Solidarity: From August 1980 to Today

In August 1980, a strike at the Gdańsk Shipyard, which began with the defense of the dismissed crane operator Anna Walentynowicz, turned into a wave of protests across the country. A few weeks later, the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity" was established, independent from the authorities of the Polish People's Republic. By autumn 1981, it had nearly 9.5 million members. Dissolved after the introduction of martial law, it survived underground and in 1989 led to the Round Table and partially free elections, after which the end of communism in Poland began.

This guide tells the entire story of "Solidarity". We start with its roots: December 1970, June 1976, and the Free Trade Unions. Then we describe August 1980, the agreements, and sixteen months of legal activity. Next, we cover the underground, the second circulation, assistance from the West and the Polish diaspora, the strikes of 1988, the Round Table, and the elections of June 4, 1989. The final part discusses what happened to the union after 1989: the Electoral Action of Solidarity and Jerzy Buzek's government, support for presidential candidates, and the current position of "Solidarity". Where sources differ or something could not be confirmed, we state it directly. We discuss martial law and the role of John Paul II in separate guides.

Where Solidarity Came From

"Solidarity" did not fall from the sky in August 1980. The people who stood at gate number 2 of the Gdańsk Shipyard carried in their memories four earlier outbursts of anger: Poznań 1956, March 1968, December 1970, and June 1976. Each time, the authorities resorted to the militia or the army, and then promised improvement. And each time, the rebels learned that they lost when acting alone.

Poznań 1956: The First Rebellion

On the morning of June 28, 1956, Thursday, workers at the Józef Stalin Metal Industry Plant in Poznań (now Cegielski's plants) went on strike. The strike quickly turned into a massive demonstration and then into street battles. To suppress the rebellion, the authorities deployed about 10,000 soldiers and 400 tanks.

The number of casualties was long disputed. In 2006, historian Łukasz Jastrząb announced a verified list of 57 killed and those who died from wounds, and the IPN confirmed these findings in 2007 and added Andrzej Stypek, who died in 1964 as a result of a gunshot wound from June 1956. Older estimates spoke of over 70 killed. One of the youngest victims was thirteen-year-old Romek Strzałkowski. "Głos Wielkopolski" reported that there were no children among the victims, while in the same issue, it published the boy's obituary.

March 1968: Students Left Alone

Twelve years later, students rebelled. The spark was the removal of a scene from Mickiewicz's "Dziady" directed by Kazimierz Dejmek, which the party deemed anti-Soviet. On March 8, 1968, a rally was held in defense of expelled students, including Adam Michnik, in the courtyard of the University of Warsaw. The rally was broken up by the militia and the "workers' active" who arrived by bus labeled "excursion." The authorities organized "mass meetings" in workplaces with slogans like "Writers to the pen, students to study," and the accompanying anti-Semitic campaign led to estimates that between 13,000 and 20,000 people left Poland in 1968.

March also had a consequence that would be felt two years later. When in December 1970, shipyard workers came to the Gdańsk Polytechnic to ask students for support, they were met with coldness. The students remembered that in 1968, workers had helped the militia suppress their protest. It was only after 1976 that workers and intellectuals began to act together.

December 1970: Blood on the Coast

On December 12, 1970, two weeks before the holidays, the radio announced price increases for food. Flour rose by 17 percent, jams by 36 percent. On Monday, December 14, workers from the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk went to the building of the Voivodeship Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party. The next day, the building was on fire. Among the members of the first strike committee at the shipyard was 27-year-old electrician Lech Wałęsa.

The most tragic day was Thursday, December 17, later called Black Thursday. On the evening of December 16, Deputy Prime Minister Stanisław Kociołek called on the shipyard workers via radio and television to return to work. In the morning, as they got off the train at the Gdynia Shipyard stop, the army and militia opened fire. According to the prosecutor's findings, 10 people were killed there, although some publications, such as the dzieje.pl website, mention 16. Around 6:00 AM, 18-year-old Zbigniew Godlewski was shot. Demonstrators carried his body on doors through the streets of the city, and a photo of this scene, taken from a window by Edmund Pelpliński, became a symbol of December. On the same day in Szczecin, a crowd set fire to the building of the Voivodeship Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party, and the militia and army shot at people. Thirteen people were killed that day in Szczecin, including bystanders, and two more the next day.

Godlewski is commemorated in the "Ballad of Janek Wiśniewski," whose authorship is disputed: the court granted rights to Krzysztof Dowgial, but Jerzy Fic also claimed authorship of the text. Interestingly, the author of the first music for the ballad in 1980, Mieczysław Cholewa, turned out to be a secret collaborator of the SB. The most famous version, from the film "Man of Iron," was composed by Andrzej Korzyński.

To suppress the protests, about 27,000 soldiers and 9,000 militia officers were deployed. Some soldiers were told they were going against "Gdańsk Germans." The most commonly cited balance is 45 killed and 1,165 wounded, but in PAP publications, one can also find 44 killed and over 1,160 wounded. On December 20, Władysław Gomułka was replaced at the head of the party by Edward Gierek. No one was held accountable for the massacre until the fall of the Polish People's Republic.

June 1976: Radom, Ursus, and "Health Paths"

On June 24, 1976, Prime Minister Piotr Jaroszewicz announced on television price increases that could reach as high as 70 percent. The next day, 97 plants went on strike. In Radom, a crowd set fire to the building of the party's voivodeship committee. In Ursus, near Warsaw, workers stopped the train "Opolanin" on the tracks and dismantled the rails on the international line. The authorities almost immediately withdrew the price increases, but reprisals fell on the protesters.

In Radom, two people were killed, Jan Łabęcki and Tadeusz Ząbecki, crushed by a trailer with concrete slabs they were trying to push towards the ZOMO. 27-year-old Jan Brożyna died after being beaten by militia officers. A total of 634 people were detained. The detainees were herded through "health paths," a line of militia officers beating them with clubs. Propaganda labeled the protesters as "Radom rebels."

KOR and Others: Opposition Comes Out of the Shadows

The repression following June 1976 gave rise to something new. Young people from the scouting "Czarna Jedynka" and the Catholic Intelligence Club began to help the families of repressed workers. In September 1976, 14 people signed an appeal to establish the Committee for the Defense of Workers. Among the founders were writer Jerzy Andrzejewski, economist Edward Lipiński, priest Jan Zieja, Jacek Kuroń, and Antoni Macierewicz. KOR members operated openly, under their own names. An informal information office about the repressions became the home phone of Grażyna and Jacek Kuroń in Warsaw, number 39-39-64.

After arrests in May 1977, the authorities announced an amnesty in July that included both KOR activists and the last imprisoned workers. On September 29, 1977, the committee transformed into the Social Self-Defense Committee "KOR". Alongside it, other groups operated: from March 1977, the Movement for the Defense of Human Rights and Civil Liberties (ROPCiO), and from 1979, centered around Aleksander Hall and the magazine "Bratniak," the Movement of Young Poland.

The most important for the future August turned out to be the Free Trade Unions of the Coast, whose founding committee was established on April 29, 1978, in Gdańsk by Andrzej Gwiazda, Krzysztof Wyszkowski, and Antoni Sokołowski. In the publication "Robotnik Wybrzeża," they wrote wryly that matters considered political in the Polish People's Republic encompass "almost everything except mushroom-picking excursions." Around the WZZ gathered people whose names would soon be known worldwide: Anna Walentynowicz, Lech Wałęsa, Alina Pienkowska, Bogdan Borusewicz, and Andrzej Kołodziej. The environment was under surveillance: one of the founding committee members, Edwin Myszk, turned out to be a secret collaborator of the SB.

The State on Credit

In the background, an economic crisis was escalating. By the end of 1970, Poland owed capitalist countries about 1.1 billion dollars. By 1980, the debt in convertible currencies had risen to 24.1 billion dollars, and for 1981, repayments and interest amounted to 10.9 billion, while all exports to the West were expected to bring in 8.5 billion. Since August 1976, sugar had been sold on "commodity tickets," as ration cards were officially called.

June 1979: "This Land"

An important psychological impulse was the first pilgrimage of John Paul II to his homeland. On June 2, 1979, in Victory Square in Warsaw, before about half a million people, the pope said: "Let Your Spirit descend! Let Your Spirit descend and renew the face of the earth. This earth!" According to many historians, the enthusiastic reception of this pilgrimage contributed to the birth of the movement that a year later took the name "Solidarity," although estimates of how significant this influence was vary. We discuss the role of the pope in more detail in a separate guide.

August 1980

Contrary to popular belief, it did not start in Gdańsk. IPN historian Grzegorz Majchrzak reminds us that the first strikes broke out as early as July 1, 1980, including at the Mechanical Engineering Plant in Ursus and the Communication Equipment Factory in Mielec. The immediate cause was, as historian Krzysztof Brzechczyn writes in an IPN study, the price increase for meat and cold cuts introduced at the beginning of July.

July: Lublin and Świdnik

On July 8, the Mechanical Processing Department of the Communication Equipment Factory in Świdnik went on strike. On July 11, the first written agreement between employees and the authorities was signed there this summer. The wave spread to over 150 plants in Lublin, and according to the IPN, about 50,000 people participated. Railway workers and public transport also joined the strike. The Lublin press remained silent, but from July 9, Radio Free Europe reported on the strikes. The authorities promised raises to each plant individually, and by the end of July and the beginning of August, the wave subsided.

