The Solidarity Revolution in Poland,

1980-1981
by Jack M. Bloom
Abstract This article, based upon in-depth interviews with anti-government leaders and activists, first explains the significance of the upheaval in Communist Poland in 1980-1981 and articulates how the
author became involved in this research and explains his methodology.
It then concentrates on the impact on the personal lives of the participants and on social relations in Poland of the upheaval that produced
an unprecedented-in-the-Soviet-bloc independent union with the right
to strike. It shows how activists developed talents and cultivated abilities as they assumed responsibilities that had previously been unavailable to them. It examines how workers' lives changed as they grasped
control of power: their working conditions improved; their status
rose; they treated one another better: they educated themselves. These
changes, which contributed to the context in which the political struggle
of that period took place, survived the suppression of the union and ultimately contributed to bringing about the end of Communism in Poland.
ALICJA MATLISZEWSKA: For the first time since the Commu-

nists took power, people were united: peasants, workers, clerks,

intelligentsia. There was no more "Mr. engineer," or "Mr. dtKtor." A
worker with a shovel used the familiar form when speaking with
both. That was the greatest threat to the Communists. They could
not divide the society any more.
Jack M. Bloom did his graduate work in Berkeley in the sixties, where he became
deeply involved in the social movements of that time, including ihe civil rights
movement and the anli-Victnani war movement. In 1970. he left school ABD to
become a full-time political activist, continuing his social movement activity. After
several years of this work, he decided to finish his degree and he wrote his dissertation on the civil rights movement, thereby becoming primarily a scholar of social
movements rather than an activist. The dissertation became the basis of his prizewinning book, C/.v.. Race and the Civil Rights Movement. He then began research
on Poland's Solidarity movement. In ihe course of" his research, he met his wife.
Joanna. He will soon finish his book. Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution. He has recently been active in opposition to the war in Iraq. "Ilie author thanks
R. Stephen Warner for having read and offered valuable suggestions for this article
and editor Andy Dunar for many very helpful suggestions.
The Oral History Review, Vt. .13. Issue I. pp. 33-64. ISSN 0094-1223, tlcctronic ISSN IS3.VHS91
2(H)6 by the Oral Ilislor .Xssotiulinn. .\tl rigtiti. restrvcd. Pteast direct uti requests Tor permission til photucupy or reproduce article ciinteni through the University of California Press's
Rights and Permissiims website, HI btl|)://www.iicpress.etiii/jouriiiits/rigbts.blin.

ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

STANISLAW HANDZUK: This democracy, this openness was bursiing out day by day. Talents were released: organizing, giving
speeches, artistic talent even. And because of all that, a lot of
people grew more valuable in their own eyes.

In August, 1980, massive strikes enabled Polish workers to

win an independent union, which they called "Solidarity," and
which had the right to strike. In doing so, they broke the mold
of Soviet-bloc countries by creating a means of challenging rule
from above; their achievement was the beginning of the end of
the Soviet empire and ultimately of the Soviet Union itself.
They thus changed the course of history. This colossal political
achievement enabled ihem to change existing social relations and
to grow and transform themselves individually.
I came to Poland almost accidentally to observe these changes
and found that I could best understand what had happened by
speaking with the activists involved and learning their history as
they saw it. I was not an expert on Eastern Europe and I had not
expected to do any research there. However, my field of concentration is social movements. So, when I learned that my application
to participate in the exchange program between Indiana University and Warsaw University had been accepted, meaning I would
be going in the summer of 1986 for about five weeks, I decided to
see if I could learn about Solidarity and the significant social
movements that had characterized Communist Poland. I was fortunate to make contact with Jane Dobija, a Polish American
woman who had been moved by Solidarity to go to Poland and
write a book about it. Jane kindly shared her contacts with me
and provided me with letters of introduction to two independent journalists in Warsaw and Krakow. Each of them gave me
connections that opened up the world of the opposition. In Krakow, Krzysztof Kasprzyk brought me to a church that was a center of opposition. I met the priest who, after we talked, asked
me to lecture about the civil rights movement in America
(about which I had then just finished a book) at the underground Christian workers' "university" that he ran. At my talk,
1 met Maciek Szumowski, a leader in the movement to reform
the Party in 1980-1981. Szumowski took a liking tome, granted
me an interview, and offered to help me make further contacts.
Afterward, the priest, one of the most prominent opposition
priests in Poland, invited me to go with him to Gdansk to meet
Lech Walsa. I did, and also, thanks to Wojciech Adamiecki in

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

Warsaw, I made contact with other oppositionists in Gdansk. By

the time I left, 1 realized that I had good enough connections to
speak with anyone I wished in the Polish opposition. It was not
something I could walk away from.
In the summer of 1987,1 took an intensive course in Polish
and then continued my studies during the year. I convinced the
committee that ran the exchange program to select me a second
timesomething unprecedentedbased on my project proposal
to interview the oppositionists. (My status of not being a scholar
of Poland actually helped me here because I had nothing to lose
if the government reacted negatively to my work, whereas established Polish scholars told me it was difficult for them to do what
I proposed because they might be denied permission to return
to the country.)
In the summer of 1988, T returned and spent three-and-a-half
months interviewing Solidarity leaders, leaders of tbe intellectual
opposition, leaders of the movement to reform the Party, and
some people affiliated with the Church. For this purpose, 1 visited four cities, each of which was a major center of opposition:
Warsaw. Krakow, Wroclaw, and Gdansk. For the most part,
these interviews were conducted in Polish and translated for me
on the spot. That was important even for the few who spoke
English because I wanted them to be comfortable in their language and to be able to express themselves most fully.
In the fall of 1989,1 was on sabbatical when a new government took power, so I decided to return. I financed this trip myself;
I spent another three-and-a-half months there, and besides returning to the cities I had already visited, I spent several weeks in
Upper Silesia, dividing my time between the major city there,
Katowice, and the coa! mining region of Jastrzbie, which had
played a crucial role both in the August strikes that established
Solidarity and in the response to the government's declaration of
martial law^Upper Silesia was the only region that offered serious, sustained resistance through prolonged strikes.
Because of the change in regime, I now fell that I could apply
for the position of Indiana University Exchange Professor, which
would send me to Warsaw University for a year-long exchange;
under the Communist government, I had worried that doing my
research might have been injurious to one or the other universities. So, I spent the academic year 1990-1991 teaching and doing

