Poland: Solidarity -- The Trade Union That Changed The World Poland: Solidarity -- The Trade Union That Changed The World August 24, 2005 Lech Walesa (left) with former Solidarity activist Bogdan Lis Share Print The strike that changed the world began around dawn on 14 August 1980. Some 17,000 workers seized control of the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk to protest, among other things, a recent rise in food prices. Their leader, Lech Walesa, had narrowly avoided arrest by secret police that morning, and had managed to scale the shipyard gate and join the workers inside. Soon, workers in 20 other area factories joined the strike in solidarity. Seventeen days later, after negotiations with Poland's Communist government, the burly, mustachioed Walesa appeared before the workers in the shipyard with an historic message: "We have an independent, self-governing trade union!

[crowd cheers] We have the right to strike!" Walesa and Poland's first deputy prime minister, Mieczyslaw Jagielski, had signed a deal granting the workers their main demands: the right to organize freely and to strike. Those were rights accorded under conventions by the International Labor Organization, of which Poland was a signatory. But this was the first time that any Communist government had put them into practice. Solidarity's underground efforts were also greatly aided by financial help from American trade unions, as well as moral support from Pope John Paul II. The workers had other demands, such as better wages and benefits, posted in a list of "21 postulates" on the shipyard door. But none was as crucial as the right to organize and strike. Radek Sikorski, a former deputy foreign and defense minister of postcommunist Poland, was a high school student at the time of the Gdansk accord. He recalled the famous day in an interview with RFE/RL. "[There was] tremendous hope and a kind of electricity between people.

You know, it's said that we Poles become a nation once a generation, just like we did recently when the pope died, and that was one of those moments when, suddenly, millions of people felt that they wanted the same thing, which was free trade unions to represent them against the [Communist] Party. It gave people hope that perhaps communism could be reformed. We now know that it couldn't," Sikorski said. In September 1980, the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarity -- or NSZZ Solidarnosc -- was officially formed. Over the next 15 months, the union's membership grew from 1 million to 9 million people -- a quarter of the country's population. But across the Russian border, Poland's Soviet masters were growing increasingly alarmed. And in early December 1981, the Warsaw Pact issued a statement at a summit in Moscow stating "fraternal solidarity and support" with Poland's communist leaders in overcoming what it called the country's "present difficulties." Days later, on 13 December, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the Polish prime minister, declared martial law and outlawed Solidarity.

The military, in a plan hatched over the previous months, arrested most of Solidarity's leaders, including Walesa. Walesa would spend nearly a year in jail. And for the next seven years, he would be under constant watch and harassment by secret police. When he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983, he sent his wife to collect the award in Oslo, fearing he would not be let back into the communist country. In the long, dark period leading up to the radical changes of 1989, Solidarity worked in the underground. But, as Sikorski recalls, it never wavered from one its key principles -- nonviolence. "It was a peaceful movement which actually realized all its objectives and more. So I think the path of nonviolence is certainly an important Solidarity legacy. And if you look at what happened in other countries -- in the Czech Republic, and more recently in Serbia or in Ukraine -- that message has been successfully imitated," Sikorski said. Solidarity's underground efforts were also greatly aided by financial help from American trade unions, as well as moral support from Pope John Paul II.

The pope published a major text -- the encyclical "On Human Work" -- and met with Walesa in 1983 for talks that made international headlines. Both acts, as well as the strategic partnership between the Polish Catholic Church and Solidarity, lent powerful legitimacy to the movement. Bronislaw Geremek, now a member of the European Parliament, was one of the leading intellectuals of the Solidarity movement. In an interview with RFE/RL, Geremek noted that Solidarity's success was a result of a "new human relationship" in Polish society among church leaders, workers, farmers and intellectuals. "One should see this phenomenon in the larger context. This context is first of all the lesson of the 1979 visit of Pope John Paul to Poland. Not only the message of John Paul -- ‘Don't be afraid,' which was a very powerful message -- but also the experience of the organization of the pope's visit. The organization was assured, in all cities in which the pope paid a visit, by civilians -- by a special guard formed by workers, people from the intelligentsia -- [who were] able to organize themselves," Geremek said.

Further moral support came from Western governments, in particular the United States and Britain, which along with international agencies refused to grant debt-ridden Poland economic aid until it legalized Solidarity. The movement got a major morale boost in November 1988, when Jaruzelski hosted British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. A fierce anticommunist, Thatcher lashed out at Jaruzelski at a state banquet, saying Poland's depressed economy would improve only after freedom and liberty were restored. She also visited outlawed Solidarity's leaders in Gdansk, telling 5,000 workers: "Nothing can stop you." And at a dinner with union leaders, Britain's "Iron Lady" urged them to forge a practical plan to freedom. "How do you see the process from where you are now to where you want to be? Because whatever you want to do, it's not only what you want to do, but how, in a practical way, you see it coming about," Thatcher said. But the reality was that Solidarity, and Polish society, had already found their way. Faced with intense social and economic pressure, Jaruzelski finally agreed to talks with Solidarity in early 1989.