The Crane Operator Who Was Five Months Short of Retirement

In August 1980, the management of the Lenin Shipyard dismissed Anna Walentynowicz, an activist of the Free Trade Unions, for disciplinary reasons. She was five months short of retirement. Sources provide different dates for her dismissal: the chronology of the Encyclopedia of Solidarity published by the IPN mentions August 7, while other studies mention August 8. Previously, she had been a welder, and when hard work ruined her health, she retrained as a crane operator. Her dismissal became the direct reason for action for the WZZ.

August 14: Strike at the Lenin Shipyard

The strike was planned by Bogdan Borusewicz, a member of KSS "KOR" and a collaborator of the WZZ. He printed a leaflet on a spirit duplicator in about 2,000 copies. At six in the morning, three young shipyard workers from the WZZ, Jerzy Borowczak, Bogdan Felski, and Ludwik Prądzyński, were to start the strike. The oldest of the group, Lech Wałęsa, who had been dismissed from the shipyard in 1976, was to infiltrate the facility and lead the protest.

On Thursday, August 14, at 6:00 AM, the K-1 and K-3 departments stopped working, followed by others. At 9:00 AM, a rally began. The workers demanded the reinstatement of Walentynowicz and Wałęsa, a monument to the victims of December 1970, a raise of 2,000 złoty, and family allowances equivalent to those received by the militia and SB officers. The government agency Interpress denied that any strike was taking place.

Jumping Over the Fence. What We Know for Sure

The most famous image of August, Wałęsa jumping over the shipyard fence, is also one of the least documented. It is only certain that Wałęsa arrived at the shipyard around 10:00 AM, several hours later than planned. The IPN chronology cautiously states that he "gets through" to the shipyard, and Wałęsa himself explained his delay with "trivialities." Grzegorz Majchrzak points out that Wałęsa's own accounts of where he jumped over the fence are inconsistent. Journalist Marcin Herman noted that it was supposedly not that difficult to enter through the gate. The iconic jump was captured in a film by Andrzej Wajda.

There is also another version: Anna Walentynowicz claimed for years, including in an interview for PAP in 2005, that Wałęsa "did not jump over any fence," but was brought to the shipyard by a Navy motorboat in agreement with the SB. Majchrzak categorizes this story as a myth and notes that it changed over time: at first, it was about Wałęsa being taken back on August 16, then about bringing him on August 14, and a newer "witness" speaks of August 13. This thread is not confirmed by any credible document. However, it is known that after entering, Wałęsa jumped onto an excavator, reminded director Klemens Gniech of his dismissal, and took the lead of the strike committee. The matter of the "Bolek" file, i.e., Wałęsa's collaboration with the SB in the early 1970s, is a separate, still disputed topic that this guide does not resolve.

August 16: A Strike That Was Supposed to End

On Saturday, August 16, the management conceded: they agreed to reinstate Walentynowicz and Wałęsa, grant a raise of 1,500 złoty, and erect a monument. Around 3:00 PM, Wałęsa announced over the loudspeaker the end of the strike. The shipyard workers were to leave the facility by 6:00 PM. Smaller plants in the Tri-City that had joined the protest were left with nothing. At the gates, Alina Pienkowska, Anna Walentynowicz, Ewa Ossowska, and others began to stop those leaving and convince them that leaving the shipyard would be a betrayal. Wałęsa changed his decision and announced a solidarity strike, although most of the crew had already left. According to the IPN, about 700 people remained at the shipyard.

This moment is sometimes portrayed as Wałęsa's "betrayal." Majchrzak considers this a myth: the decision to end the strike was made by the entire committee, and it was Wałęsa who extended the protest against the wishes of some of its members. In the night from August 16 to 17, the Inter-Plant Strike Committee was formed with Wałęsa as chairman. On Sunday, August 17, Father Henryk Jankowski held a mass at gate number 2 with the participation of thousands of people. A portrait of John Paul II and a banner with a modified slogan of the communists: "Proletarians of all plants unite" hung at the gate.

21 Demands on Plywood

The demands of the MKS were established on August 17 and 18 (sources differ on the day), after heated disputes among the strike leaders. Ultimately, they were drafted by Bogdan Borusewicz. The first was the most important and the most difficult for the authorities: agreement on free trade unions independent of the party, citing Convention No. 87 of the International Labour Organization, which the Polish People's Republic itself had ratified. Following were the right to strike, freedom of speech, the release of political prisoners, but also completely mundane matters: shorter waiting times for housing, places in nurseries, and free Saturdays. Few remember today that demand number 12 stated: "Introduce ration cards for meat and processed products (until the situation on the market is stabilized)." The workers themselves demanded rationing, and in the next point, the abolition of "commercial prices" and sales for dollars in so-called internal exports.

Since there was no other way to show the demands to the people, they were written on two plywood boards and hung at the reception desk at gate number 2. The first was recorded by Arkadiusz Rybicki, the second by Maciej Grzywaczewski, both associated with the Movement of Young Poland. In 1981, the union transferred them to the Central Maritime Museum. After the introduction of martial law, the authorities requisitioned the exhibits but took copies. The originals were hidden earlier by museum employees, and Wiesław Urbański kept them in his home and only returned them after 1989. In 2003, the boards were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Register.

The MKS grew day by day: on August 18, it encompassed 156 plants, on August 23, 388, and by the end, over 700. At the request of the strikers, the sale of alcohol was halted in the Tri-City. On August 23, the first issue of the "Strike Information Bulletin Solidarity" was published, and the graphic symbol of "Solidarity" was designed by Jerzy Janiszewski, a graduate of the Gdańsk State Higher School of Fine Arts. Experts from Warsaw, including Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Bronisław Geremek, arrived at the shipyard.

Szczecin, Jastrzębie, Dąbrowa Górnicza

On August 18, the Szczecin Shipyard named after Adolf Warski went on strike. The local MKS, led by Marian Jurczyk, presented 36 demands and was the first to sign an agreement with the commission of Deputy Prime Minister Kazimierz Barcikowski on August 30 at 8:00 AM. By the end of August, Upper Silesia also went on strike. From August 28, the Manifest Lipcowy mine in Jastrzębie-Zdrój was idle, followed by others. On September 3 at 5:45 AM, the MKS, with Jarosław Sienkiewicz, signed the Jastrzębie agreement with Deputy Prime Minister Aleksander Kopeć, which included, among other things, the promise of free Saturdays. On September 11, an agreement was reached at the Katowice Steelworks in Dąbrowa Górnicza (the IPN chronology states September 11, although Grzegorz Majchrzak mentions September 9).

According to Majchrzak, the agreements from Gdańsk and Szczecin granted the right to independent unions only on the Coast, which is why a second wave of strikes swept the country in September, and only the Katowice agreement extended the Gdańsk arrangements to other regions.

August 31: The Pen with the Pope

The final talks in the BHP hall of the Gdańsk Shipyard got stuck on the issue of political prisoners. Deputy Prime Minister Mieczysław Jagielski conceded and provided written guarantees for their release. On August 31 in the afternoon, Wałęsa and Jagielski signed the agreement. Sources provide slightly different times: the IPN chronology mentions 4:40 PM, while other studies refer to 4:00 PM for the final document and 4:45 PM for Wałęsa's signature.

Wałęsa signed it with a huge, red, plastic pen about 40 centimeters long, with a capsule containing a rolled-up postcard with John Paul II. Such pens were produced by Ludwik Górka from Myślenice for sale at pilgrimage sites. Someone handed it to Wałęsa during the strike, but the donor never revealed themselves. In 1983, Wałęsa donated the pen, along with the Nobel Peace Prize medal, to Jasna Góra. Ethnologist Czesław Robotycki saw this as an example of the "carnival" aesthetics of the strike.

According to a report from the Ministry of Internal Affairs on August 30, 700 plants and over 700,000 workers were on strike in 28 provinces at that time.

Sixteen Months of "Carnival"

The period from August 1980 to December 13, 1981, is often referred to as the "Carnival of Solidarity." It was marked by euphoria and a sense of freedom, but also by deepening poverty, longer queues, and fear of Moscow.

September 17: One Union for All of Poland

On September 17, 1980, in Gdańsk, representatives of independent founding committees from across the country gathered. More than 3 million people had already joined or wanted to join the new unions. Legal advisor Jan Olszewski proposed that all committees register as one nationwide union. Karol Modzelewski from Wrocław supported this idea and suggested the name: Independent Self-Governing Trade Union "Solidarity." Lech Wałęsa was appointed head of the National Coordinating Commission.

Registration Crisis

On September 24, Wałęsa submitted the statute to the Voivodeship Court in Warsaw. It did not include a provision about the leading role of the party. On October 24, Judge Zdzisław Kościelniak registered the union, adding a clause about the leading role of the PZPR and changing the provisions regarding the right to strike. "It seems to me that a different union has been registered than the one I represent," commented Wałęsa. On October 27, the union announced its readiness to strike.

On November 10, 1980, the Supreme Court overturned the judge's changes. The compromise involved attaching an annex to the statute with a fragment of the Gdańsk Agreement regarding the leading role of the party and with provisions from the ILO convention. "We have everything we wanted," Wałęsa said.

How Many Were in "Solidarity"

It is commonly said that there were "ten million members of Solidarity." This is an approximation. According to historian Krzysztof Brzechczyn, in a study by the IPN, at the beginning of October 1980, about 2.5 million people had joined the union, around 7.5 million after registration, and during the First National Delegates' Congress in the fall of 1981, "Solidarity" had exactly 9,476,584 members. The largest regions were Silesia-Dąbrowski (1.4 million members), Mazowsze (911 thousand), and Lower Silesia (900 thousand). English-language studies estimate that this was roughly one-third of the working-age population.