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

research in Poland, mostly in Warsaw. In 1997,1 decided thai I

needed to return one more time, and I won a small grant from
the Russian and East European Institute at Indiana University
for that purpose. I spent six weeks there in the summer, largely in
the western city of Poznan, where important events had taken
place in the first post-war upheaval in Poland in 1956. interviewing key participants. On this last trip, I made a break-through in
the sociological character of my respondents. I managed to have
a lengthy interview with a former colonel in the secret police
who. after some time, opened up to me and told me a great deal
from his point of view. He introduced me to a colonel in the Ministry of the Interior, I then approached Mieczysiaw Rakowski.
the last leader of the Communist Party and of the Polish government, who gave me several hours of interviews. As a result, I
managed to get their point of view represented, as well.
In each city I visited, I was able to meet with the opposition
leadership thanks to the connections 1 had already established,
and they guided me to key people. Because I was vetted, they
were quite willing to talk with me.TTiat others chose the people
was fine with me because they knew who 1 needed to speak with
much better than I, I was not looking for a random or representative sample, but rather to speak primarily with the leaders,
which was not limited to those who held offices or positions., but
those people recognized as having played a leadership role. My
intention, about which I informed my respondents, was always
to use their names.
In 1998 and 1999,1 supplemented these interviews by contacting people who had been in the Solidarity leadership and
who were in edle in the United States and Canada. I interviewed
people in Sacramento. California, New York City, Chicago, and
Toronto. These included interviews with Aleksander Krystosiak.
Alicja Matuszewska. Ryszard Sawicki, and Andrzej Rozplochowski, all of whom played key roles in Solidarity and were in
exile because the Polish Communist government wanted to
punish them. Krystosiak subsequently returned to Poland.
Tliere were very few occasions when I had to talk someone
into granting me an interview. In one of these, in the coal-mining
region of Jastrzbie. there was an important activist who felt he
had been badly treated by Solidarity, then newly-empowered. I
spent quite a while arguing that he should speak with me because

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

otherwise no one would hear his story. Eventually, he relented

and we talked for over six hours. On another occasion, one of the
people whom I was interviewing in Toronto was giving me
the brush-off: he told me he had little titne atid he went through
his experience with so little detail and so quiekly that I was
learning little. I stopped him after about 20 minutes and told
him so. Apparently, journalists who were just looking for a juicy
quote and soon left had previously interviewed him. I told him
that I needed lots of details and follow-up questions and that if
he didn't have the time, perhaps we should just not continue.
He looked at me, surprised, and began again. We spent eight
hours together, though he had originally said he had only two.
I decided to approach the interviews whenever possible by
taking life histories, which usually took several hours, and in some
eases, several days, I felt that the key to my study was C.Wright
Mills's insight that great historical events are reflected in peoples'
lives in specific ways.The particularities are unique, but individually they reflectand collectively they constitutethe broad
course of history. Mills put it this way:
The facts of contemporary history are also facts about the success
and the failure of individual men and women. When a society is
industrialized, a peasant hecomes ii worker: a feudal lord is liquidated or becomes a businessman. When the rate of investment
goes up or down, a man is employed or unemployed. Wlien wars
happen, an insurance salesman becomes a rocket launcher; a
store cterk. a radar man; a wife lives a;tone; a child grows up without a father. Neither the life of an individual nur the history of a
society can be understood without understanding both.'

Therefore, what better way to understand historical events than

to probe how they were manifested through people's lives and
their understanding of those lives, and conversely, how those lives
and those understandings affected and shaped the events? My
hope was to come to know the oppositionists, to see the individual paths they followed as they became a significant collective
opposition that culminated in the Solidarity movement.
I approached these interviews by beginning with the broadest formulation of a question, which then served in a certain
sense as a Rorschach test: my subjects could give the question
' C. Wright Mills, The Sodotogical Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press,
1959), 3.

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

whatever interpretation they might wish and answer it in directions I might not have anticipated. Gradually, I would sharpen
and specify my questions in search of what I sought. I probed
the lives of tny subjects in detail to learn how they had intersected historical events. One answer suggested another question.
Someone who was in the army during, say, December 1970.
when there were major demonstrations and severe repression
on the Baltic Coast, could tell me the official line he heard concerning these events, how his fellow-soldiers reacted, how officers
and enlisted men differed in their reactions, how the government got its line across to them, in what way they got information other than the official line, and how they felt about these
things. Even peripheral relationships to such events could yield
revealing information, as for example is illustrated by Solidarity
activist Winicjusz Gurecki's statement:
I worked in a restaurant in Swinoujscie. It was a small town, so
among my clientele were policemen, and some of them I knew. I
asked one who served on the coast in 1970: "Where were you in
l*>7()?" And he said. "'I was in the td-city area" [where the killings
had taken placeJMB|. So I said, "Tell me the truth. How many
people were killed there?" He was drunk, but even so. when I
asked him that, he looked at me more consciously, like being
awakened. There was tragedy in his eyes, and he said. "You tell
me how many people can be killed after shooting a machine gun
into a crowd for two hours."

I never knew what turns in an individual's life might give

me some insight or information from a unique point of view. I
went through their lives chronologically, probing for the intersections between the broad sweep of history and their own
experiences and awareness. I would generally begin each interview by asking them for about a five-minute overview of their
activity, which then provided the broad framework for me to
ask questions.
By following this trajectory, I was able to get many details
of people's lives to give meaning to the historical generalities. I
felt that the only way I could really understand what had happened was on the basis of the specifics of individual lives and
experiences. I got as detailed as possible in asking people to
take me into meeting rooms, negotiations and demonstrations,
and to allow me to observe their conversations, to the degree
thai Ihey were able to reconstruct them. One beneficial result

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

of this approach was that people were less likely to fall back on
canned, predigested perspectives and instead spoke from their
experience. It also turned out to be a good way of disarming my
informants. For example, when I began an interview with the
former colonel of the secret police, his initial distrust in answering considerably diminished as we followed the trajectory of his
life, rather than just approaching the difficult questions; as a
result, he was very open and provided me with a window into
the government's efforts in response to its opposition.
I found people to be very careful in answering my questions. It was not uncommonas I was inquiring about events
that had taken place years, in some cases decades, earlierfor a
respondent to ask if I wanted to know what he or she thought at
the time the event was taking place, or at the time of the interview, so as to be sure of what question I was asking and how to
answer it properly. When I occasionally let it slip that I Hked
Solidarity. I was admonished that the respondent was only concerned that I tell the truth.
One thing I had not anticipated when I began the interviews
was how articulate and even eloquent my informants would be.
As a result, as I read them over, it became clear to me that their
words should see the light o day, that as much as possible, I should
let them speak because their words make much clearer what happened and how and why it happened, and because they are able
to bring readers much closer to the actual events than I can.
I learned a great deal from my interviews: they taught me
how events had developed, what were key turning points in the
movement, the debates that took place over strategy and tactics,
how they had learned their lessons and what they had learned
that eventually made it possible for them to triumph. I do not
think that 1 could have gathered this information without these
interviews; they were essential to understanding this movement. Because I am still working with the interviews, I still
have possession of them; when I am done, they will be deposited in a library that has a strong Eastern European section.
The Solidarity Upheaval
On August 14,1980 a strike began at the Lenin Shipyard in
Gdansk. By the next day, the strike had spread to shipyards