Two months later, after historic roundtable talks, the two sides signed a 400-page agreement on sweeping political and economic reforms that officially recognized Solidarity. In June 1989, in the first free elections ever in the communist bloc, Solidarity won the maximum number of seats allowed in both houses of parliament. And with two smaller parties, it formed the first non-Communist government in the Soviet bloc. Six months later, the Berlin Wall came crumbling down. See also: Solidarity was a polish trade union federation founded in - ENGLISH - 1B View Full Document — Solidarity was a polish trade union federation founded in 1980 by Lech Walesa. It was the first non-communist trade union in a communist country. It was joined by intellectuals and supported by the Catholic Church. It was a broad anti-communist social movement affiliated with and by the people of Poland. (pg. 1034) 8. perestroika — Perestroika is the Russian term for the economic reforms introduced in June 1985 by the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. Its literal meaning is “reconstructing,” referring to the reconstructing of the Soviet economy.

To accomplish perestroika, Gorbachev and his supporters permitted the easing of prices on goods, allowed more independence for state enterprises, and the setting up of small businesses for profit. (pg. 1036) 9. glasnost — Glasnost is the Russian term for “transparency” or “openness.” Gorbachev used the term to introduce a reform in 1985. Its goals included combating corruption and the abuse of privilege by the political class. In a broad sense, it aimed to liberalize freedom of press gradually, and to allow freedom of dissent. (pg. 1037) 10. “Euro” currency — The “Euro,” is the official currency of Europe. It was first brought upon by the Maastricht treaty, along with political unification. Some people opposed this idea believing it would bring political instability and grasp for power. In the end, it did create a balanced system that allowed for all of Europe to exchange goods with the same currency. (pg. 1057)\ Identify the following people and explain their significance. 1. Slobodan Milosevic — Slobodan Milosevic was the president of Serbia and Yugoslavia.

His goal of a “greater Serbia” was to take Yugoslavia and its republics and unify them as one. This goal led to the cause for separation of the two powers. His significance was that this led to the Yugoslav Wars and the Kosovo War, which he played a significant role in. (pg. 1054) 2. Mikhail Gorbachev — Mikhail Gorbachev was a Russian Politician. He was the last leader of the Soviet Union. Gorbachev’s initiatives brought political and cultural liberalization to the Soviet Union. His significance was that he allowed democracy and national self-determination to triumph spectacularly in the Soviet Union. (pg. 1035) This preview has intentionally blurred sections. Sign up to view the full version. View Full Document 3. Boris Yeltsin — Boris Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation. He was one of Gorbachev’s greatest rivals. The Yeltsin era was a traumatic period in Russian history. His significance was that his period marked widespread corruption, economic collapse, and enormous political and social problems. (pg. 1043) 4. Lech Walesa — Lech Walesa was a Polish politician and human rights activist.

His significance was that he co-founded solidarity, the Soviet Union’s first independent trade union. This allowed workers to organize their free and democratic trade union. It allowed for the unification of workers to gain respect and power of government. (pg. 1034 ) 5. Nicolae Ceausescu — Nicolae Ceausescu was the president of Romania. His methods of rule combined a Stalinist brutality with a stubborn independence. He This is the end of the preview. Sign up to access the rest of the document. TERM Lech Walesa : Poland Lech Walesa : Poland ▼ Primary Sources ▼ Lech Walesa Lech Walesa, the son of a peasant farmer, was born in Popowo, Poland , on 29th September, 1943. After leaving school he worked as a car mechanic. In 1967 Walesa moved to Gdansky where he became an electrician at the Lenin Shipyard. Walesa was active in the trade union movement and during an industrial dispute in 1970 he became chairman of the shipyard's strike committee.

In 1976 lost his job as a result of his trade union activities and for the next few years had to earn his living by taking temporary jobs. Walesa continued to involve himself in organising free non-communist trade unions and in 1980, along with some of his friends, founded Solidarnosc (Solidarity). It was not long before the organization had 10 million members and Walesa was its undisputed leader. In August 1980 Walesa led the Gdansk shipyard strike which gave rise to a wave of strikes over much of the country. Walesa, a devout Catholic, developed a loyal following and the communist authorities were forced to capitulate. The Gdansk Agreement, signed on 31st August, 1980, gave Polish workers the right to strike and to organise their own independent union. In 1981 General Wojciech Jaruzelski , replaced Edward Gierek as leader of the Communist Party in Poland. In December 1981, Jaruzelski imposed martial law and Solidarnosc was declared an illegal organization. Soon afterwards Walesa and other trade union leaders were arrested and imprisoned.