Farmers and Students

Individual farmers wanted their own union, but the authorities responded that peasants were not hired workers, so they could not have a union. After strikes in Ustrzyki Dolne and Rzeszów, the registration of the NSZZ Rolników Indywidualnych "Solidarity" only came on May 12, 1981. It was led by Jan Kułaj.

Students began to establish the Independent Students' Association as early as September 1980 (some sources give the date as September 22), and the committees from across the country adopted a common name at a congress in Warsaw on October 18-19. They were registered only on February 17, 1981, after student strikes, primarily in Łódź, and its first leader was Jarosław Guzy. In January 1981, the entire country was also engaged in a dispute over free Saturdays: the government declared some Saturdays to be working days, and on January 10, at the call of "Solidarity," many workers did not show up for work. On January 31, it was agreed that three Saturdays a month would be free.

Three Crosses at Gate No. 2

The idea for a monument to the fallen shipyard workers was proposed as early as 1971 by Henryk Lenarciak, a union member from department W-4. It was only realized after August, with funds collected during the strike and sent from across the country. The authorities tried to change the name so that the monument would also commemorate fallen militia members. This was blocked by sharp protests from Anna Walentynowicz.

On December 16, 1980, on the tenth anniversary of December, the monument was unveiled at Gate No. 2 in the presence of hundreds of thousands of people and representatives of "Solidarity," the government, and the Church. The three steel crosses with anchors are 42 meters high and were the tallest crosses in Poland for twenty years. The monument features a fragment of Psalm 29 and a poem by Czesław Miłosz titled "You Who Have Wronged," and during the ceremony, "Lacrimosa" by Krzysztof Penderecki was performed for the first time, which the composer wrote at the request of Lech Wałęsa. However, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński was absent, as he believed he could not be just the "Cardinal of the Shipyard Workers."

Just eleven days earlier, on December 5, a meeting of the leaders of the Soviet bloc dedicated solely to Poland took place in Moscow. Stanisław Kania assured his comrades that if necessary, the party would "demonstrate great determination in relation to the counter-revolution."

Bydgoszcz and the Largest Strike in the History of the Bloc

On March 19, 1981, in Bydgoszcz, the Voivodeship National Council convened, inviting a delegation from "Solidarity" to present the arguments of the striking farmers. The chairman unexpectedly closed the session. In the evening, the militia forcibly removed the union members from the building, and regional chairman Jan Rulewski, along with Mariusz Łabentowicz and Michał Bartoszcze, were severely beaten. According to the IPN calendar, 1,300 militia officers arrived in Bydgoszcz that day. Who and why ordered the beating remains unresolved to this day.

Then an information war began. In the early morning of March 21, a military plane dropped leaflets over Bydgoszcz, allegedly signed by councilors, claiming that Rulewski had harmed himself. According to the IPN, the leaflet was prepared by the military's Special Propaganda Division at the request of Chief of the General Staff Gen. Florian Siwicki. Meanwhile, the union press printed instructions in case of a Soviet intervention, modeled after Czechoslovakia in 1968: remove street name signs, turn road signs around.

Radicals demanded a general strike. After a stormy night meeting, Wałęsa pushed through a milder variant: a four-hour warning strike on Friday, March 27, from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM, and a general strike starting March 31 if the government did not concede. On March 27, almost all of Poland came to a standstill. English-language studies, citing various sources, estimate participation at 12-14 million people and call it the largest strike in the history of the Eastern bloc, but these numbers should not be treated as precise measurements. The same day also has a grim undertone: according to the IPN calendar, on March 27, 1981, Stanisław Kania and Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski signed planning documents in case martial law was introduced.

Cardinal Wyszyński mediated. "The most urgent matter is that you, wanting much, do not lose what you have today," he told the union delegation on March 28. On the evening of March 30, Andrzej Gwiazda announced on television's "Dziennik" that an agreement had been reached with the government and the strike was suspended. The government expressed regret over the beating, but many activists considered the settlement a capitulation. Union spokesman Karol Modzelewski resigned, and Rulewski and Łabentowicz wrote that they had signed a statement "that could have been drafted by the worst clerk."

The Shadow of Maneuvers

The entire Bydgoszcz crisis unfolded in the shadow of Warsaw Pact troops. On March 16, 1981, maneuvers "Sojuz-81" began on Polish territory, and on March 24, they were extended indefinitely. They lasted until April 7. Historians interpret them as a form of pressure from Moscow on both the Polish authorities and "Solidarity," but whether this was a real indication of an invasion remains disputed. In September 1981, during the "Solidarity" congress, maneuvers "Zachód-81" ("Zapad-81") took place in the Baltic and Belarus, considered by Western analysts to be the largest in the history of the Soviet army. The debate over whether martial law saved Poland from intervention is discussed in our guide on martial law.

Congress in the Olivia Hall and a Letter to Eastern Europe

The First National Delegates' Congress of the NSZZ "Solidarity" was held in the Gdańsk Olivia Hall in two sessions, from September 5-10 and September 26 – October 7, 1981. It was attended by 896 delegates. Lech Wałęsa was elected chairman, receiving 55 percent of the votes, ahead of Marian Jurczyk (24 percent), Andrzej Gwiazda (9 percent), and Jan Rulewski (6 percent). The congress adopted the program "Self-Governing Republic." During the proceedings, Prof. Edward Lipiński read a statement dissolving the KSS "KOR," which considered its activities concluded.

On September 8, the congress passed the "Message to the Working People of Eastern Europe," greeting workers from Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, the GDR, Romania, Hungary, and "all the nations of the Soviet Union" and supporting those who "decided to embark on the difficult path of free trade union movement." The text, as Jan Lityński recalled, was written "on the knee." The proceedings were chaired by Jerzy Buzek, later Prime Minister, who wanted to postpone the vote until after lunch, but the assembly demanded an immediate vote. The message passed by a significant majority.

Leonid Brezhnev reportedly called the message "a dangerous and provocative document." Some advisors, including Jacek Kuroń and Bronisław Geremek, considered it a mistake, although Kuroń later referred to it as "a poker move" and acknowledged that "time showed that it was a good thing." Less known is the fact that the congress also issued a "Letter to the Polish Diaspora Worldwide." Support also flowed from the USA. According to the "Christian Science Monitor" from December 8, 1980, the AFL-CIO headquarters, led by Lane Kirkland, had raised $150,000 by that time to assist Polish workers, but the money had apparently not yet been sent; instead, they provided "Solidarity" with a printing press worth $50,000. In 1981, Wałęsa received an honorary doctorate from, among others, Alliance College in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania, an institution founded in 1912 by the Polish National Alliance.

Queues, Ration Cards, and Hunger Marches

Meanwhile, the economy was collapsing. On February 28, 1981, a decision was made to introduce ration cards for meat, which began on April 1. According to available studies, from April 30, ration cards also covered meat products, butter, flour, rice, and groats, and from September, soap, laundry powder, and toilet paper, although sources do not fully agree on subsequent stages. Physical workers received more meat than officials, miners even more, while some farmers were deprived of allocations. Ration cards actually lasted for eight years, until July 1989.

However, a ration card did not guarantee goods. People stood in line for hours, and in smaller towns, they waited for deliveries for days. Queue committees were formed: instead of standing, people signed up on a list and took turns on duty. On July 23, 1981, the government reduced meat ration allocations by 20 percent and announced food price increases. In Łódź, columns of buses and trucks drove around the city with signs saying "How will I feed my children?" and "Food." On July 30, a hunger march of tens of thousands of women from the entire region took place in the streets of Łódź, according to the IPN, the largest street demonstration since the founding of "Solidarity."

Life During the Carnival

For ordinary people, this time was a strange mix of freedom and deprivation. In April 1981, the first issue of "Tygodnik Solidarność" by Tadeusz Mazowiecki was published. On July 31, 1981, the Sejm passed a new censorship law, agreed upon with "Solidarity" and creative communities. The censor's decision could now be appealed to the court, and interventions in the text were marked.

Memory revived, which the PRL had suppressed for years. On July 31, 1981, the underground Katyń Committee set up the first monument to the victims of Katyn in Poland at the Powązki cemetery in Warsaw in about two hours, featuring a cross and a plaque inscribed "Katyń 1940." According to the IPN calendar, the monument did not survive even until August 1: it was removed on the orders of the Soviet embassy. The leadership of "Solidarity" wrote in July 1981 that "the daily life of Polish families is becoming a torment." This carnival ended on the night of December 12-13, 1981, which we recount in our guide on martial law.

Solidarity in the Underground

On the night of December 12 to 13, 1981, the authorities declared martial law, interned thousands of activists, and suspended the union's activities. The history of martial law itself is described in a separate guide. Here, we are interested in something else: how a ten-million-strong movement, stripped overnight of its offices, phones, money, and most of its leaders, survived seven years underground and returned to the game stronger than anyone expected.

TKK, or the Leadership That Could Not Be Arrested

Some leaders managed to evade capture. Zbigniew Bujak from Mazowsze and Władysław Frasyniuk from Lower Silesia were not detained at the Grand Hotel in Sopot, where many members of the union's leadership were interned. For several months, regional underground structures operated separately. On April 22, 1982, four hiding activists – Bujak, Frasyniuk, Bogdan Lis from Gdańsk, and Władysław Hardek from Lesser Poland – established the Temporary Coordinating Commission of NSZZ "Solidarity", abbreviated as TKK. From then on, it directed the underground movement.