39

ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

in the adjoining city of Gdynia and after the weekend to the western port city of Szczecin. Soon, dozens, then scores of other
workplaces joined the strikes in those cities. After two weeks,
when negotiations with the government had so far yielded nothing, miners, steelworkers, and other workers joined the strikes,
and their intervention was decisive in forcing the government
to bargain in good faith. Seweryn Jaworski, who led the strike
in the Warsaw Steel Mill, recalled that during similar strikes in
1970 the police and the army had fired on the strikers, killing a
disputed number of workers:
We decided to strike because we feared a bloodbath. (After the
strikes. I spoke with other people. In Silesia, they had the same
feeling.) The army and the pohcc arc enough lo pacify some factories, but not Uie whole country.

On August 31,1980, the strike ended with the government

having accepted the legal existence of free, independent unions
with the right to strike. In the ensuing months, many more strikes
took place as workers used the unions, brought together under
the name of '"Solidarity," to win gains at the workplace and in
the broader society. This concession set Poland off on a course
never before followed by a Soviet-bloc country; with such power,
the union could challenge the government policies and force its
solutions to the nation's problems. It was, in fact, a mortal challenge to the Soviet system.
For the rest of 1980 and almost all of 1981. the union, whose
strength made room for a huge national social movement,
engaged in continual conflict with the government over a variety
of issues, most of which did not bave to do with the workplace.
They addressed church privileges, student influence on curricula,
the right to positions based on qualifications rather than loyalty
to the ruling party, redirection of investments, and political issues,
such as free speech and the right to organize. Solidarity frequently won these conflicts and forced major changes in the
way business was carried out. Conflict ostensibly continued
until mid-December 1981 when, in the middle of the night, the
government declared martial law. Authorities detained some
ten thousand opposition leaders, and declared Solidarity illegal.
But Solidarity adherents went underground and continued their
efforts for years until, at the end of the decade, new negotiations
with the Solidarity leadersliip ended Communist rule in Poland.

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

The formation of Solidarity began a social revolution that

ultimately threatened the system by which the Soviet Union
had dominated Eastern Europe since the end of World War II,
The nation that came out of those strikes was quite different from
what had existed before. Earlier interpretations had held that Sohdarity was the product of intellectuals," or that it was a creation
of the Catholic Church, and especially of the Polish pope, John
Paul 11.^ Later, some significant analyses emphasized, on the
contrary, the crucial role that workers themselves played in creating and developing this movement,'' While intellectuals and
the Church each played an important role, I maintain that it
was workers who bested a Communist governmentsomething
never before accomplished, Tliey were aware of what they had
achieved, and that knowledge affected their self-image.
The workers had seen many other Poles stand by their side:
not only fellow workers, but also farmers, intellectuals, students, their families, and many others from the community.
Moreover, after the August strikes, more workers, inspired by
the outcome, made their own demands and also went on strike.
^ See Leszek Koiakowski, "The Intelligentsia," in Abraham Brumberg, ed., Poland:
The Genesis of ei Revolution (New York: Random House, 1983): Z.A. Peiczynski.
"Solidarity and the Rebirth of Civil Society"" in John H. Keane, ed.. Civil Societ}' and
the State (London: Verso. 1988); Alain Tourainc, Francois Dubel, Michel Wieviorka
and Jan Slrzeiecki, Solidarity: The Analysis of a Social Movement. Poland 19801981 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983); Adam Bromke, Poland: The
Protracted Crisis {Oakville, Ontario: Mosaic Press 1983); Jean-Yves Potel. The Promise of Solidarity (New York: Praeger, I982):rimothy Garln Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (New York: Vintage, 1985); Jan Jozef Lipski, KOR: A History of
the Workers' Defense Committee in Poland, I976-I98I, translated by Olga Amsterdamska and Gene M. Moore (Berkeley: University of California Press, 198?);
Michael H. Bernliard, The Origins of Democratization in Poland (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993)to mention only some of the more prominent holders
of this point of view,
^ Grzegorz Ekiert. "The State Against Society; The Aftermath of Political Crises in
Hungary. 1956-1963, Czechoslovakia. 1968-1970. and Poland, 198I-I989" (Ph.D.
diss.. Harvard University, 1991); Timothy Garton Ash, The Mugic Laniern (New
York: Random Hotise, 1990); Carl Bernstein and Marco Politi, His Holiness: John
Paul II and the Hidden History of Our Time (New York: Doubicday, 1996); Jonathan
Kwitny, Man of the Century: The Life and Times of Pope John Paul II (New York:
Henry Holt and Company, 1997).
* Especially Lawrence Goodwyn, Breaking the Barrier: The Rise of Solidarity in
Poland (New York: Oxford University Press. 1991) and Roman Laba, The Roots of
Solidarity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

From the beginning, it was clear that people intended to make

use of the independent union to influence a broad range of
issues. The reach of the union, and the social movement it had
engendered and protected, grew quiekly. Other segments of the
societystudents, farmersalso began to organize. With all this
independent activity, it should not be surprising that social relations underwent a far-reaching transformation: the revolution
that was Solidarity transformed the individuals who participated
in it and the character and quality of social relations in Poland.
Tlie Polish sociologist Ireneusz Biaiecki summed up the changes:
A new image of a worker has thusemerged, that of a man socially
committed, conscious of his own power, solidarity, capable of
unselfishness and sacrifices. Such people could be found in all the
places where new trade unions were organized.^

During the period of the union's legal existence, from

August 1980 to December 1981, the Party and its dependents saw
power slipping away to Solidarity and to the subsidiaiy movements that it helped to spawn. This trend involved a titanic
political battle between Solidarity and the Polish Communist
Party, as well as conflicts within both Solidarity and the Party.
These political struggles, which ultimately determined the fate
of the movement, are not the subject of this article. Rather,
there was another element beyond the polilical realm that still
affected it, which it is important to grasp. In a revolution, power
slips away from those who wield it not only in institutional ways,
but also when ordinary people can grasp control of their lives.
From below, it feels like an end to the burden of fear, and a vast
expansion of liberty and possibilities, as people grab at the levers
of power that had previously been out of their reach. Their former
overlords, accustomed to having people quake in their presence,
now find these same people confronting and challenging them.
Indeed, the changes wrought by the Solidarity movement
involved a transformation of the individuals, of social relations,
and of the Polish nation itself. One of Karl Marx's insights was
that in the course of people's efforts to change the world, they
' Irencus,^ Bitilccki. "Solidaritythe Roots of the Movement" in Wladyslaw W.
Adamski, Sisyphus Sociolof-icat Stulies. Vol, III. Crises and Conflicts: The Case of
Polaiul. 9m-SI (Warsaw: Polish Scientitic Publishers. 1982). 118. Tliis work was
cited in Colin Barker. Festival of the Oppressed: Solidarity, Reform and Revolution
in Potand. 1980-1 (Chicago: Bookmarks, 1986). 87.