In November 1982 Walesa was released and allowed to work in the Gdansk shipyards. Martial law was lifted in July 1983, but there were still considerable restrictions on individual freedom. Later that year, in the recognition of the role he was playing in Poland's non-violent revolution, Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize . Reformers in Poland were helped by the fact that Mikhail Gorbachev had gained power in the Soviet Union . In 1986 Gorbachev made it clear he would no longer interfere in the domestic policies of other countries in Eastern Europe. Wojciech Jaruzelski was now forced to negotiate with Walesa and the trade union movement. This resulted in parliamentary elections and a noncommunist government and in 1989 Solidarnosc became a legal organization. In December 1990 Walesa was elected President of the Republic of Poland. He was not a success and his critics claimed he developed an authoritarian style in running the country. His behaviour was erratic and he was criticised for his close links with the military and security services.

In November 1995 Walesa was defeated by the former communist, Aleksander Kwasniewski . Primary Sources (1) Lech Walesa, Nobel Lecture (11th December, 1983) I belong to a nation which over the past centuries has experienced many hardships and reverses. The world reacted with silence or with mere sympathy when Polish frontiers were crossed by invading armies and the sovereign state had to succumb to brutal force. Our national history has so often filled us with bitterness and the feeling of helplessness. But this was, above all, a great lesson in hope. Thanking you for the award I would like, first of all, to express my gratitude and my belief that it serves to enhance the Polish hope. The hope of the nation which throughout the nineteenth century had not for a moment reconciled itself with the loss of independence, and fighting for its own freedom, fought at the same time for the freedom of other nations. The hope whose elations and downfalls during the past forty years - i.e.

the span of my own life - have been marked by the memorable and dramatic dates: 1944, 1956, 1970, 1976, 1980. And if I permit myself at this juncture and on this occasion to mention my own life, it is because I believe that the prize has been granted to me as to one of many. My youth passed at the time of the country's reconstruction from the ruins and ashes of the war in which my nation never bowed to the enemy paying the highest price in the struggle. I belong to the generation of workers who, born in the villages and hamlets of rural Poland, had the opportunity to acquire education and find employment in industry, becoming in the course conscious of their rights and importance in society. Those were the years of awakening aspirations of workers and peasants, but also years of many wrongs, degradations and lost illusions. I was barely 13 years old when, in June 1956, the desperate struggle of the workers of Poznan for bread and freedom was suppressed in blood. Thirteen also was the boy - Romek Strzalkowski - who was killed in the struggle.

It was the "Solidarity" union which 25 years later demanded that tribute be paid to his memory. In December 1970 when workers' protest demonstrations engulfed the towns of the Baltic coast, I was a worker in the Gdansk Shipyard and one of the organizers of the strikes. The memory of my fellow workers who then lost their lives, the bitter memory of violence and despair has become for me a lesson never to be forgotten. Few years later, in June 1976, the strike of the workers at Ursus and Radom was a new experience which not only strengthened my belief in the justness of the working people's demands and aspirations, but has also indicated the urgent need for their solidarity. This conviction brought me, in the summer of 1978, to the Free Trade Unions - formed by a group of courageous and dedicated people who came out in the defense of the workers' rights and dignity. In July and August of 1980 a wave of strikes swept throughout Poland. The issue at stake was then something much bigger than only material conditions of existence. My road of life has, at the time of the struggle, brought me back to the shipyard in Gdansk.

The whole country has joined forces with the workers of Gdansk and Szczecin. The agreements of Gdansk, Szczecin and Jastrzebie were eventually signed and the "Solidarity" union has thus come into being. The great Polish strikes, of which I have just spoken, were events of a special nature. Their character was determined on the one hand by the menacing circumstances in which they were held and, on the other, by their objectives. The Polish workers who participated in the strike actions, in fact represented the nation. When I recall my own path of life I cannot but speak of the violence, hatred and lies. A lesson drawn from such experiences, however, was that we can effectively oppose violence only if we ourselves do not resort to it. In the brief history of those eventful years, the Gdansk Agreement stands out as a great charter of the rights of the working people which nothing can ever destroy. Lying at the root of the social agreements of 1980 are the courage, sense of responsibility, and the solidarity of the working people. Both sides have then recognized that an accord must be reached if bloodshed is to be prevented.

The agreement then signed has been and shall remain the model and the only method to follow, the only one that gives a chance of finding a middle course between the use of force and a hopeless struggle. Our firm conviction that ours is a just cause and that we must find a peaceful way to attain our goals gave us the strength and the awareness of the limits beyond which we must not go. What until then seemed impossible to achieve has become a fact of life. We have won the right to association in trade unions independent from the authorities, founded and shaped by the working people themselves. Our union - the "Solidarity" - has grown into a powerful movement for social and moral liberation. The people freed from the bondage of fear and apathy, called for reforms and improvements. We fought a difficult struggle for our existence. That was and still is a great opportunity for the whole country. I think that it marked also the road to be taken by the authorities, if they thought of a state governed in cooperation and participation of all citizens. "Solidarity", as a trade union movement, did not reach for power, nor did it turn against the established constitutional order.