From the beginning, TKK declared its readiness to negotiate with the authorities, provided that the interned were released and an amnesty was announced. At the same time, it announced that it would respond to the union's delegalization with a general strike.

The fates of TKK members illustrate what life was like underground. Frasyniuk was arrested on October 5, 1982, and sentenced to six years in prison. After the amnesty in 1984, he returned to activism, and in February 1985, he was arrested again in Gdańsk, along with Bogdan Lis and Adam Michnik. In total, he spent over three and a half years in prison. Bujak was one of the longest-hidden leaders of the union. He was caught only on May 31, 1986, after more than four years in hiding. According to a report published by dzieje.pl, special unit officers attempted to blow up the door of the house where he was hiding. He was released in September 1986 under the amnesty.

This amnesty opened a new chapter. On September 30, 1986, Lech Wałęsa established the Temporary Council of NSZZ "Solidarity", the first public structure of the union since the introduction of martial law. On October 25, 1987, during a joint meeting of TKK and the Temporary Council, the National Executive Commission was created, which took over the role of public leadership.

October 8, 1982: The Union Dissolved by Law

In the first months of martial law, "Solidarity" was formally only suspended. On October 8, 1982, the Sejm of the Polish People's Republic passed a law on trade unions that dissolved all unions existing before December 13, 1981, including "Solidarity". Twelve deputies voted against, and ten abstained. Among those who said "no" was Hanna Suchocka, who would become the Prime Minister of free Poland ten years later. New unions could only be established from 1983 onwards and initially only at the workplace level.

The next day, TKK stated that "NSZZ 'S' can only be dissolved by a decision of its members" and called for a four-hour strike on November 10. However, a spontaneous protest erupted immediately. On October 11, the Gdańsk Shipyard went on strike. The authorities announced its militarization, and ZOMO entered the facility. In Nowa Huta, on October 13, an SB officer shot a twenty-year-old worker, Bogdan Włosik. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, likely underestimated, about 16,000 people were on strike in 27 workplaces. Prof. Andrzej Paczkowski assesses these protests as a failure of the underground, while Bogdan Lis later called them a turning point. The United States also quickly reacted to the delegalization, as we describe in the guide on martial law.

The Second Circulation: Thousands of Titles Beyond Censorship

The most enduring product of the underground turned out to be the printed word. Independent publishing houses had existed since the 1970s – the largest of them, the Independent Publishing Office NOWa, was established in September 1977 – but after December 13, the second circulation not only survived but also expanded. No one knows the exact numbers, and sources provide various estimates. Prof. Andrzej Friszke, citing bibliographies of independent publications, speaks of about 5,000 press titles and around 4,000 book and brochure titles from 1976 to 1989. Other compilations indicate over 4,500 book titles and about 2,000 magazine titles for the years 1981-1988. The differences arise from which years are counted and what is considered a separate title, so it is most honest to speak of thousands.

Everything that was at hand was printed: on duplicators with protein and wax matrices, using screen printing, which allowed for the largest editions, and in better-equipped centers on offset machines. The publication with the largest circulation is cited as the Wrocław weekly "Z dnia na dzień" (43,000 copies), although there are also mentions of screen prints exceeding 100,000 copies, so the data here is not unequivocal.

The most important underground publication was the Warsaw "Tygodnik Mazowsze". The first issue was published on February 11, 1982, and the last, the 290th, on April 12, 1989, a few days after the conclusion of the Round Table talks. The editorial team was led throughout by Helena Łuczywo, who signed with the pseudonym Paweł Hofer. The circulation, including regional editions, reached between 50,000 and 80,000 copies. The vignette featured Wałęsa's statement: "'Solidarity' cannot be divided or destroyed." Many people from this editorial team founded "Gazeta Wyborcza" in 1989.

Radio Solidarity

On April 12, 1982, at 9 PM, residents of Warsaw living near Grójecka Street could hear something on the FM waves that no program had predicted. From the roof of the building at Grójecka 19/25, Janusz Klekowski and Marek Rasiński broadcast the first program of the underground Radio "Solidarity". It lasted about eight and a half minutes. Among those involved in the radio were Zbigniew and Zofia Romaszewski, with Zofia Romaszewska being one of the readers.

Stations were also established in Kraków, Wrocław, Toruń, Świdnik, Puławy, and several other towns. Some of them used television sound instead of radio: special transmitters jammed the audio of the state program and substituted the underground voice for the image. The Warsaw station broadcast its last program on June 22, 1989, after the elections.

Nobel for Wałęsa

On October 5, 1983, the Nobel Committee announced that the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Lech Wałęsa. The justification emphasized his efforts for workers' rights to establish their own organizations and that he resolved conflicts without violence. He was informed of the award by Krzysztof Wyszkowski via phone at night. Wałęsa initially did not take it seriously until Western journalists appeared outside his home.

The laureate did not go to Oslo because he feared that the authorities would not allow him to return to the country. On December 10, 1983, his wife Danuta received the award, accompanied by their thirteen-year-old son Bogdan. Danuta Wałęsa read her husband's letter, and the Nobel lecture the next day was delivered on his behalf by Bohdan Cywiński. The prize money, 1.5 million Swedish crowns, was donated by Wałęsa to the Polish Episcopate for a fund supporting individual farming.

Fighting Solidarity

Not everyone in the underground agreed with TKK's cautious line. In June 1982, in Wrocław, Kornel Morawiecki, along with a group of activists from the regional strike committee, founded Fighting Solidarity. Its goal was not only to restore the union but also to remove the communists from power and regain full independence for Poland. The organization had about 2,000 members in a dozen branches, published 134 press titles, and was the target of a large SB operation codenamed "Octopus". In 1989, it rejected the Round Table agreement.

Help from the West: Money, Duplicators, Paint

In July 1982, at a meeting in Oslo, the Coordinating Office of NSZZ "Solidarity" Abroad was established, based in Brussels. TKK appointed Jerzy Milewski as its head. The office was to represent the union in the international labor movement and maintain contacts with Western trade union centers. Historian Idesbald Goddeeris from the University of Leuven, who described its history, titled his study "The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of 'Solidarity'".

The most engaged ally across the Atlantic was the American trade union center AFL-CIO and its president Lane Kirkland. The Polish Workers Aid Fund was established as early as late August and early September 1980 (according to the Albert Shanker Institute, the AFL-CIO Executive Council decided on it on August 30), even though the Carter administration advised against such assistance for fear of Moscow's reaction. Arch Puddington, Kirkland's biographer, described how the equipment was smuggled: the smuggling routes, mainly from Sweden and France, were organized by Mirosław Chojecki, and a second channel operated from London. Printing equipment was once hidden in a shipment of refrigerators, machines were disassembled and sent in parts, and cash was transported in clothing, luggage, and cars. Not everything made it: in Gdańsk, three trucks were once stopped, and 14 duplicators, 5 copiers, and 9,500 matrices were confiscated. According to Puddington, the AFL-CIO provided "Solidarity" with over 4 million dollars in total, including funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, while other studies, citing the history of the AFL-CIO, state a total of over 6 million dollars along with the equipment. Sources therefore differ regarding the total amount.

The American Polish community operated mainly openly. The Polish American Congress, led by Alojzy Mazewski, supported "Solidarity" as early as 1980, and its Charitable Foundation sent missing medicines and medical supplies to Poland. The Congress's position on American sanctions is described in the guide on martial law. According to the "Christian Science Monitor", in 1981, the Congress raised 900,000 dollars and sent 3.4 million pounds of food to Poland. Larger amounts reported by the Congress itself could not be independently verified.

How People Endured: Masses and Culture in Churches

For many, the most important place during those years was not an apartment with a duplicator but the church. At St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Warsaw's Żoliborz, Father Jerzy Popiełuszko held monthly Masses for the Homeland starting February 28, 1982 (this date is given by dzieje.pl; other sources mention different dates), with sermons that related the Gospel and the Church's social teaching to the situation in the country. Delegations from "Solidarity" from all over Poland attended these Masses, along with actors, intellectuals, and youth. Opponents of the priest called these services "anti-communist meetings". The fate of Father Popiełuszko and the role of the Church are described more broadly in the guides on martial law and on John Paul II.

Churches became shelters for all independent culture in the 1980s. In parish halls and temples, performances were staged, paintings exhibited, concerts held, and films from the second circulation shown. In many cities, Christian Culture Weeks were held, inviting writers, actors, and artists who did not want to perform in official institutions. In Kraków, Cardinal Franciszek Macharski was the initiator of this series. The IPN dedicated a separate exhibition to this topic titled "Independent Culture in the Church in the 1980s".

From the Strikes of 1988 to the Round Table

In the second half of the 1980s, the underground was tired, and the authorities had no idea for the economy. There was a shortage of goods, queues were a daily occurrence, and prices were rising. On February 1, 1988, the government introduced price increases, the largest since 1982, officially called the "price-income operation". According to available studies, wage increases of about 40 percent did not offset the price increases, and inflation accelerated sharply. It was this increase that triggered a wave that within a year led to talks between the authorities and the opposition.

Spring and August 1988

On April 24, 1988, public transport workers in Bydgoszcz went on strike. On April 26, the Lenin Steelworks in Nowa Huta stopped, on April 29, the plant in Stalowa Wola, and on May 2, the Gdańsk Shipyard. Workers demanded pay raises, but also the reinstatement of dismissed activists and the legalization of "Solidarity". Many strikers during the first "Solidarity" were still children. On the night of May 4 to 5, ZOMO stormed the steelworks in Nowa Huta, beating the strikers. The strike in Gdańsk ended on May 10 without an agreement, and over a thousand shipyard workers silently walked to St. Bridget's Church.

The second wave was stronger. On August 15, 1988, the "Manifest Lipcowy" mine in Jastrzębie-Zdrój went on strike, followed by other mines in Silesia, the port in Szczecin, Stalowa Wola, and on August 22, the Gdańsk Shipyard again. This time, the authorities changed their tactics. On August 31, Minister of Internal Affairs Gen. Czesław Kiszczak met with Lech Wałęsa and promised talks about the future of the union. Wałęsa called for the strikes to end, which subsided by September 3. Despite assurances, the authorities later dismissed hundreds of strikers.

Magdalenka

Real negotiations took place away from the cameras. From September 16, 1988, representatives of the authorities and the opposition met at the Ministry of Internal Affairs center in Magdalenka near Warsaw. On the government side were, among others, Czesław Kiszczak, Stanisław Ciosek, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, and Janusz Reykowski; on the "Solidarity" side were Lech Wałęsa, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Bronisław Geremek, Adam Michnik, Jacek Kuroń, and Lech Kaczyński. Representatives of the Church were also present. The "Magdalenka Group" met a total of 13 times, and 42 people participated in the talks in various compositions. It was there that positions were established, which were then formally approved by the Round Table. This is why Magdalenka later became a symbol of the dispute: some see it as a pragmatic compromise that allowed power to be transferred without bloodshed, while others view it as a place of a behind-the-scenes agreement among elites. Historians speak of the "white" and "black legend" of the Round Table.

A Debate That Changed the Mood

In November 1988, Alfred Miodowicz, head of the pro-government All-Poland Trade Union Agreement, proposed a debate with Wałęsa on television. On November 30, 1988, right after the "Television Journal", both sat opposite each other in the TVP studio, without a host. Wałęsa, calm, with a "Solidarity" badge and an image of the Virgin Mary on his lapel, answered briefly and vividly: "We are moving on foot while others are driving cars." He also said, "There is no freedom without Solidarity" and argued that "the empty round table today will be abundantly filled over time."

The debate was widely regarded as a victory for Wałęsa. Miodowicz later admitted that he made many mistakes. According to a survey commissioned by the authorities after the debate, 62 percent of respondents supported the legalization of "Solidarity", while previously support had not exceeded 50 percent.

The Round Table

The talks began on February 6, 1989, at the Namiestnikowski Palace on Krakowskie Przedmieście, then the seat of the Council of Ministers, now the Presidential Palace. On one side of the table sat representatives of the authorities and the ruling coalition, including Czesław Kiszczak, Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Leszek Miller, and Alfred Miodowicz; on the other side were representatives of the opposition and "Solidarity" with Lech Wałęsa, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Bronisław Geremek, and Adam Michnik. The Church was represented by observers, including Fr. Alojzy Orszulik and Fr. Bronisław Dembowski, and for the Evangelicals, Bishop Janusz Narzyński.

The actual work took place at so-called tables: three main teams dealing with political reforms, the economy, and social policy, as well as union pluralism, and ten sub-teams – from mining and agriculture to media, health, and ecology.

The talks concluded on April 5, 1989. The most important agreements were as follows:

• the restoration of the Senate, in which all 100 seats were to be filled in free elections,
• a "contractual" Sejm: 299 out of 460 mandates (65 percent) were guaranteed to the PZPR, its allies ZSL and SD, and pro-government Catholic associations, while 161 mandates (35 percent) were subject to free competition,
• the office of the president elected by the National Assembly for a six-year term,
• the re-registration of "Solidarity" and access for the opposition to the media, including the right to publish its own newspaper.

On April 17, 1989, the Provincial Court in Warsaw re-registered NSZZ "Solidarity". The union, which had about 10 million members in 1980-1981, had about 1.5 million in 1989. Not everyone in the opposition accepted the contract: the Confederation of Independent Poland, Fighting Solidarity, and some former activists, including Anna Walentynowicz and Antoni Macierewicz, considered it a deal with the authorities, while the government of the Republic of Poland in exile called the guarantee of 65 percent of seats a "denial of democracy".

"Gazeta Wyborcza" and the Sheriff with a Ballot

On May 8, 1989, the first issue of "Gazeta Wyborcza", the first legal independent newspaper in the Polish People's Republic, was published. It had eight pages and a circulation of 150,000 copies. Adam Michnik became the editor-in-chief, and the team of about 20 journalists was mostly made up of people from "Tygodnik Mazowsze". The editorial office was located in the building of a former nursery at 19 Iwicka Street in Warsaw.

The election campaign lasted only a few weeks. Almost all opposition candidates took photos with Lech Wałęsa and went to the elections with these photos, taken by, among others, Erazm Ciołek, as the "Wałęsa team". However, the most famous image of the campaign became the poster "At Noon. June 4, 1989". It was designed by Tomasz Sarnecki, born in 1966, a student at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts. He used the motif of Marian Stachurski's poster for the western "At Noon" with Gary Cooper: the sheriff holds a ballot instead of a revolver, and above the sheriff's star is the "Solidarity" emblem.

June 4, 1989 and What Next

The first round of elections took place on June 4, 1989. Voter turnout was about 62 percent. The results surprised both sides. Candidates from the Civic Committee "Solidarity" won 160 out of 161 parliamentary seats they could contest in the first round, and 92 out of 100 seats in the Senate. After the second round, on June 18, with a turnout of about 25 percent, they held all 161 seats in the Sejm and 99 seats in the Senate. The only senator outside the "Solidarity" camp was Henryk Stokłosa, a formally non-partisan entrepreneur from the Pila Voivodeship, supported by the ruling coalition.

The Collapse of the National List

A particular humiliation for the authorities turned out to be the national list. It included 35 key politicians from the ruling camp who had no opponents – it was enough for each of them to receive more than half of the valid votes. Voters massively crossed out their names, and only two passed in the first round: Mikołaj Kozakiewicz from ZSL, later the Speaker of the Sejm, and Adam Zieliński from PZPR. To ensure that the 33 guaranteed mandates did not go to waste, on June 12, the State Council changed the electoral law during the elections and moved them to new constituencies, where they were filled in the second round.

Prime Minister from the Opposition

On July 19, 1989, the National Assembly elected General Wojciech Jaruzelski as president. He received 270 votes, just one more than the required majority. On August 24, 1989, the Sejm appointed Tadeusz Mazowiecki as prime minister. 378 deputies voted in favor, 4 against, and 41 abstained. However, in the government approved on September 12, the PZPR retained important ministries: internal affairs was taken over by General Czesław Kiszczak, and national defense by General Florian Siwicki. Leszek Balcerowicz became the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance. During his inaugural speech on September 12, Mazowiecki fainted at the podium and completed his speech after receiving medical assistance.

What the "Thick Line" Really Meant

No statement from those months sparked as much controversy as the words Mazowiecki uttered on August 24, 1989, in the Sejm: "We draw a thick line under the past. We will only be held accountable for what we have done to pull Poland out of its current state of collapse." In context, it meant that the new government would not take responsibility for the debts and neglect of its predecessors. However, the term "thick line" quickly became understood as a promise to forget the crimes and wrongdoings of the PRL. Critics, including some right-wing politicians and historian Leszek Pietrzak, associate it with the lack of early lustration and the impunity of communist officials. Defenders, such as Andrzej Brzeziecki, remind that it was about an open, compromise model of transformation. Mazowiecki himself claimed that his words were "mystified" and did not mean excluding the past from accountability.

Wałęsa as President and the Disintegration of the Camp

The unity of the "Solidarity" camp did not last even a year. From June 1990, a so-called "war from above" ensued: Wałęsa accused Mazowiecki's government of being too slow in implementing changes and said that a war from above was needed to ensure peace below. The movement split into supporters of Wałęsa, gathered in the Agreement of the Center led by Jarosław Kaczyński, and supporters of the prime minister, who formed ROAD. In September 1990, the National Commission of the union revoked "Gazeta Wyborcza"'s right to use the "Solidarity" logo.

In the presidential elections on November 25, 1990, Wałęsa received 39.96 percent of the votes, while Mazowiecki, with 18.08 percent, came in third, behind Stanisław Tymiński, who received 23.10 percent. In the second round, on December 9, Wałęsa won with 74.25 percent. On December 22, 1990, he took the oath before the National Assembly, and at the Royal Castle, the last president of the Republic of Poland in exile, Ryszard Kaczorowski, handed him the pre-war insignia of the head of state.

The "Bolek" Case

Since the 1990s, a contentious issue has been whether Lech Wałęsa was registered and collaborated with the Security Service as a secret collaborator under the pseudonym "Bolek" between 1970 and 1976. Here we present only the findings and positions, attributing them to their authors.

In 2000, the Lustration Court deemed Wałęsa's lustration statement, in which he denied collaboration, to be truthful. On February 16, 2016, prosecutors from the IPN secured six packages of documents at the home of Maria Kiszczak, the widow of General Czesław Kiszczak, including a handwritten commitment to collaborate dated December 21, 1970, signed "Lech Wałęsa 'Bolek'", receipts for money received, and reports. On February 22, 2016, the IPN made them available to journalists and historians. At the request of the IPN, experts from the Jan Sehn Institute of Forensic Expertise in Krakow examined the documents. On January 31, 2017, IPN prosecutor Andrzej Pozorski announced that, according to their opinion, the commitment was entirely written by Wałęsa, and he was also the author of 17 receipts. IPN President Jarosław Szarek stated at that time that the IPN did not intend to remove Wałęsa from textbooks, but the way he was assessed was changing.