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

changed themselves. He saw that it was through their struggles

that people would grow, develop talents, and eventually alter
their consciousness and self-concepts. He phrased it in the following way iti The German Ideology:
The alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration
which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution;
this revolution is necessary, therefore, because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all
the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew.''

TTiis article focuses on how these extra-political developments profoundly altered individuals and social and institutional relations.
When George Orwell joined the battle against the fascist
forces in Spain, led by General Francisco Franco, Orwell found
significant changes in social relations as a result of the social
upheaval:
Waiters and shop-walkers looked you in the face and treated you
as an equal. Servile and even ceremonial forms of speech had
temporarily disappeared... .Tipping had been forbidden by law....
In outward appearance it was a town in which the wealthy classes
had practically ceased to exist. .. .Tliere was no unemployment,
and the price of living was still extremely low; you saw very few
conspicuously destitute people, and no beggars except the gypsies. Above all. there was a belief in the revolution and the future,
a feeling of having suddenly emerged into an era of equality and
freedom. Human beings were trying to behave as human beings
and not as cogs in the capitalist machine. In the barbers' shops
were Anarchist notices . . . solemnly explaining that barbers were
no longer slaves. In the streets were colored posters appealing to
prostitutes to stop being prostitutes. . . . In the early battles
womenl had fought side by side with the men as a matter of
course. It is a thing that seems natural in time of revolution.'

Similar changes took place among African Americans in the

United States in the course of the civil rights movement.^
Social movements often transform individuals; even when a
new hierarchy develops, or the old hierarchy reasserts itself,
people remain transformed. The strike victoi^ in Poland in 1980,
and the solidarity that had made it possible, helped to create a
*Kar] Marx, The German Ideology (New York: International Publishers. l%0). 6y.
'George Orwell. Homage to Catalonia (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
1952). 5-7.
"See Jack M. Bloom. CVI.., Race and Ihe Civil Rights Movement (Bioomington:
Indiana University Press, 1987), chapter 5: "The Defeat of White Power and (he
Emergence of the "New Negro' in the South."

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

Ztiigiiicw Bogac/.

sense of hope and of personal self-confidence that armed people

for future conflicts. Wladyslaw Erasyniuk. Solidarity's leader in
the western Wroclaw region, recalled that: "There was this
great sense that workers would become the governors of their
factoriesand have the right to organizations which would
defend us." Grzegorz Stawski, a miner Solidarity leader: "The
very fact of the strikes caused people to feel their own value.
They felt that they had the potential to change things, that they
were not only objects of manipulation." Miroslawa Strzelec, an
activist in the Krakow steel mill: "Every worker was aware that
he was 'somebody.'"
People gained courage and made new demands. They
described their new assertiveness as crossing the barrier of fear.''
Bogdan Borusewicz, a Solidarity leader in Gdansk explained:

'' t,.awrence Goodwyn was referriap to this sense of emancipation from fear in ihe title
of his book on Solidarity. Breaking the Barrier: The Rise ofSolliiariiy in Poland (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1991). The barrier to which he referred was fear.

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

"You have political hopelessness when you think that you must
agree to everything they demand. Now, with this movement, hope
and self-confidence grew. People lost a lot of their fear." Zbigniew
Bogacz, a miner leader, said: '"It was the first time that people
could feel that the government was afraid." Andrzej Jarmakowski, a youth activist, recalled: "The most important thing was
that no one was afraid of the government or the police any more."
A new sense of power emboldened the workers against
officials who at one time had inspired fear. A government delegation went to the city of Czstochowa to attempt to mitigate
the anger generated by the provincial governor's declaration of
a state of emergencya clumsy effort to keep Solidarity from
being legally recognized. Solidarity leaders threatened a regional
strike if the officials responsible were not dismissed. According
to George Sanford:
At a meeting at the local bus station, which was relayed to a
crowd of 5.000 outside, Ihe city officials faced public accusations
that they had never really accepted the Gdansk Agreement [that
guaranteed the right to independent unions with the right to
strikeJMB]. The City President was blamed for a million zJoty
deficit on a pig farm and for having refused to renovate a center
for the handicapped run by nuns while he had built a luxurious
new Party headquarters costing 2(H) million zlotys. The deputy
governors were accused of building villas for local notables and of
assuring preferential supplies to shops catering to officials. Cz^stochowa. with a population of a quarter of a million, because of their
neglect, had only two cinemas, a wholly inadequate library system,
poorly heated schools and an unsanitary hospital system.'"

These officials had to resignthey were the first, but not the last.
Again and again, it was made evident in ways that could not
fail to impress themselves upon the apparatus that power had
shifted, and workers' lives improved as a result. Shortly after
the events in Czstochowa, in the fall of 1980, Solidarity members occupied the local government headquarters in the town
of Bielsko-Biala in southern Poland, demanding that all the top
local officials be fired." Hardline Party first secretaries in War-

'"Timothy Garton Ash, The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (New York: Vintage,
1985). 85; George Sanford, Polish Communism in Crisis (New York: S(. Martin's
Press, 1983), 109-10.
" Ash, 92.