During the 15 months of "Solidarity's" legal existence nobody was killed or wounded as a result of its activities. Our movement expanded by leaps and bounds. But we were compelled to conduct an uninterrupted struggle for our rights and freedom of activity while at the same time imposing upon ourselves the unavoidable self-limitations. The program of our movement stems from the fundamental moral laws and order. The sole and basic source of our strength is the solidarity of workers, peasants and the intelligentsia, the solidarity of the nation, the solidarity of people who seek to live in dignity, truth, and in harmony with their conscience. Let the veil of silence fall presently over what happened afterwards. Silence, too, can speak out. One thing, however, must be said here and now on this solemn occasion: the Polish people have not been subjugated nor have they chosen the road of violence and fratricidal bloodshed. We shall not yield to violence. We shall not be deprived of union freedoms. We shall never agree with sending people to prison for their convictions. The gates of prisons must be thrown open and persons sentenced for defending union and civic rights must be set free. The announced trials of eleven leading members of our movement must never be held.

All those already sentenced or still awaiting trials for their union activities or their convictions - should return to their homes and be allowed to live and work in their country. The defense of our rights and our dignity, as well as efforts never to let ourselves to be overcome by the feeling of hatred - this is the road we have chosen. The Polish experience, which the Nobel Peace Prize has put into limelight, has been a difficult, a dramatic one. Yet, I believe that it looks to the future. The things that have taken place in human conscience and re-shaped human attitudes cannot be obliterated or destroyed. They exist and will remain. We are the heirs of those national aspirations thanks to which our people could never be made into an inert mass with no will of their own. We want to live with the belief that law means law and justice means justice, that our toil has a meaning and is not wasted, that our culture grows and develops in freedom. As a nation we have the right to decide our own affairs, to mould our own future. This does not pose any danger to anybody. Our nation is fully aware of the responsibility for its own fate in the complicated situation of the contemporary world.

Despite everything that has been going on in my country during the past two years, I am still convinced that we have no alternative but to come to an agreement, and that the difficult problems which Poland is now facing can be resolved only through a real dialogue between state authorities and the people. Lech Walesa Lech Walesa Leader of Polands Solidarity Movement Lech Walesa was born September 29, 1943 in Popowo, Poland. After completing his education at vocational school, Walesa worked as an electromechanic and subsequently performed a two-year military service as a conscript. In 1967, Walesa was employed as an electrician at the Gdansk shipyard, where anti-government political activity was beginning. In 1970, Walesa became one of the leaders of the strike in the shipyard which was suppressed brutally by the Communist regime. He engaged in organizing and activating free and independent trade unions. In August of 1980, Walesa again joined his striking colleagues and went on to become the leader of the social movement Solidarity which would ultimately overthrow Communism in Poland.

He was elected Chairman at the first convention of the independent trade union Solidarity in September of 1981. On December 13, 1981, following the imposition of martial law, he was interned and kept in isolation and detention centers for eleven months. He returned to the Gdansk shipyard and resumed leadership of outlawed Solidarity in April of 1983. Walesa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in December of 1983. By August of 1988, Walesa was the leader of two protest actions in the shipyard which gave rise to the tranformation process in Poland. The Civic Committee led by Walesa developed into a wide-spread social and political initiative. Lech Walesa co-chaired sound table talks between the opposition and Communist authorities. As a result, Solidarity was reinstated under law, and on June 4, 1989, partly free elections were conducted, in which the Communists were defeated. On December 9, 1990, Walesa was elected President of the Republic of Poland in the general and free election, the first to be organized in Poland after World War II.

In 1996, Lech Walesa founded the Walesa Institute. Mr. Walesa is married to Danuta Walesa and has four sons and four daughters. Lech Walesa Biography (Activist/Electrician/Political Figure) Birthplace: Popowo, Poland Best known as: Trade union activist who became president of Poland During the 1980s trade union activist Lech Walesa was the face of Poland's anti-Soviet struggle, and in 1990 he won the presidency in Poland's first free election in half a century. Walesa was a trained electrician working in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk when he got involved in union activism around 1970. An organizer of shipyard strikes in the mid-1970s, he lost his job in 1976 over his anti-communist political views. While managing to make a living, he became more involved in demanding rights for workers, and in 1980 his Interfactory Strike Committee evolved into the Solidarity movement (Solidarnosc).

With a reported 10 million Polish workers on their side, Solidarity was able to win concessions in the Gdansk Agreement (31 August 1980), and quickly became an all-purpose political group that demanded free elections and openly called for the ouster of the Soviet-backed communist government. When martial law was declared in December of 1981, Walesa's organization was forced underground, and Walesa was arrested and briefly jailed. By the end of 1982 he was back in the shipyards, an international folk hero who was TIME magazine's 1980 Man of the Year. Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize and was received by Pope John Paul II in 1983, and Solidarity could not be ignored by the government. Legalized again in 1989, Solidarity won concessions in a series of negotiations (the "roundtable talks") and were allowed to run candidates for parliament. Walesa won the presidency in 1990 (9 December), but lost in a bid for re-election in 1995 to former communist Aleksander Kwasniewski.

His term was marked by internal struggles within his political party, and by the time he left office he was considerably less popular. He ran for office in 2000, but fared poorly at the polls. Considered a key figure in what led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, Walesa travels the world on the lecture circuit and heads up the Lech Walesa Institute Foundation (est. 1995). Copyright © 1998-2017 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved. Advertisement Advertisement Expedition Team Lech Walesa Past Global Perspectives Guest Speaker From electrician to labor leader to Nobel Prize Laureate to the elected President of Poland, Walesa left a changed world. He will meet with Lindblad Expeditions-National Geographic guests in his hometown of Gdansk. A charismatic leader, Walesa co-founded Solidarity (Solidarnoœæ) in 1980, the Soviet bloc's first independent trade union, a 10 million-member labor movement that inspired hope in the hearts of those starved for freedom. Soon after beginning work at the Gdansk (then "Lenin") Shipyards, he became a trade-union activist.

For this he was persecuted by the Polish communist government, placed under surveillance, fired in 1976, and arrested several times. In August 1980 he was instrumental in negotiations that led to the ground-breaking Gdansk Agreement between striking workers and the government. Despite the crackdown of martial law, Walesa prevailed to see the end of communist rule in Poland and Eastern Europe. For his heroic efforts, Walesa won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. He received praise from leaders worldwide for his honor, including these words from President Reagan, "It's a victory for those who seek to enlarge the human spirit over those who seek to crush it." In 1990, he was elected President of Poland. His term in office set Poland firmly on the path to becoming a free market democracy, enabling Poland to receive one of the first invitations to join an expanded NATO. He heads the Lech Walesa Institute whose aim is to champion democracy and free market reform in Eastern Europe and throughout the world. Get Our Newsletter Join us for updates, insider reports & special offers. You exceed allowed number of e-mails sent from a single IP.

Please try again later Subscribe Lech Walesa historical biography : Solidarity An outline historical biography The Solidarity trades union ï¿½ Lech Walesa (pronounced Vah-wen-sah) was born as the son of a carpenter in a clay hut located in the village of Popow, between Warsaw and Gdansk, Poland, on September 29, 1943. The Second World War was in operation with Nazi Germany being an occupying power. Lech Walesa's father, Boleslaw, was conscripted to dig ditches and died in 1946 from the exposure and beatings he suffered. His mother, Feliksa, seemed to have the most effect on Walesa. The parish priest remembers her as "the wisest woman in the parish." Walesa was only an average student at his parish school and after graduating from the state vocational school in Lipno, where he learned the electrician's trade, worked as a car mechanic at a machine center from 1961 to 1965.

He served in the army for two years, rose to the rank of corporal, and in 1967 was employed in the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk as an electrician. Poland has had a rather turbulent and unfortunate history in its position amongst powerful neighbours. Once an extensive country, but one which was apt to suffer serious domestic turbulences, by 1800 Poland had been partitioned out of existence with its former provinces being allocated to the Russian and Austrian empires and to Prussia. At several stages in Poland's history the Roman Catholic Church there has served as a focus through which efforts were made to preserve a Polish, and Catholic, nationality. Although Poland had been reconstituted as an independent state between 1921 and 1939 the aftermath of the Second World War saw a Poland with revised frontiers and under the ideological control of Soviet Russia. Most Poles regarded the Polish Communist Party in Warsaw as little more than an outpost of Soviet Imperialism.

In 1956 there were riots in protest at food shortages, in 1968 Polish intellectuals joined those of Czecheslovakia, another reluctant satellite in the Soviet orbit of control, in protesting the lack of intellectual freedoms. In 1970 there were serious turmoils all along the Baltic coast after the government raised food prices. Lech Walesa was prominent in a leadership role amongst the workers in Gdansk at this time. Gdansk, and the immense Lenin shipyards, featured as the focus of protest against the government in these turmoils. Lech Walesa championed reform but he also urged restraint in the methods used to achieve that reform. In one notably instance he persuaded a crowd of some 20,000 not to attack a nearby prison. It happened that the leader of the Polish Communist Party, Wladslaw Gomulka, authorised the police and army to use force causing tens, and perhaps hundreds, of fatalities - the actual figure has not been established. Lech Walesa was one of the many hundreds who were now arrested by the authorities and subjected to periods of detention.

Following on from the riots of 1970 Edward Gierek replaced Gomulka and promised to transform the standard of living of the Polish people through the deployment of foreign capital. In all, Gierek imported about $10 billion worth of modern capital goods. Then he wasted all of it in textbook cases of how not to run an economy. For example the Ursus tractor factory intended to produce tractors of western design proved to not have the required licencing to allow it to sell its output in the West. The tractors produced were too expensive to be sold in the East, besides this most Polish farm equipment did not fit the tractor. In efforts to inhibit domestic protest that might be caused by economic deprivations, Gierek allowed wages to rise 40% from 1970 to 1975, compared with an increase of only 17% over the previous decade. To give Poles enough meat, Gierek quadrupled imports of grain and fodder; the per capita consumption of meat jumped from 132 lbs. per year in 1970 to 154 lbs. in 1980.

The state's pricing system meanwhile, was primarily designed to hold down food costs to consumers, and was a very effective blueprint for fiscal disaster. The state was paying farmers 10 zlotys for a liter of milk that sold it stores for 4 zlotys. Live hogs were bought from farmers at 130 zlotys per kilogram and sold as butchered pork at 70 zlotys per kilogram. Farmers bought bread and fed it to their livestock because it was cheaper than the wheat it was made from. Price subsidies began absorbing a staggering one-third of the national budget. In Cracow, meanwhile, Karol Cardinal Wojtyla emerged as a strong advocate of human rights and promoted an independent intellectual life. In 1974 Communist Party ideologue Andrej Werbian called the Cardinal "the only real ideological threat in Poland." The astuteness of Werbian's judgment became dramatically apparent four years later when Wojtyla became John Paul II. The naming of the first Polish Pope caused an explosion of national pride in Poland. As had occurred so often in the past, a religious act had become a patriotic cause for the Poles.

Fearing a national outcry, Gierek was reluctant to ease the strain on the budget by raising prices. He was right. When he finally increased prices in 1976, there were major riots in Radom and at the Ursus tractor factory. The brutal repression of these riots led to the formation of the committee for Social self-Defense (KOR), a precursor of Solidarity. The organization was the first significant link between the dissident intellectuals like Jacek Kuron and the workers who later founded the Soldarity trades union. Inspired by KOR activists, small independent--and illegal--labor unions cautiously began to form in various parts of the country. Lech Walesa joined such a unit and was arrested and briefly jailed scores of times. In 1976, as a result of his activities as a shop steward, Walesa was fired and had to earn his living by taking temporary jobs. In 1978 with other activists he began to organise free non-communist trade unions and took part in many actions on the sea coast. He was kept under surveillance by the state security service and frequently detained. The spark that ignited the Solidarity revolution was a government decree that raised meat prices in July 1980.

As they had done many times before, Polish workers reacted with angry protests. But this time something was different. This time the workers occupied the factories. Still, the movement had no focus. In Gdansk's Lenin shipyard, protest seemed to be on the verge of dying out when a stocky man with a shock of reddish-brown hair and a handle-bar mustache clambered over the iron-bar fence and joined the strikers inside. They all knew Lech Walesa. He was an unemployed electrician, fired eight months earlier for trying to organize an independent trade union. With a double chin, a bit of a paunch, and of middle height, Lech Walesa, then 36, did not have an imposing physical presence. His working-class Polish was rough and often ungrammatical: his voice, perhaps from years of heavy smoking, was hoarse and rasping. His speeches were frequently riddled with mixed metaphors and skewed analogies. His real strength as a speaker was an ability to reduce complex issues to simple words and images that everyone could understand. Said one Solidarity official: "He knows his audience.

He can sense what they want, and almost always he is right." In August 1980 he led the Gdansk shipyard strike which gave rise to a wave of strikes over much of the country with Walesa seen as the leader. The primary demands were for workers' rights. The authorities were forced to capitulate and to negotiate with Walesa the Gdansk Agreement of August 31, 1980, which gave the workers the right to strike and to organise their own independent union. If any one event had helped to create the psychological climate in which Solidarity trades union emerged, it was the visit of Pope John Paul II to his homeland in June 1979. From the moment that the Pope knelt in Warsaw's airport to kiss the ground, he was cheered wildly by millions of Poles. John Paul never criticized the Communist regime directly, nor did he have to: his meaning was plain enough. "The exclusion of Christ from the history of man is an act against man," he told an enormous outdoor congregation in Warsaw. With that hardly veiled allusion to Communism, a deafening roar of approval filled the great city square.

Says a Polish bishop of that day: "The Polish people broke the barrier of fear. They were hurling a challenge at their Marxist rulers." During the August 1980 defiance of the communist authorities, the Lenin shipyard functioned as the emotional center of an extraordinary national movement. Festooned with flowers, white and red Polish flags and portraits of Pope John Paul II, the plant's iron gates came to symbolize that heady mixture of hope, faith and patriotism that sustained the workers through their vigil. In September 1981 Walesa was elected Solidarity Chairman at the First National Solidarity Congress in Gdansk. As the world watched and wondered if Soviet tanks would put an end to it all. Walesa and his fellow strikers stood their ground. Like soldiers before battle, they confessed to priests and received Communion in the open shipyard. To reduce the risk of violence, Walesa called for a ban on alcohol and insisted on strict discipline. Through it all, his plucky courage and infectious good humor helped keep up the workers' spirits. Firmness and patience paid off; the government team finally gave in on almost all of the workers' demands.