Lech Wałęsa consistently denies being a collaborator of the SB, claims that the documents were forged, and has announced his intention to seek justice in the courts. However, his accounts have changed over the years – Reuters recalled in 2017 that Wałęsa once admitted to signing a commitment to inform but claimed he never acted on it. His representative, Professor Jan Widacki, questioned the expertise, arguing, among other things, that Wałęsa's handwriting today is not the same as his handwriting from the 1970s. Historians also differ. Sławomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, in a book published by the IPN in 2008 titled "SB and Lech Wałęsa: A Contribution to Biography", concluded that Wałęsa was a secret collaborator "Bolek" from 1970 to 1976. Professor Antoni Dudek criticized this work for not providing solid direct evidence and relying on circumstantial evidence, while Professor Andrzej Friszke called it one-sided. Professor Paweł Wieczorkiewicz defended the authors, and Professor Andrzej Paczkowski considered the book to be reliable, although he had doubts about some documents. In 2017, Paczkowski stated that the SB forged some documents concerning Wałęsa, but he considers the materials from Kiszczak's home to be authentic, and from the perspective of Polish history, he believes the "Bolek" case is insignificant. Historians quoted by Reuters also recalled that the PRL authorities tried to dissuade the Nobel Committee from Wałęsa by providing forged materials. The dispute is not resolved in a way that all parties would accept.

Interesting Facts

• The first issue was numbered 2. "Tygodnik Mazowsze" debuted on February 11, 1982, as issue number 2. According to available studies, the numbering started from two in tribute to Jerzy Zieleński, who co-created the publication and took his own life on the night of the introduction of martial law.
• 80 million zlotys in a safe place. On December 3, 1981, ten days before martial law, Józef Pinior, along with Piotr Bednarz, Stanisław Huskowski, and Tomasz Surowiec, withdrew 80 million zlotys from the accounts of the Lower Silesian "Solidarity" and deposited it with Archbishop Henryk Gulbinowicz. In 1985, the court ordered Pinior to return this amount. The story is told in the feature film "80 Million" from 2011.
• The future prime minister voted against. Among the only 12 deputies who voted against the law dissolving "Solidarity" on October 8, 1982, was Hanna Suchocka, who served as Prime Minister from 1992 to 1993.
• The underground at Andropov's funeral. Radio "Solidarity" from Świdnik, which broadcasted 43 programs from April 1983 to August 1988, intervened in the television broadcast for the first time on February 14, 1984 – right during the transmission of the funeral of Soviet leader Yuri Andropov.
• A hymn that was a warning. "Mury" by Jacek Kaczmarski became the unofficial anthem of the union. According to some accounts, the underground Radio "Solidarity" began its broadcasts with a fragment of this song, although other descriptions of the Warsaw station indicate that the signal was the melody of "Siekiera, motyka", so accounts differ. Kaczmarski wrote it in 1978 to the melody of "L’Estaca" by Catalan Lluís Llach and repeatedly stated that it is about distrust of mass movements: the singer loses his song to the crowd.
• Person of the Year. "Time" magazine named Lech Wałęsa Person of the Year 1981, identifying him as the leader of "Solidarity" and the architect of the Gdańsk Agreement.
• Letters like a crowd. The logo of "Solidarity" was designed in 1980 by Jerzy Janiszewski, a graduate of the Gdańsk School of Fine Arts, now the Academy of Fine Arts. The crowded letters were meant to resemble people walking together and supporting each other. The distinctive font gained the nickname "solidaryca" – a play on words from "Solidarity" and "Cyrillic".
• Press like guns. Underground activist Wiktor Kulerski compared underground printing houses to "machine guns or tanks in wartime" in a conversation with Arch Puddington.
• Campaign for Polish dollars. According to Puddington, the AFL-CIO and the American Polish community donated $100,000 to Bronisław Geremek for the 1989 election campaign.
• A poster that no one wanted to print. Tomasz Sarnecki brought his design "At Noon" to the election committees, but – as he recalled – no one wanted to send it to print. It was only thanks to journalist Janina Jankowska that it was printed. The poster was printed in France and due to delays appeared on the streets only in Warsaw and only on election day, in about 10,000 copies. In 1999, the London Victoria and Albert Museum included it in the exhibition of the hundred most important posters of the 20th century.
• The table in the museum. The original round table stood for years in the Presidential Palace. On December 18, 2025, President Karol Nawrocki announced its dismantling and transfer to the Museum of Polish History in Warsaw, stating: "We are returning the Round Table of history." From February 13 to May 17, 2026, the table could be seen in the Warsaw Citadel at the exhibition "The Round Table: A Moment of Transition", and it is intended to be placed in the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Polish History.

Solidarity after 1989

After June 1989, "Solidarity" found itself in a situation that no scenario from the 1980s had predicted. Its members took seats in the government, in the Sejm, and in the Senate, and shortly thereafter in the Presidential Palace. The union, which had been both a social movement and an opposition for nine years, and a hope for millions, had to answer the question of what it actually was: a defender of workers or a support for the power that was implementing painful reforms. For the next twenty years, it answered this question in various, sometimes contradictory ways.

From movement to trade union

We discuss the "war at the top" and the fragmentation of the solidarity camp into supporters of Lech Wałęsa (including Jarosław Kaczyński's Agreement of the Center) and supporters of Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki (ROAD, and later the Democratic Union) in the previous section. Here it is worth adding what was happening with the union itself during this time. From April 20 to 25, 1990, the II National Delegates' Congress was held in the Olivia Hall in Gdańsk, which re-elected Wałęsa as chairman. Władysław Frasyniuk then withdrew his candidacy, speaking of a "top-down orchestrated congress." On September 4, 1990, the National Commission revoked "Gazeta Wyborcza"'s right to the "Solidarity" sign, and Wałęsa wrote the next day: "The struggle under one banner is coming to an end." On December 12, 1990, already as the elected president, he resigned from leading the union.

His successor was elected by the III National Delegates' Congress on February 23–24, 1991. Marian Krzaklewski was elected, defeating, among others, Bogdan Borusewicz and Lech Kaczyński in the vote. Krzaklewski led "Solidarity" for over eleven years and was the one who most significantly introduced it into party politics. The union first tried its strength independently: in the first fully free parliamentary elections on October 27, 1991, its lists garnered just over 5 percent of the votes, resulting in 27 deputies (23 from district lists and 4 from the national list) and 10 senators.

Umbrella over Balcerowicz's plan and the first strikes

On October 6, 1989, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Leszek Balcerowicz presented a program for transitioning to a market economy, later called "shock therapy." It meant free prices, the collapse of many state enterprises, and the emergence of unemployment, which the PRL officially did not recognize. According to the literature on the subject, in the first months, the union's authorities strongly supported the reforms, advocated for avoiding strikes and negotiations, and it was said that "Solidarity" had spread an "umbrella of protection" over the plan.

This umbrella quickly began to leak. Already on May 22, 1990, after a protest by railway workers, the presidium of the National Commission accused the Mazowiecki government of "passive economic policy, limited to wage control." On May 22, 1991, the union organized a nationwide day of protest, in which, according to union records, about 80 percent of workplace committees participated. On January 13, 1992, it conducted a one-hour nationwide strike against energy price increases announced by the government of Jan Olszewski, and on December 14, 1992, a two-hour warning strike. The disputes mainly concerned the "popiwku," or tax on excessive salaries, wages in the public sector, and the liquidation of mines.

Vote of no confidence that toppled Suchocka's government

The most dramatic consequence of this conflict came in the spring of 1993. On May 5, a strike in the civil budgetary sphere began, and on May 19, the National Strike Headquarters was established under Krzaklewski's leadership. Deputies from the "Solidarity" Parliamentary Club submitted a motion for a vote of no confidence against Hanna Suchocka's government – a government that had itself emerged from the solidarity camp. On May 28, 1993, the Sejm adopted the vote of no confidence by a majority of one vote. The next day, President Lech Wałęsa did not accept the government's resignation and exercised the right granted to him by the Small Constitution: he announced the dissolution of parliament.

For the union, this was a Pyrrhic victory. In the early elections on September 19, 1993, the "Solidarity" list received 4.9 percent of the votes, falling about 14,000 votes short of the five percent threshold. Nine of its representatives entered the Senate. The elections were won by the Democratic Left Alliance, which formed a coalition with the PSL. In the following years, "Solidarity" was in clear opposition to the SLD–PSL governments: it organized demonstrations in Warsaw, strikes in mining, and a 33-day hunger strike by healthcare and education workers, which ended with an agreement on January 3, 1995. In the 1995 presidential elections, the National Commission called for votes for Wałęsa, who lost to Aleksander Kwaśniewski.

Election Action Solidarity

The conclusions from the 1993 defeat were simple: a fragmented right loses. On June 8, 1996, at the initiative of NSZZ "Solidarity," the Election Action Solidarity was established, a coalition of the union with many right-wing, Christian-democratic, and independence-oriented groups, including the Agreement of the Center and ZChN, and from 1997 also with the Conservative People's Party. Krzaklewski led it. On August 31, 1997, on the anniversary of the agreements, he announced before the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers the list of "21 tasks for Poland," referring to the 21 demands from 1980.

In the elections on September 21, 1997, AWS received 4,427,373 votes, or 33.83 percent, and 201 mandates in the Sejm, and 51 out of 100 seats in the Senate. On October 20, it signed a coalition agreement with the Freedom Union. Krzaklewski did not become prime minister. Jerzy Buzek became prime minister, and Leszek Balcerowicz from UW again became the deputy prime minister and minister of finance. The government was sworn in on October 31, 1997, and on November 11, the Sejm granted it a vote of confidence. The marshals of the chambers were AWS politicians: Maciej Płażyński in the Sejm and Alicja Grześkowiak in the Senate.

The four reforms of 1999

The Buzek government went down in history primarily due to four reforms that came into effect on January 1, 1999 (the educational reform actually from September 1, 1999):

• Administrative – the three-tier division of the country with counties was restored, and the number of voivodeships was reduced from 49 to 16. Initially, AWS proposed 12 voivodeships, but this project was vetoed by President Kwaśniewski, and the final compromise was reached with the support of the SLD.
• Educational – the eight-year primary school was shortened to six years, three-year gymnasiums were introduced, and external exams were implemented at the end of each stage of education.
• Health – instead of a centralized system, 16 regional health funds were created. The introduction of the reform caused much dissatisfaction, and the coalition ruling since the autumn of 2001, SLD–PSL–UP, replaced the funds with the National Health Fund.
• Pension – a three-pillar system was introduced: ZUS, mandatory Open Pension Funds for those born after 1968, and voluntary savings.

During the same period, on March 12, 1999, Poland joined NATO. Buzek proved to be the first prime minister of the Third Republic who survived the entire four-year term. However, the assessment of the reforms remains contentious. Critics considered them a departure from the program with which AWS went to the elections and associated them with an economic slowdown and the so-called "Baucus hole" in the budget. Supporters emphasize that the administrative and pension reforms permanently changed the state.

Collapse of AWS

Tensions in the coalition had been rising from the beginning. In 1999, the National Commission decided to give half of its shares in AWS to the Social Movement AWS party in exchange for 29 demands, and the XI National Delegates' Congress in December 1999 passed a resolution to withdraw "Solidarity" from political functions. On June 6, 2000, the Freedom Union left the coalition, and Buzek led a minority government until the end of the term. In the presidential elections on October 8, 2000, Krzaklewski received 15.57 percent of the votes and came in third. After this defeat, he handed over the leadership of AWS to Buzek.

In the spring of 2001, AWS began to fall apart: SKL left the federation and co-founded the Civic Platform, while Lech Kaczyński's environment established Law and Justice. On May 15, 2001, the National Commission decided to withdraw the union from all AWS structures and not to participate in any political structure. In the elections on September 23, 2001, the coalition Election Action Solidarity Right received 5.6 percent of the votes, with an 8 percent threshold for coalitions, and did not enter the Sejm. The party that had won the elections four years earlier disappeared from parliament within one term. Its politicians mainly dispersed to PO and PiS.

The union under the leadership of Śniadek and Duda

In September 2002, the XV National Delegates' Congress elected Janusz Śniadek, a graduate of shipbuilding from the Gdańsk University of Technology, who had been the head of "Solidarity" at the Gdynia Shipyard for many years, as chairman. Krzaklewski left after the electoral defeat. Still under Krzaklewski, on June 26, 2002, over 50,000 people attended a demonstration in Warsaw against changes to the Labor Code, according to union records. Under Śniadek, the union returned primarily to its union role, and in 2003 it collected 650,000 signatures for a project to restore pre-retirement benefits. However, it did not abandon politics: in September 2005, the National Commission called for votes for Lech Kaczyński, and in 2010 it supported Jarosław Kaczyński. This support came at a price. In 2006, as reported by Radio Free Europe, Lech Wałęsa formally left the union. His spokespeople explained that he stopped paying dues at the end of the previous year due to a dispute with the leadership over support for the new conservative government.

On October 21, 2010, Piotr Duda, head of the Silesian-Dąbrowski region and a turner by profession from the Gliwice Steelworks, became chairman. He has led the union to this day, being re-elected in 2014, 2018, and 2023. The first major test was the government project to raise the retirement age to 67 for both women and men. From mid-December 2011, the union collected signatures for a referendum proposal. According to TVN24, it submitted nearly 1.4 million signatures to the Sejm, while the union later reported a number of over 2 million. The Sejm rejected the proposal. On May 11, 2012, when deputies were voting on the law (268 votes for, 185 against, 2 abstentions), union members surrounded the Sejm building and, in accordance with the decision of their protest headquarters, blocked its exits.

The issue returned after a change of power. On December 19, 2016, President Andrzej Duda signed a law restoring the retirement age to 60 for women and 65 for men from October 1, 2017. The same was true for Sundays: on September 2, 2016, a committee involving "Solidarity" submitted a civic project limiting trade on Sundays, which, according to the union, was signed by over 350,000 people. However, the law that came into effect on March 1, 2018, was modified to such an extent that in October 2017, Piotr Duda stated that "Solidarity" no longer claims the project and that it is a "deep scratch" on cooperation with PiS.

Relations with the United Right governments were therefore not conflict-free. On April 7, 2019, the educational "Solidarity" signed a wage agreement with Mateusz Morawiecki's government. The Polish Teachers' Union and the Forum of Trade Unions did not accept it and on April 8 began a nationwide teachers' strike, in which some members of "Solidarity" also participated. The strike was suspended on April 27. In April 2021, Piotr Duda accused both the government and the Presidential Palace of passivity regarding so-called seniority pensions.

Agreements with presidential candidates

A novelty of Piotr Duda's era is written agreements with presidential candidates. The first was signed on May 5, 2015, with PiS candidate Andrzej Duda. The head of the union said at the time: "For the first time, we signed a 'Program Agreement' with a presidential candidate." The candidate committed to policies aimed at lowering the retirement age and linking pensions to years of service, raising the minimum wage to 50 percent of the average salary, and combating "junk" contracts. On May 5, 2020, already as the sitting president, Andrzej Duda signed a new agreement in Warsaw, covering the maintenance of social programs and pension reform considering workers with the longest service.

On February 13, 2025, in the BHP Hall of the Gdańsk Shipyard, an agreement with eleven commitments was signed by Karol Nawrocki, supported by PiS. According to the service Notes from Poland, it included, among other things, not raising the retirement age, defending the minimum wage and the ban on Sunday trading, supporting public healthcare and Polish agriculture, and limiting the effects of the EU Green Deal. Nawrocki won the presidential elections in 2025. Such support raises controversies, as it ties the union to one side of the political scene. Piotr Duda stated in 2015 that the presidential elections are "citizen elections, not party elections," and that "Solidarity" in the last 25 years "has indicated the candidate that union members should vote for."

How many are there

The membership numbers of "Solidarity" have always been a subject of disputes and estimates. We discuss the millions from 1980–1981 and how many members the union had after re-registration in 1989 in previous sections. Later, there were even fewer. For 2010, compilations indicate, according to two articles from "Gazeta Wyborcza," between 400,000 and 680,000 members, and for 2015–586,901, according to the union's own document.

A newer nationwide number from an independent source has not been confirmed. It is indirectly shown by CBOS surveys. In April 1991, 10 percent of adult Poles declared membership in NSZZ "Solidarity." In October 2021, this was 2.3 percent of adults, or 4.1 percent of wage earners. Nevertheless, "Solidarity" remains the largest union in Poland – in all trade unions combined, according to the same study, there were 10.5 percent of wage earners at that time.

Place in the country and the world

Since 1989, the headquarters of the National Commission has been located at 24 Wały Piastowskie Street in Gdańsk. Since 2014, the patron of the union has been Blessed Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, and in 2025, the Institute of National Remembrance awarded "Solidarity" the gold medal of Reipublicae Memoriae Meritum. Since October 2015, the union has had its representatives in the Social Dialogue Council, where Piotr Duda became one of the vice-chairs.

On the international stage, "Solidarity" is a member of the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), of which it has been a member since 2006. Its representatives also sit on the European Economic and Social Committee. The union defines itself as an organization based on Christian values and the social teaching of the Church. One of the most frequently quoted statements about its significance comes from the European trade union movement. According to union records, on April 28, 2004, ETUC General Secretary John Monks said at a meeting with representatives of "Solidarity": "If it weren't for what happened in the Gdańsk Shipyard in 1980, there would be no expansion of the European Union today."

Heritage and Memory

Every country has its places and dates where history pauses. For "Solidarity," these are August 31, the shipyard gate, the plywood boards with demands, and the BHP hall. The memory of the union lives today in museums, films, songs, and on the streets – in Warsaw, Krakow, Poznań, or Białystok, there is Aleja Solidarności, often named in place of former patrons from the PRL era.

August 31 – Day of Solidarity and Freedom

By the act of July 27, 2005, the Sejm established August 31 as the Day of Solidarity and Freedom. The act has only three articles, and its preamble states that it was enacted "to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the historical uprising of Poles for freedom." It is a national holiday, but not a day off work. It was first celebrated on August 31, 2005, with the main ceremonies in Gdańsk. On the same day, Archbishop Stanisław Dziwisz held a mass at the Solidarity Square, after which the act of foundation for the construction of the European Solidarity Centre was signed.

European Solidarity Centre

The Centre was established by an agreement on November 8, 2007, between the Minister of Culture, the Pomeranian Voivodeship, the city of Gdańsk, NSZZ "Solidarity," and the Solidarity Centre Foundation. The building at Solidarity Square, next to Gate No. 2 and the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers, was designed by the Gdańsk studio Fort (selected from 58 competition entries). The construction cost 231.1 million zlotys, and it was opened on August 30, 2014.