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

saw and in Lodz, who resisted giving up any of their power and
prerogatives, had to resign. The relationship between workers
and management had changed, as Ginter Kupka. a miner activist, explained: "Nobody controlled us: the managers, the bosses,
the foremen in the coal mines could do nothing to us now; ihey
were afraid of us."' Ryszard Brzuzy, also a miner, explained how
this new attitude affected working conditions, saying: "Management couldn't force people to break safety and health rules.
Workers were not treated like slaves anymore. The power of
the working class then was much greater than management's."
Workers demonstrated their increased power in many ways.
Staszek HandzHk, a steelworker leader in Krakow, recalled that
workers demanded significant changes:
Solidarity gave people courage tn oppose openly, They began to
lalk Trotn the bottom of their hearts about Ihe things that troubled them. People demanded an explanation for Ihis great $20
billion debt. We demanded fundamental reforms, like having
some influence on the way people were chosen I'or their posts, to
prevent the Party from making all the decisions. We said, "Of
course we can work, and very efficiently, hut we dun't want our
work to be wasted by incompetent management." Then, il was
enough for the leadership of the Solidarity committee to go to
the manager of the steel mill and demand the change of this or
that person and something was done about it.

Both Alojzy Szablewski. a leader in the Gdansk Shipyard, where

the strikes had begun, and Grzegorz Stawski spoke of how the
workers* lives improved as a result of their new power:
SZABLEWSKI: I was a.sked to go see the work in the shipyard; I
went to a room where there was no ventilation and the workers
were breathing smoke. I told ihe director that if ihe situation didn't
change by the next day, I would slop work on that ship. The next
day the ship had many pla.stic sleeves, and great venlilators were
taking Ihe smoke out. hi one of the huge work rooms, the heating
was out o order, and the iemperature was very low. We went to
the director and told him it had to be repaired, and it was.
Because the director knew that Solidarity had power.
STAWSKI: People were not badly treated any more. Working conditions, safety, healthall improved once a real trade union existed.
We won free Saturdays and Sundays. We could bietter administer
the work. We learned to speak with our own voice.

As a result, workers became much bolder as they confronted

matters that had previously been the sole concern of the authori-

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

Ryszard Sawicki

ties. People expanded their demands: they wanted public buildings turned back to public uses rather than being reserved for
the privileged, and public funds directed into hospitals, schools,
libraries, recreational centers. When these things were not forthcoming, a wave of strikes followed.'' Students occupied the University of Lodz, demanding independence for "university level
schools in issues concerning science, teaching and the internal
life of organizations."" After a month, they signed an agreement that included student participation in the schools' representative bodies, independent curricula, increased humanities
offerings, and the right to study a foreign language other than
Russian. They also raised a series of social demands for more
freedom of expression and less police harassment.'"^ Ryszard
Sawicki, a leader of the copper miners, spoke of the wide range
of issues that people felt able to raise because of Solidarity:
Solidarity became a cure for all social ills. Everyone came to us
with their problems. So. if you had to stand in line, they would
create line committees. If they felt that the manager of a store did
'-Lech Walesa, >1 Way of Hope: An Autobiography (New York: Henry Holl and
Company. 1987). 163.
"Stan Persky and Henry Flam. The Solidarity Sourcehook (Vancouver: New Star
Books. 1982). 143-49.
'Mbid.

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

Aleksantler Krystosiak
something wrong, they would come to us and expect us to take
care of it.

Solidarity enjoyed vast social support, which strengthened

it as it sheltered its supporters. It was a huge social movement that
involved almost every social stratum. Aleksander Krystosiak, a
Solidarity leader in Szczecin, recalled: "There were weddings
during the strike, and brides would come straight from the
churches to hang their wedding bouquets on the gates. It was a
way of showing us: 'We are with you!"' Millions of people in all
walks of lifeincluding housewives and even childrenbecame
involved and organized. Janusz Palubicki, who led Solidarity in
the Wroclaw region, recalled that even "private businessmen
would come to us and tell us that they wanted to be members."
Within a few months after the August strikes, some ten million
people held membership in the union. Many others belonged to
associated organizations like the Independent Student Union.
Later, farmers organized their own union: Rural Solidarity. With
their families, they were virtually the entire nation. Again and
again, their new union supported them, and this support gave
them a new sense of strength. Miroslawa Strzelec recalled how
this power opened new topics to discussion: "People began to
speak freely about things they could not speak about before.
Our director came from eastern Poland, and he told us a lot

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

about the Soviet invasion in 1939. People discussed these subjects with friends and families. They tried to get to the families
of those killed in Katyn,''' and young people became Interested in
the 'white spots* in Polish history." Power relationships changed,
as Aleksander Krystosiak illustrated:
At>out a month after the strike, the terrified vice-district attorney
comes to my office. Tliere 1 am sitting on the side of the desk that
normally was his; he is sitting in a pleading position on the side of
the desk where I would normally sit. He is telling me that they
caught a worker who stole something. He is asking me if I would
object to this worker being arrested. For some reason. I stand up.
He immediately jumps to his feet and stands at attention. This is a
psychological study of an oflicial. A few days earlier. I wouldn't
have been able to look at him. he was so self-important, and so
puffed up. And there he was standing in front of me, just a worker
and he looked like a sick ratone of those you could step on and
crush its spine, and it wasn't even capable of showing teeth or
running away.

It is worthwhile to speculate a moment about the thoughts

of this official who was so used to wielding authority and who
now faced this new authority that was apparently terrifying.
Was it fearwhich in this anecdote moved from the people to
the erstwhile powers? Resentment because of the fear? Anger?
A deep desire to end this "anarchy?" All of these? Clearly, the
authorities had lost confidence. Of course, he was not alone;
many such officials all around the nation found themselves confronted with a new authority that made them feel profoundly
uneasy. It must have been a terrifying and threatening experience that they dearly wished to end. Their feelings certainly
affected the policy of the government and the Party toward Solidarity. Mieczysiaw Rakowski, who became deputy prime minister in February 1981, acknowledged this trend:
For the whole Party, what happened in 1980 was unexpected, and
therefore they were not psychologicallynot to mention politicallyprepared to accept the new siluation. None of these
people had expected such a development. This was ihe tragedy:
that neither side was prepared to understandmuch less accept
this new situation.

'-This isa reference lo the murder of some 15,000 Polish offlcere during World War I
by the Soviets in the town of Katyn.

49

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

Alicja Matus/ewska

Family reactions compounded their humiliation. Krystosiak

recalled that: '"Even their children felt ashamed of their parents."
Others made similar observations. There are many reports of
family discord, as the children of officials had to endure questions and comments about their parents' activities, and in turn,
brought these issues home and accused their parents.
In these circumstances, the Party had much less control.
Alicja Matuszewska, a leader of the civilians who worked for
tbe miUtary explained that:
Almost Immediately, I began receiving newspapers from the shipyards and elsewhere: 1 always took piles. Something like this would
happen: someone would knock on my oflice door, and I would say,
"Come in." A young ofiicer would come ina lot of people from
the air force and from the shipsI have no idea how ihey knew
about me. They would ask me very quietly. "Mrs. Matuszewska.
can we get some newspapers?" I would say. "Of course."

Aieksander Krystosiak noted the impact of this change in power

relations:
Among those people, the feeling of guilt and fear was born. They
realized that the people accused them of signing false accusations
andof doing wroiig to innocent people.They felt not only that we
had the power, but also that we had reason to put the noose on
their necks. They were Ihe ones who decided upon sentences. They
signed papers and they looked at the "evidence"supposedly a

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

Andrzej Rozplochowski

gunand they knew as soon as they looked at it that it had been

put there by Ihe secret police. Bui they still signed: they did what
they were ordered to and they didn't even think about it. People
were disgusted with their activities.

In some cases. Solidarity leaders used their new power to

press hard against officialdom. Andrzej Rozplochowski. a miner
Sohdarity leader:
1 was a dangerous enemy in the eyes of the regional and central
officials from the very beginning of Solidarity because I did not
agree lo any compromises. 1 felt that you do not negotiate with
bandits: the only thing you can talk about with them is how they
will surrender. In September 1980. we said Ihat we would not
negotiate with any Party officials, only with government oOicials.
Because of thai, my name was used like Holy Water against evil
spirits. Nurmal people came to me with Iheir problems. But
people in high positions did not want to deal with me because
they wanted to make deals, and I was against it.

These fears were also felt by Poland's "friends" (as Mieczysiaw Rakowski, Poland's last Communist prime minister and
general secretary of the Party, and others whom I interviewed
spoke of themwith the quotation marks), Zbgniew Regucki, the
chief of staff to Stanislaw Kania, the reformist Party secretary

51

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

installed in response to Solidarity, recalled that: "The pressure

put on us by our neighborsRomania, Czechoslovakia, everyone elsewas so strong that there was really no question in my
mind that they were ready to come in."
So, the new status quo brought a deep and continuing conflict
with the nomenklatura systemwhereby people were advanced in
their positions due to their political loyalty and not their qualificationsthat would not be resolved until either the system or
the union triumphed. The union local at the Nowa Huta Steel Mill
near Krakow contended that they were upholding the values that
the country's leaders had abandoned: "We . . . believe . . . that it
is possible to restore the highest values: truth, justice, recognition
for honest work and respect for man."'^ The union's national
program later echoed it:
What we had in mind was not only bread, butter and sausage, but
also justice, democracy, truth, legality, human dignity, freedom of
convictions and the repair o the republic. All elementary values
had been too mistreated for us to beheve thai anything could
improve without their rebirth.''

The victory that resulted in the Communist-state recognition of an independent union with the right to strike, an unprecedented step, opened new horizons to the workers, who exulted
in the changes it heralded in their lives. Suddenly, things took
place that before had been inconceivable. There was a sense of
joy and a perception of vast new possibilities to deal with heretofore unalterable realities. Aleksander Krystosiak illustrated
how the union encouraged people to propose new directions:
As deputy ehair of the regional committee, I was obliged to look
into housing construction. People who built housesarchitects,
engineers, workers, foremencame to me and almost cried with
joy that our strong union was interested. These people just
started peppering me with all kinds of wonderful projects for
making people's lives better that had never seen daylight under
the Communists.

Krystosiak recalled one important manifestation of the feeling of great possibilities:

"Oliver MacDnnn\ii. eu.. Polish August: Documents from the Beginnings of ihe Poiish
Workers' Rebellion, Gdansk, August, 1980 (San Franeisco: Ztangi Press. 1981 ), 139.
"Ash, 223.

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

For forty-five years there had been trade unions. You got hired;
the first thing they did was put you in the union and take the dues
from your salary. Fifty per cent of ihal money disappeared. No
one knew where it went. When you needed help from them, ihere
was no money for you. TTien. in a short time, just in my regional
committee, we had 85 million zlotys in our account. We were getting ready to start building houses for people. I'm talking about
this because I want you io see the depth and the brcLidth of the
problems that were dumped on us. We look them on our shoulders,
ready to carry on. and we were capable of managing quite well.

People developed an exhilarating sense that they were a

community, working together for the general welfare. Slawomir
Majewski, a Solidarity activist in Gdansk, gave an example:
You could see the difference Solidarity made everywhere: we
were all one family. I wenl to a meeting of the National Commission. On the train to Szczecin, we met a woman who said. "You
will arrive very eariy in Ihe morning. Come to my place." Then
she left for work and we stayed in her flat and made lea for ourselves and felt al home. Of course when we left, the flat was absolutely clean. You fell immediate sympathy when you knew that
someone belonged lo Solidarity. The echo of Solidarity in August
was help in December. 1981 [when martial law was declared
JMB]: I was in hiding for five months in the houses of people I
didn't know at all.

Before the August strikes, people had often been unpleasant to one another on the streets, in public transportation, in
stores, at work. But. a natural result of people coming to know
each other and working together in shared concern was a sense
of community. As a resuh of Sohdarity. people who had been
strangers were brought together. For example. Wroclaw was
referred to as the "Wild West." After World War II, as borders
were changed in central Europe, the Soviet Union swallowed
the eastern part of Poland which it had occupied at the beginning of the war, and Poland's border moved to the West. Many
of these easterners returning to Poland were forced to move to
the "new," now unsettled West (as the German residents were
also forced to leave their homes to return to Germany). Poland
got tbe German town of Breslau, which became Wroclaw, and
Poland's residents from the East now moved to the West. But
they never became a community until Solidarity. A similar process was noted in Gdansk (formerly Danzig), Szczecin (Stetin)
and in Silesia, all of which had been the recipients of large-scale

