The Rise and Fall of Poland’s Solidarity Movement
Four decades ago, Poland’s communist system faced the challenge of a powerful independent workers’ movement and eventually drove it underground. Understanding Solidarity’s fate during and after communism is essential for making sense of Polish politics today.
Striking workers sit at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk on August 20, 1980. (JORMA PUUSA/AFP via Getty Images)
Polish politics today is dominated by the clash between national-conservative populists and their neoliberal opponents, with left-wing forces pushed into a minority space. But postcommunist Poland might have followed a very different path.
During the 1950s and ’60s, communist reformers argued for a version of socialism that would be more democratic than the Soviet model. In 1980, popular discontent with the system gave rise to the Solidarity movement, one of the biggest mobilizations by workers anywhere in Europe since the Second World War. Understanding Solidarity’s fate after its emergence is crucial if we want to understand the state of Poland today.
David Ost witnessed the emergence of Solidarity firsthand and later wrote a book about the movement’s rise and fall, The Defeat of Solidarity: Anger and Politics in Postcommunist Europe.
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