet mode. In spite of the will shown by the author to make of this song a criticism of certain aspects of the social movements, it became a symbol about it.

Internal bond

External bonds

Phenomenon of Solidarnosc (FR, PL, IN, OF, ES, RU)
“From Solidarity to Freedom” (IN, PL)
Advice for East German propagandists one how to deal with the Solidarity movement
Force More Powerful

Sources

Random links: