„Solidarity”: concept and task

After World War II, despite fighting on all fronts, Poles found themselves in the Soviet sphere of influence, separated from the free world by an iron curtain. Devastated by war, they now had to face a new totalitarianism, a Communist regime imposed by the Red Army, which choked freedom and prevented the development of the economy. Polish patriots, war heroes, and soldiers of the wartime underground independence movement were persecuted by the apparatus of repression, locked up in prison, and subjected to torture and murder. The new socialist order controlled society through terror. The Catholic Church was the target of repression, priests were persecuted and imprisoned, even the primate of Poland, cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, spent three years under house arrest.
Birth of „Solidarity”
This did not destroy the Polish love of freedom, as reflected in mass protests, brutally suppressed by the authorities but resulted in the emergence of the democratic opposition. The election of a Polish cardinal to the Throne of St Peter led to the first pilgrimage of John Paul II to Poland in June 1979, during which these memorable words were uttered „may Your Spirit come down and renew the face of the Earth.
This earth”. This awakened the Polish people’s dreams of freedom, fully realised a year later, when, as a result of mass protests in August 1980 caused by striking workers at shipyards on the Baltic coast, the independent self-governing trade union „Solidarność” (Solidarity) was born. In addition to social and economic demands, there were also demands for freedom of religion, radio transmission of the Mass, abolition of censorship and freedom of association. With 10 million members, or one quarter of Polish society, Solidarność went far beyond the norms of a trade union, it became the largest citizens’ movement for peace and democratic resistance to Communism in the Eastern Bloc. Solidarność, with its regional structure and presence in each workplace, acted as a counterbalance to the plant-based Communist Party cells. The authorities only prevented the creation of Solidarność groups in the Polish army and the Civic Militia.
Before Solidarność emerged, there was a real solidarity between people, and on a huge scale. Solidarność combined a variety of ideas: socialist (social justice, self-government and egalitarianism), Catholic social science (social solidarity and the rejection of violence in resolving social conflicts) and the Polish tradition of independence.
Solidarność, with its clear demands, formulated a programme to introduce systemic changes in Poland. It sought to implement reforms, using a variety of forms of pressure, including sit-ins in industrial and public buildings and street demonstrations. It was then unthinkable that teachers, doctors, and nurses would strike. Thus, Solidarność introduced the concept of a solidarity strike: one to defend the rights and interests of workers who could not or should not strike, whose protest was limited to the flying of flags and the wearing of armbands; for them and in their place others went on strike. This was a beautiful idea. The strike had its own ethos, something sublime, free of selfishness and individualism.
Fortress Wrocław
Wrocław became one of the most important centres of anti-Communist resistance, and the emergence of Solidarność and the period 1980–1990 provided key moments shaping its postwar history. The environment of the democratic opposition was formed here in the second half of the 1970s: the Student Solidarity Committee, the Movement of Free Democrats and the Society of Scientific Courses. Modest in size, but dynamically functioning organisations publishing and distributing illegal uncensored magazines and books became the intellectual and expert support for those on strike in Wrocław’s workplaces.