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

immigration. Grzegorz Stawski explained that: "The region of

Jastrzbie [in Upper Silesia] consisted of people from all over
Poland, and there were natural frictions between them. But
tiirough the strikes, they became integrated as a community.
And that attitude radiated and influenced the rest of Silesia." In
Krakow, recalled Mirosiawa Strzelec: "Through the meetings
and activities of Solidarity, people got to know each other and
treated one another better."
This trend began during the strikes, and continued thereafter. Marek Muszynski: "'Cars would stop at bus and tram stops
and drivers would say they were going here or there and
offered to give people a ride. Of course, they didn't take any
money for it. Almost everyone acted like that; it was very pleasant to see." Wladystaw Frasyniuk: "People became friendly
with each other, and less aggressive. For instance, if the bus
didn't come on time, the bus driver was not rudely addressed."
Alicja Matuszewska's story movingly illustrates this change:
I worked for Solidarity in Ihe evenings because I bad a day job.
Meetings would take place in my apartment until midnight or
1:00 am. I remember one time I hadn't time to stand in line to
buy my ration and my refrigerator was empty. Eighteen people
were at my bome, and we were all really hungry. I had one loaf of
bread and a little bit of oU, whicb was really terribleblack and
filthy. One of the workers weni to the kitchen, sliced the bread
and fried il with that lilthy oil. We all put salt on it and ate. If anyone has any doubts about what Solidarity was about, it was eating
this loaf of bread together!
I said to Ihem, "Tomorrow, my daughter is coming home
from Warsaw." (She was a student there.) "I have nothing ;it
homeno food. Not even bread." One of them suggested thai
they continue to work while I went to my job. I relumed from
work around 3:30 pm and they showed me what they had written.
It still needed work, so we started writing. Suddenly it was 8:30. !
said.'Tm sorry. I have to run to buy bread." They said. "At this
hour there will be no bread. You'll go in the momng."They left.
I knew I had an empty fridge. I went to my neighbor and asked
her to lend me a half loaf of bread and two eggs. She agreed. I went
home and opened the fridge andlike Lot's wife, I turned into a
pillar of salt! Everything was there! Even things that were not available in P()land: ham, salami, sardines, butter. It turned out that the
wives of two of my workers, who didn't even know me. brought it
all for me. lliey said. "So when her daughter comes, she can take
care of her." My daughter came in the morning about 6 am. She
opened the fridge and said, "1 star\'e and you have everything!"

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

Aieksander Krystosiak also spoke of how Solidarity changed

how people acted toward one another:
Before, people just growled and barked at each other. You
stepped on someone's foot in a Iram and you almost gol caten by
that person. And now, it didn't happen. People began seeing each
other as human beings. So you could hear, "Excuse me." in the
lines and in the trams. In my opinion, this was the most important
change that took place in society.

Piotr Polmaski, a miner Solidarity activist added that:

"During this period, there was not a single fatal accident in my
mine at this time. Everybody became more responsible; we had a
feeling of being one family, a team. We simply took care of everything." Taking care of "everything" is a pretty inclusive notion.
There is no doubt that the impulse was powerful and had significant reverberations. Alojzy Szablewski recalled how the union
saw to it that things in short supply were equitably distributed:
People who sold books, cigarettes, food in the shipyard asked Solidarity to see that these things were distributed fairly, so it wasn't
that one person had several packs of cigarettes, and someone else
nothing. Solidarity gave everyone a card, and he would take the
card to the shop and get the same amount, so that everyone had
food, and people knew it was just. The fish factory called to say that
they had cans of fish. They knew the shipyard workers needed it,

Feeling that they now had some control, workers acted

more responsibly. As Wladyslaw Frasyniuk reported:
For the first time, people got the sense of being masters in their
own workplaces. In my workplace, the manager couldn't remember when there was so much self-discipline. For instance, drinking
alcohol in the workplace entirely vanished, disappeared. It was
not from increased control from above. There was pressure from
one's workmates.

Indeed, alcohol consumption, which had often been a

major problem on and off the job, now fell under control of the
workers themselves, and virtually disappeared at the worksite.'**
An anonymous worker recalled: "During the strike [in the Paris
Commune Shipyard in Gdynia] consumption of alcohol in the
shipyard was forbidden. At the beginning of the strike, a foreman
was thrown out for drunkenness. Before being thrown, out he
'"Ireneusz Biaiecki,op.cit.

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

was paraded around the shipyard in a cart; it was a sort of symbolic pillory."'^ Aleksander Krystosiak saw a similar pattern:
Wilh lightning speed, the society rebuilt itself morally. In my factory, which wasn't any exception, there were four places where
alcohol was sold. The director, the management, the foremen
really did whatever they could to get rid of them. Il wasn't possible. Why? Because the people helped hide them. With the new
trade unions, no one looked for these places. Why not? Because
when Ihe worker went to gel vodka, he wasn't looking for the
foreman or manager; he was making sure Ihal no other worker
saw him because he was ashamed of doing it. So these selling
points just died off, like dinosaurs, What was really important was
Ihe change in the quality of the worker's mind.

Jan Kubik reported that he found evidence of this new attitude

persisting well beyond the strikes. In December 1980, he recalled:
As I was going from Katowice to Gdansk for the unveiling of Ihe
December 1970 Monument [to workers killed by the army and
the police during protests-JMB|. 1 was struck by the absence of
drunken men in the train's buffet. Buffets on long-distance trains
in Poland are usually frequented by drinking crowds. This time,
however. I did not notice a single drunken person. The people
were solemn and pensive. . . . Solidarity banned alcohol sales in
the vicinity of Gdansk for the duration of ihe celebrations but
people refrained from drinking even where it was still possible.^'

This movement of moral regeneration raised people's selfesteem and developed a new attitude of cooperation and concern for one another. Increasingly, those who had had no voice,
no opportunity to affect their society, now began to delve into
areas they had never before broached and developed skills they
may never have imagined, as the following examples illustrate.
Mirosawa Strzelec said that: "The workers organized theaters,
cabarets. Tliey wrote articles, poemsand read them in public."
Workers learned to give speeches.
ALEKSANDER KRYSTOSIAK: People who before didn't know how
to build two sentences correctly now spoke sensibly and creatively
before thousands of people. I was one of them. Many times, when
people from my shipyard and from ihe Warski shipyard spoke at
universities in Szczecin, they couldn't believe we didn't have a
higher education.
'" Ewa Barker. "Interview With Two Gdynia Workers," in MacDonald. 119.
^Jan Kubik. Power of Symbols Against the Symbols of Power (University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press. 1994). 200.

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

GRZEGORZ STAWSKI: The most important thing to me in the

whole movement was my first speech to the public. It broke a
barrier of fear. I knew what 1 wanted: I knew what people
wanted. The problem was whether, at ihat moment. I would be
able to say what 1 wanted to say. whether 1 would be able to
touch those people. And when I did, I became more self-assured.

Helena Luczywo recalled how people became concerned with

issues they had previously ignored:
Suddenly, people felt they had an opportunity to really change
the situation of our country, and many people organized activity
not only political or trade union activity, but also in the education
system, the cultural system, the economic system. People who
had been completely indifferent before Solidarity were suddenly
very active about how to improve education and health services.
There was a great movement to improve our economy, our industries, cinematography. literature. Someone organized a new
program of edueation lor primary and secondary schools. A lot
of activists went to see how to improve the situation of prisoners.

