Well, [following the August 1980 strike] it was clear that something in the way of a banner would have to be devised. Something short and clear, so that the people could gather around, so to speak. We didn’t have a nationwide organization, which could provide any kind of a framework. So these demands were here to provide a kind of focal point for others to notice and to lend their support to us. The demands were drawn up in such a way that the most difficult ones were right up in the front. The political ones.
The first one was the demand for free trade unions, and the very last ones were economic. This was done by design, on my part. I knew that if we started our negotiations with the economic demands, then the authorities would respond with a [wage] raise – regardless of whether there were goods in the stores to buy. But they would give that raise. And that could be a point at which the strike is over – because some people could say, we got our money and let’s go home. So the first demand was of course the hardest for the authorities to swallow – free trade unions. What did that mean? It meant the Communist authorities’ acquiescence in the birth of a trade union, an organization which they did not control.
I knew that if we got an agreement, if we achieved it, then the next steps we took would achieve more. I also knew that this was a game not only with the Communist Party, the Communist authorities’ headquarters in Warsaw, but also a game with Moscow. So therefore there were no hints of anti-Sovietism. No hint of saying, “We are leaving the Warsaw Pact” or “We don’t like the Soviet Union.” One of my colleagues, without my approval, wrote in a demand for free elections. I crossed that one out. Because to me this was clear-cut.
What free elections meant, what that demand means is, “Give us power.” And the response could be of one kind only. Therefore, this demand for free trade unions was maximalist, and some of the people who traveled to us, especially from Warsaw, said, no, this is not feasible. For my part, I got a sense that it was feasible, when the workers started to be able to talk of nothing else except the unions, except free trade unions. So then it became their own demand. So this demand for free trade unions, of the small political opposition group, became one owned by all, by all the workers who participated in that strike. So it was clear to me that this was realistic.
Bogdan Borusewicz is the Speaker (Marshal) of the Polish Senate. He was born in 1949 and studied history at the Catholic University of Lublin.
Under communism, Borusewicz was an ardent democracy activist. His career as a dissident started in high school, when he was arrested in 1968 for engaging with the opposition movement. In the 1970s, Borusewicz became involved with the Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) and the Free Trade Unions of the Coast, workers’ advocacy organizations that preceded the Solidarity independent trade union.
Borusewicz rose to prominence as the principal organizer of Gdansk’s Lenin Shipyard strike in August 1980, which led to the formation of Solidarity. When martial law was declared in 1981, Borusewicz went into hiding for four years. During this time, he married fellow freedom activist Alina Pienkowska in secret. When Alina gave birth to the couple’s daughter, Kinga, Borusewicz attended her baptism in disguise for fear of being arrested by authorities. He was later arrested in 1986 and imprisoned for two years. After receiving amnesty, Borusewicz renewed his activism, serving as deputy leader of Solidarity in 1990 and 1991. He was elected to the lower house of parliament in 1990, where he served until 2001.
In 2005, he was elected to the Senate, where he was chosen by his colleagues to serve as Speaker (Marshal). In 2010, he served briefly as the interim Polish President after President Lech Kaczynski died.
Poland is a central European country bordered by the Baltic Sea, Belarus, Ukraine, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Poland has a population of 38 million people; nearly 90 percent are Roman Catholic.
Poles struggled against foreign dominance from the 14th century and the modern Polish state is less than one hundred years old. Polish borders expanded and contracted through a series of partitions in the 18th century. After a brief period of independence and parliamentary democracy from 1918 to 1939, World War II brought occupation by Nazi Germany and the near annihilation of the Jewish population. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Poland’s Jewish population went from over 3 million in 1933 to 45,000 in 1950.
After the war, Poland became a Soviet satellite state and a communist system was imposed. Farms were collectivized, basic freedoms curtailed, and a culture of fear developed under a Stalinist regime. The 1960s brought greater prosperity and some liberalization. Labor protests in the early 1970s tested the communist government’s resolve and prompted modest reforms.
In 1978, Polish Archbishop and Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian to hold the position since the 16th century. The pope’s triumphant return to Poland in 1979 saw massive outpourings of public support, shaking the foundations of the government and inspiring the opposition to press for peaceful change.
In 1980, shipbuilders in the seaport city of Gdansk united to confront the government. Their calls for greater political liberties and improved working conditions developed into the Solidarity movement. Solidarity’s leader, Lech Walesa, became the movement’s voice. Protests and unrest spread throughout the country and the communists replaced their leadership. General Wojciech Jaruzelski became prime minister and declared martial law on December 13, 1981. Solidarity was outlawed and Walesa and other Solidarity leaders were imprisoned.
While martial law was lifted in 1983, Poland continued to stagnate. Mikhail Gorbachev’s elevation to leadership of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985 brought new pressures for reform in Poland. A failing economy and continued repression incited workers to a new wave of strikes in 1988. A desperate regime agreed to legalize Solidarity and conduct semi-free elections. In the 1989 parliamentary elections, Solidarity won 99 of the 100 Senate seats and 160 of the 161 lower house seats they were allowed to contest. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Solidarity leader, became Poland’s first non-communist prime minister in over four decades. In 1990, Lech Walesa was elected president with 74 percent of the vote. While Solidarity splintered as Poland democratized, a coalition government of anti-communist parties won fully free parliamentary elections in 1991.
Poland transitioned to a market economy and applied for integration into western institutions. Economic dislocation returned the former communists, now social democrats, to power in 1993. Free elections and peaceful transitions in the following decades solidified Poland’s multi-party democratic system. Reforms eventually led to a more robust economy and Poland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.
In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2013, Poland earned the status “Free,” (as it has since 1990) receiving the best possible rankings in the categories Political Rights and Civil Liberties.
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