The permanent exhibition in six halls presents the contemporary history of Poland, the birth of the solidarity movement, and its legacy. The building also houses an archive, library, and media library, and since 2015, an office for Lech Wałęsa. For the first two months, admission was free, attracting around 110,000 visitors, and over 300,000 in the first year. The director of ECS from 2011 to 2025 was Basil Kerski.

BHP Hall and Gate No. 2

The BHP Hall of the Gdańsk Shipyard, a former torpedo warehouse from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, where in August 1980 the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee met and the agreement was signed on August 31, was entered into the register of monuments in 1999. On December 23, 2004, the then-owner of the shipyard area, Synergia 99, transferred the hall along with the plot to the National Commission of "Solidarity." After renovation, it was ceremonially opened on August 24, 2010, on the 30th anniversary of the strike, with exhibitions including those from the Institute of National Remembrance.

Gate No. 2 was a place of memory even before August: on December 16, 1970, the military fired on shipyard workers leaving the plant, killing two people. In August 1980, religious paintings and a portrait of John Paul II hung on it, and on August 31, Wałęsa announced the end of the strike from there. On December 16, 1981, the original gates were destroyed by tanks. The inscription "named after Lenin" was removed on January 22, 1990. In 1999, the gate was entered into the register of monuments, and according to available studies in 2014, along with other historical shipyard sites, it was distinguished with the European Heritage Label (some sources cite the year 2015). In August 2025, the gate and replicas of the demand boards were vandalized by activists from the Last Generation movement.

Boards on the UNESCO List

Two plywood boards with 21 demands were inscribed on the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme list in 2003, which collects the most valuable documents of humanity. Note the common mistake: this is not a list of world heritage, which includes monuments and landscapes, but a register of documents. Sources differ on the exact date of the inscription in 2003 – the union chronicle states August 28, while other sources refer to the decision of the UNESCO Director-General on October 16. The discrepancy likely has an explanation: from August 28 to 30, 2003, the International Advisory Committee of the program met in Gdańsk, which recommends inscriptions, and the formal decision is made later. Since August 2014, the originals have been displayed in the permanent exhibition of ECS as a deposit of the National Maritime Museum.

Film and Music

The most important film about "Solidarity" remains "Man of Iron" by Andrzej Wajda, shot in haste to make it to the Cannes festival. According to accounts, it was the workers of the Gdańsk Shipyard, who remembered "Man of Marble," that persuaded the director to make a film about them and suggested the title. Lech Wałęsa and Anna Walentynowicz appeared in episodes, and most of the real participants, dressed as they were in August, were present during the signing of the agreements. In 1981, the film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes – the first in the history of Polish cinema – and was nominated for an Oscar. By December 1981, it had been seen by around 5 million viewers in Poland, but after the introduction of martial law, it disappeared from cinemas, and in 1983, Wajda's Film Team "X" was dissolved.

Wajda returned to the subject over thirty years later. "Wałęsa. Man of Hope," based on a script by Janusz Głowacki, premiered on October 4, 2013. In 2006, German director Volker Schlöndorff made "Strike," whose heroine was modeled on Anna Walentynowicz.

In music, the most famous are "Walls" by Jacek Kaczmarski, which we discuss in the previous part. The trace of "Solidarity" is also found in world rock. According to descriptions of the song's history, the lyrics of U2's "New Year’s Day" from 1983 began as a love song by Bono for his wife, but were ultimately reworked under the influence of the Polish movement. The song became the band's first hit in the UK.

A Symbol Known Worldwide

We previously discussed how Jerzy Janiszewski designed the famous "solidarity" logo in August 1980. It is worth adding that he graduated from the Gdańsk PWSSP in 1976, and during martial law, he emigrated, first to Germany, then settled in Spain, and in free Poland designed, among other things, the logo for the Polish presidency in the European Union (2011), the new emblem of the Sejm (2015), and the logo for the 40th anniversary of the August agreements (2020). The union granted him a membership card with the number 1.

Echoes in the World

The assessment of the international significance of "Solidarity" belongs to historians, and Poles themselves have a clear opinion on it. In a CBOS survey from 2015, 75 percent of respondents considered the establishment of the union important for other countries in the Eastern bloc, and 66 percent for the world. Studies on the Autumn of Nations indicate that Hungarians, following Poland's example, organized their own round table talks, and in September 1989, the Sejm approved the Mazowiecki government, the first non-communist cabinet in the Eastern bloc. Two months later, the Berlin Wall fell. Historians argue about how much credit to assign to "Solidarity" versus Mikhail Gorbachev's policies, the economic crisis in the USSR, or Western pressure. There is no single, widely accepted answer, and we do not attempt to impose one.

One thing is indisputable: on November 15, 1989, Lech Wałęsa spoke at a joint session of both houses of the U.S. Congress. He is often referred to as the first foreigner who was not a head of state to speak at such a session, but other sources count this exception differently, so we do not settle the record. He began his speech with the words "We the People," which open the Constitution of the United States, and according to Polish Radio, he received a standing ovation right after.

How the Polish Diaspora in America Remembers

The American Polish community supported "Solidarity" financially in the 1980s, as mentioned in the previous part. The memory of this endures. On September 22, 2024, a monument to the Heroes of the Struggle for Independence after 1945 and "Solidarity" was unveiled at the Polish cemetery at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Częstochowa in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, known as American Częstochowa. According to the IPN, which was one of the investors, this is the first monument in the United States dedicated to the Polish path to freedom after 1945. It takes the form of stairs with dates of subsequent uprisings, from 1945 to the 1980–1981 period, and on the last step, the inscription "Solidarity" is visible. The initiative was led by the committee commemorating the Smolensk disaster, chaired by Tadeusz Antoniak, with the project by Richard Kulinski. President Andrzej Duda participated in the ceremony, and the then-president of the IPN, Karol Nawrocki, presented the reasons for the monument's creation during the mass.

State authorities in America also remember. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer declared August 31, 2021, as "Polish Day of Solidarity" in her state. The proclamation reminded that the residents of Michigan, "especially trade unions and the Polish-American community," strongly supported the union and Poles in their fight against the oppressive government.

What Poles Think Today

The most comprehensive research we found is a CBOS survey conducted from July 1 to 8, 2015, on a representative sample of 1,044 adults. We could not find a newer CBOS report dedicated solely to the assessment of "Solidarity."

The establishment and activities of "Solidarity" in 1980–1981 were...	Percentage of respondents
important for Poland (including groundbreaking)	90 percent (66 percent)
important for the respondent and for the average Pole	76 percent
important for other countries in the Eastern bloc	75 percent
important for the world	66 percent

The same study showed the other side of the coin. 38 percent of respondents believed that the anniversary of August is now important only for the older generation, 25 percent – only for former participants of the movement, and only 23 percent – for all Poles. 57 percent thought that the memory of "Solidarity" is sufficiently nurtured, while 33 percent believed it is insufficiently so. The youngest, aged 18–24, more often than others assessed the commemoration as adequate. The authors of the report summarized that Poles appreciate the historical significance of those events, but believe that remembering them is not as important to people today as it once was.

Curiosities After 1989

• Beer drinkers right behind the union. In the 1991 elections, "Solidarity" won 27 parliamentary seats, while the Polish Beer Lovers' Party won 16. Thus, the two groups were separated by only 11 seats in the Sejm.
• Irony from 1993. The prime minister who was overthrown by a motion from "Solidarity" was one of the few MPs who opposed the legalization of the union in 1982 (we discuss this in the previous part).
• A cross hung at night. On the night after the signing of the AWS–UW coalition agreement in October 1997, AWS MPs hung a cross in the Sejm meeting room.
• A cradle for sale. On August 8, 1996, the court declared the Gdańsk Shipyard bankrupt. In 1998, it was purchased for 115 million zlotys by the Gdynia Shipyard. Earlier, the association "Solidarni ze Stocznią Gdańską" raised over 5.25 million zlotys from the sale of bricks and donations to save it.
• Lenin returned for a moment. In 2012, by the decision of Gdańsk's president Paweł Adamowicz, Gate No. 2 was restored to its historical appearance, including the inscription "named after Lenin" and the Order of the Banner of Labor. According to PAP, the gate was also to serve as a backdrop for Wajda's film about Wałęsa. After opposition from "Solidarity" activists, these elements were removed again.
• Boards from the attic. After the introduction of martial law, the authorities confiscated the boards with demands from the museum, but – according to available studies – these were copies. The originals were hidden by museum staff, and Wiesław Urbański, who kept them at home, returned them after 1989. According to another version, they lay forgotten in the attic until 1996. Sources differ on the date.
• A troublesome sponsor. One of the main private sponsors of Wajda's film "Wałęsa. Man of Hope" was the company Amber Gold. After the scandal broke, the producer donated the 3 million zlotys received from it to a deposit "for moral reasons" in August 2012, which delayed the premiere.
• A pen with a history. Andrzej Duda and Piotr Duda signed a program agreement in 2015 with a pen that the union leader received from President Lech Kaczyński before his death in the Smolensk disaster.
• The union leader with a mission in Syria. Piotr Duda, a member of the union since 1980, served in the 6th Pomeranian Airborne Division from 1982 to 1983, and also served in the Polish Military Contingent as part of the UN mission UNDOF in Syria.
• Firefighters from New York at Jasna Góra. In September 2002, during the 20th Pilgrimage of Working People to Jasna Góra, New York firefighters, participants in the rescue operation after the World Trade Center attack, marched alongside union members.