The fall of Communism
The beginning of the end
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If you ask a Pole about the end of Communism, you are likely to get the answer: “It all began here". While some might doubt the veracity of this claim, it is true that Poland was the centre stage for the first uprisings behind the Iron Curtain, which shook Eastern Europe in the 1970s and 80s.
It all first began in December 1970 , when Poles took to the streets in protest against a sudden rise in food prices. This price hike cut particularly close to the bone as it came just before Christmas.
Dozens of people were killed in the demonstrations across the country. But this is now considered the first gust of the wind of change. Ten years later, the workers of the Gdansk shipyards united as never before and formed the first non-Communist trade union in Poland - Solidarity.
The leader of the new union was an unemployed electrician from the shipyards, Lech Walesa. He was elected by his colleagues during the strikes in the Gdansk shipyards.
The dissent there inspired others from around Poland to follow suit. The Communist regime was forced to roll back some of its stricter policies and decided to allow limited freedom of association, but not actual trade unions.
By December 1981 the government could not cope with the strikes and uprisings in the country instigated by Solidarity any more and declared martial law. On the same day they arrested Lech Walesa.
Negotiation or selling out?
Another charismatic leader of the movement was crane operator Anna Walentynowicz. She had been working at the Gdansk shipyards for 42 years when she decided to join Solidarity. She was arrested once and felt so scared that she almost gave up her membership. So she came up with a plan: "I had a rule: not to know surnames or addresses. Just in case I were caught and they would want some kind of information from me. So, for example, Janek Ikrzynski. I knew who Janek was. But Ikrzynski was a stranger to me. I simply did not want to know surnames."
Ms Walentynowicz and Mr Walesa initially fought together, but as the years went by they started to follow different ideologies. According to Ms Walentynowicz, Lech Walesa sold out to the Communists when he agreed to negotiate with them at the Round Table Talks in 1989.
But Lech Walesa sees things differently. "My whole tragedy was that I could not say what I really wanted to do. What was I supposed to tell [Communist leader] General Wojciech Jaruzelski? That he should allow Solidarity to exist and take over his job? Then, the only thing I could have done was to become president, because no one else was in a position to do so."
Declining Solidarity
The Round Table Talks led to semi-free elections in 1989. Solidarity won all the seats made available by the regime and took over from them. Lech Walesa was elected president the following year.
But despite the charisma that the Solidarity leader had shown throughout his fight against Communism, he failed to convince the voters to chose him for a second term. And in the 2000 elections he failed to win the presidency for a second time.
So was he disappointed by the people he fought for? "No. I am a leader so I have to understand the process. The struggle was not about 'Walesa.' It was about Poland and about reforms and about democracy, so it could not have looked differently. I also had to pay some kind of price."
The fact Lech Walesa agreed to hold talks with the Communist regime led many to believe he was in fact a double agent, working under the codename "Bolek". The matter sparks controversy in Poland still today.
Solidarity has come a long way since its golden years. It no longer occupies centre stage in Polish politics, and it has been scaled down to being a trade union, just like the many others across democratic Europe. But nothing can take away the important role played by the movement in modern history. After all, it all began there.
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