In addition to the right to strike and form unions, the Warsaw regime granted concessions extraordinary in a Communist country, including reduced censorship and access to the state broadcasting networks for the unions and the church. At a nationally televised ceremony, where strikers and government representatives stood side by side and sang the Polish national anthem. Walesa signed what became known as the Gdansk agreement with a giant souvenir pen bearing the likeness of John Paul II. The Catholic Church had supported the Solidarity movement, and in January 1981 Walesa was cordially received by Pope John Paul II in the Vatican. Walesa himself has always regarded his Catholicism as a source of strength and inspiration. Falling to his knees, Walesa kissed the papal ring and then briefly resisted the Pope's efforts to pull him to his feet. The union leader then had a rare private meeting with the Pope, which lasted for half an hour. Later, in his public remarks, John Paul II warmly supported Solidarity.

"I wish to assure you," he told Walesa, "that during your difficulties I have been with you in a special way, above all through prayer." He declared that the right to form free associations was "one of the fundamental human rights." But the Polish Pope also cautioned Walesa to follow a moderate course. As workers rushed to join up at hastily improvised union locals across the country, Walesa and the other ex-strike leaders quickly found themselves at the head of a labor federation that soon grew to 10 million members--fully a quarter of the Polish population. One of the key organizational problems for Walesa and Solidarity was the question of defining policy and strategy. In the beginning, Walesa insisted that Solidarity should be a pure and simple labor movement, not a political opposition. On the day he showed up at a Gdansk apartment building to open Solidarity's first makeshift headquarters, a wooden crucifix under his arm and a bouquet of flowers in his right hand. Walesa told a crowd of reporters, "I am not interested in politics, I am a union man.

My job now is to organize the union." Some 900,000 Poles quit the Communist party after August 1980, reducing its strength to a mere 2.5 million, only 7% of the population. The resignations increased in October when the Central Committee urged party members, about 1 million of whom belonged to Solidarity, to quit the union. In a strikingly candid statement, Central Committee Member Marian Arendt recently told a Polish weekly: "Mostly it is workers who are leaving (the party). Once I was so naive as to think that a few evil men were responsible for the errors of the party. Now I no longer have such illusions. There is something wrong in our whole apparatus, in our entire structure. "The party was on the verge of total collapse. What was more, Solidarity's surge had started another surprising movement in Poland: a grass-roots crusade for reform that sought to democratize the party from within. Adopting the workers' slogan of ODNOWA (renewal), party reformers tried to make the leadership more responsive to the rank and file.

Party Boss Stanislaw Kania, a pragmatic politician who had replaced Gierik in September 1980, shrewdly adopted the cause of renewal in the hope of controlling it from the top and limiting its scope. At the same time, he cooperated with Solidarity to avoid a possibly disastrous confrontation. A five-day work week was granted on Jan 31 1981 after decades of six-day work weeks in Poland. But that only aggravated the economic crisis by further reducing production--especially in the coal-mining industry, whose output fell by nearly 10% in 1981. In addition, the country was soon swept by a spate of wildcat strikes over local issues. In some cases, Solidarity chapters were taking on the Communist Party bureaucracy by demanding the ouster of corrupt local officials or the conversion of party buildings to public hospitals. For the first time, rank-and-file militants threatened to spin out of Walesa's control. "We must concentrate on basic issues. "Walesa pleaded as the protests spread. "There's a fire in the country." All the while, the Kremlin watched with rising anxiety. Solidarity's very existence was incompatible with the Communist Party's monopoly of power.

But perhaps even more important, the drive for democracy within the Polish party challenged the Leninist doctrine of centralized party discipline. Poland's festering economic crisis also put a drain on the whole Soviet bloc, whose member nations' economies were interlocked within the COMECON trade organization. And in Moscow's worst-case scenario, the "Polish disease" might infect other East bloc countries and the Ukraine, posing a threat to the future of the Soviet empire. On October 18 1981 the Communist Party's Central Committee accepted the resignation of the ineffectual Kania and elevated General Jaruzelski to the party leadership, the real source of power in the country. Jaruzelski was thus the head of the party, the government and the army. The very fact that the Soviets allowed the Poles to violate the Communist dogma that party civilians must always control the military was a sign of their dismay over the Polish party's disarray, and of their faith in the Soviet-schooled general. Jaruzelski appealed for national unity. He asked Solidarity and the church to join with the party in a "front of national accord" that would cooperate on economic recovery.

The overture raised hopes that Poles might at last find a way out of the impasse by forging the vital element that had been missing from their body politic for more than three decades; a true social compact. Then on December 12, Solidarity radicals gave Jaruzelski the excuse to do what he probably had been planning all along. From the start, the government and the Kremlin had made it clear that they could not tolerate a challenge to the existence of Poland as a Communist state, or any loosening of ties with the Soviet Union. That is precisely what the radicals voted to do at their last meeting in Gdansk. While Walesa looked on in frustrated silence, they called for a national referendum on the future of the Communist government and a re-examination of Poland's military alliance with the soviet Union. That was the perfect pretext for the government to impose martial law. Near the end of the session, when communications with the outside world had already been cut, Walesa stood up, raised both arms in a gesture of despair, and angrily told his fellow leaders: "Now you've got what you've been looking for." The end had begun. Within in hours, most of the union leaders had been arrested.

Walesa had been flown to Warsaw, and army vehicles were clanking across the country. By the time Jaruzelski appeared on television, Solidarity's tumultuous revolution had been gagged and shackled. No one could know if Warsaw's leaders would honor their pledge to restore the people's freedoms once "order" returned. But one thing was certain; the flame that was lighted in August 1980 had brightened all Poland, and Poles do not give up easily. In the words that emblazon the tomb of the venerated Marshal Pilsudski: "To be defeated and not to surrender, that's victory." If the government of General Jaruzelski had not imposed the crackdown, the Soviets certainly would have. The presence in Warsaw of high-ranking soviet officers, including Marshal Viktor Kulikov, even suggested a direct soviet role in planning what amounted to an invasion by proxy. For more than a year, the Kremlin had made it clear that it would not indefinitely tolerate the development of a union movement that could challenge a Communist government as directly as Solidarity had--a movement that was calling, in effect, for government by consent of the governed.

In November 1982 Walesa was released and reinstated at the Gdansk shipyards. Although kept under surveillance, he managed to maintain lively contact with Solidarity leaders in the underground. While martial law was lifted in July 1983, many of the restrictions were continued in civil code. In October 1983 the announcement of Walesa's Nobel Peace Prize raised the spirits of the underground movement, but the award was attacked by the government press. Over the following years the Jaruzelski regime became even more unpopular as economic conditions worsened. Under Mikhail Gorbachev the Soviet Union was no longer prepared to use military force to keep communist parties in satellite states in power. The Polish Communist party was finally forced to again negotiate with Walesa and his colleagues in a revived Solidarity movement. The result was the holding of parliamentary elections in September 1989 which led to the establishment of a Solidarity led government. Walesa, now head of the revived Solidarity labour union, began a series of meetings with world leaders. In November 1989 he became the third person in history, after the Marquis de Lafayette and Winston Churchill, to address a joint session of the United States Congress.

In April 1990 at Solidarity's second national congress, Walesa was elected chairman with 77.5% of the votes. In December 1990 in a general ballot he was elected President of the Republic of Poland. He served until defeated in the election of November 1995. Walesa has been granted many honorary degrees from universities, including Harvard University and the University of Paris. Other honors include the Medal of Freedom (Philadelphia, U.S.A.); the Award of Free World (Norway); and the European Award of Human Rights. In 1969 he married Danuta Golos and they have eight children. Popular European History pages at Age-of-the-Sage The preparation of these pages was influenced to some degree by a particular "Philosophy of History" as suggested by this quote from the famous Essay "History" by Ralph Waldo Emerson:- There is one mind common to all individual men... Of the works of this mind history is the record. Its genius is illustrated by the entire series of days. Man is explicable by nothing less than all his history.

Without hurry, without rest, the human spirit goes forth from the beginning to embody every faculty, every thought, every emotion, which belongs to it in appropriate events. But the thought is always prior to the fact; all the facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. A man is the whole encyclopaedia of facts. The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn, and Egypt, Greece, Rome, Gaul, Britain, America, lie folded already in the first man. Epoch after epoch, camp, kingdom, empire, republic, democracy, are merely the application of his manifold spirit to the manifold world. Solidarnosc : Poland Solidarnosc : Poland Solidarnosc : Poland Solidarnosc : Poland In an attempt to solve the Poland's economic problems Edward Gierek instigated an ambitious industrialization programme. This plunged the country into debt and in 1980 the country suffered from severe food shortages. Lech Walesa , along with some of his friends in the anti-communist trade union movement, founded Solidarnosc (Solidarity).

It was not long before the organization had 10 million members and Walesa was its undisputed leader. In August 1980 Walesa led the Gdansk shipyard strike which gave rise to a wave of strikes over much of the country. Walesa, a devout Catholic, developed a loyal following and the communist authorities were forced to capitulate. The Gdansk Agreement, signed on 31st August, 1980, gave Polish workers the right to strike and to organise their own independent union. In 1981 General Wojciech Jaruzelski , replaced Edward Gierek as leader of the Communist Party in Poland. In December 1981, Jaruzelski imposed martial law and Solidarnosc was declared an illegal organization. Soon afterwards Walesa and other trade union leaders were arrested and imprisoned. In November 1982 Lech Walesa was released and allowed to work in the Gdansk shipyards. Martial law was lifted in July 1983, but there were still considerable restrictions on individual freedom. Reformers in Poland were helped by the fact that Mikhail Gorbachev had gained power in the Soviet Union .

In 1986 Gorbachev made it clear he would no longer interfere in the domestic policies of other countries in Eastern Europe. Wojciech Jaruzelski was now forced to negotiate with Walesa and the trade union movement. This resulted in parliamentary elections and a noncommunist government and in 1989 Solidarnosc became a legal organization.

Question: In 1980 Lech Walesa co-founded what trade union in Poland?
Answer: Solidarity