Slawomir Majewski was one of the people who became newly

involved:
Before Solidarity, people didn't know their factory income, its
organizational structure, its economic problems. Only government officials had been interested in the problem of how to run
these factories, and now ordinary people beeame concerned. I
studied the economic problems of our university: its sources of
income, how to organize a budget, individual pay. I was a member of a special group that prepared a new education program for
the university. We considered how to change curricula in the secondary schools and how to educate about ecology.

Poles now became very protective of democracy in all

realms, especially within Solidarity. If they could not retain democratic forms there, how could they do so in the broader society?
Marek Muszynski, an opposition intellectual, explained that:
There was a sort of childish illness of democracy: every meeting,
every gathering, every rally went on for hours because people
wanted them to be strictly according to democratic rules. Most
people had had no opportunity to live in a democratic society.
Now, activists had to learn to give life to their concepts. The common element was the belief that we. together, by our own force,
could achieve something.

People practiced democracy not just in meetings, but in everyday hfe. They now had a say in their country's life and discussed
their conditions and their options. Now that their opinions mattered, they were concerned about what they and others felt.

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

FRASYNTUK.: There were some controversial issues: should Solidarity demand free access to the mass media, or should we
reform the economy first? People talked about these problems
everywhere: in tines, in the shops, at parties, in ihe buses. The
regional Solidarity committee started work at seven in the morning, and we would finish at about ten or eleven at night, mostly
because people would come to us lo present their problem or
their point of view, and to discuss it, and we thought ihai they had
the right to do it, so we listened.

The range of people's concerns broadened. They demanded

education. Newly empowered people shed their apathy. As
horizons rose, they became interested in matters that before
had seemed of mere academic concern because now knowledge
could enable them to act effectively. Great social movements
frequently provoke a popular demand to learnhistory, politics,
and economics^matters that in the past had seemed remote
and dry. Both in response to demand and in hopes of stimulating
a desire on the part of workers to educate themselves. Solidarity
organized libraries for its members and established "worker universities" where people gave lectures and taught skills. In Wroclaw, recalled Jan Waszkiewicz, who headed the information
bureau there:
Solidarity wasn't just a trade union. You could hardly find people
interested in just the usual trade union problems. They were interested in political, historical, constitutional issueseverything.
There were lectures twice or three times a week. Anybody could
come, and people did. In WriKlaw. they were held both in the educational center and in factories. Usually, there was one lecture with
a long discussion in the evening. How many people altended
depended on who ihe lecturer was. When il was somebody with a
well-known name, there would be a few hundred people, In Wroclaw, we had quite a good auditorium for this, and we had every
public room open for Solidarity. There were lectures, discussion
clubs, also Solidarity groups in factories and many places.

Wiadyslaw Frasyniuk. also from Wroclaw, explained that:

The demand for knowledge was so spontaneous that the regional
committee of Solidarity was in the rear. For instance, the workers
in the Dormcl Company insisted on forming their own branch of
the trade union university on Ihe territory of their factory because
the building in Red Square, where we held meetings of the union's
citywido workers' university, was too crowded. Academics, especially historians, were always asked to give lectures. Tliey had no
free time for themselves: they went everywhere in Ihe region, and

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

even to neighboring regions. Tliey lectured mainly about history;

then economics and law. The demand for knowledge about unions
was so great that a permanent pari of our magazine was devoted lo
the history and functioning of different trade unions in the world.

Wroclaw's example spread to other centers. Publications proliferated from the underground which, as Bogdan Borusewicz put
it: "wasn't really underground anymore. There was no workers
university in Gdansk, but there were lectures in the factories, at
the National Commission, and meetings in churches with interesting people." In Krakow, Stanislaw Handzlik recalled: '"The
hunger for education was just enormous. Apart from regular
papers, we also published brochures on various subjects. We
organized meetings with intellectuals to get to know the outlooks
of the people in the opposition." Andrzej Rozplochowski spoke
of a similar movement in Upper Silesia:
Upper Silesia had very few enlightened intellectuals. So, it was
important to create an independent publishing network to educate the workers. We created a library in the region with a very
rich collection of books, and we managed lo organize smaller
libraries in over 100 factories all over the region. The books in
those libraries also (raveled around and were lent from hand to
hand in other factories as well. By mid-198L we had regular lectures in factories and in cultural houses, and an independent network of lecturers and classes developed through the church. The
number of people who came was large.

In the copper mines, noted Ryszard Sawicki, they had the same
concerns:
We looked for independent presses and book publishers and
broughl as much as we could into the mine lor the workers, 1 figured that it didn't matter what they read. If they understood just
a little bit, then even if at some point the government managed lo
scare them, later on what they read and learned would somehow
be like an investment that brings you interest.

Sawicki was right: many of these changes had permanent

effects that carried on into the period of martial law. As a result,
even with the arrest of thousands of activists and the suppression of almost all organizational remnants of the union, the
government was never again able to reassert the control over
individual behavior and the expression of ideas that it had before
the Solidarity upheaval. The education and experiences of the

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ORAL HISTORY REVIEW

Solidarity movement had created a spirit of resistance. Some

managed to escape the massive detentions and built an underground opposition that produced newspapers, and later journals
and books, radio and even television broadcasts. They recreated
Solidarity organizations in the workplaces, refused to pay bus
and tram fares, and staged demonstrations and strikes. Eventually, this resistance made it evident to the authorities that there
would be no peace unless the government came to terms with
the opposition, and negotiations began that ended the domination of the Communist Party.
Malgorzata Gorczewska, for example, was 15 in 1980. She
was very much affected by the efforts at education: "I attended
lectures at the university about the 'white spots' in Polish history for about a year, and I learned about things I hadn't known
about before. I met a group of young people at these meetings;
I got newspapers and books from them." Later, after the declaration of martial law. Gorczewska became an activist: "We published our own newspaper. Perhaps, if August 1980, and then
the period where things were openly discussed hadn't occurred,
I wouldn't be here now."
A revolution is not only a political event, but also one that
creates important social and individual changes that alter the
character of social relations in many ways, and that transform the
individuals who participate in it. Workers became empowered
and felt themselves part of a community and thereby freer and
more able to affect their lives and their nation. Such changes
underlie and make possible the political developments that proceed, but they are important in their own right, as they enable
people to take their lives to heretofore uncharted waters.
In Summation: Oral History and Social Movements
I have had the good fortune to examine and become involved
both with the civil rights movement in the United States and
Solidarity in Polandtwo of the most important social movements of the twentieth century. Each of them necessitated significant transformation of the political and social systems of which
they were a part; each required and allowed the activists and
leaders to stretch their abilities and to grow. Sometimes these
were wrenching tasks that occasioned deep turmoil within the

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

individuals who were involved and within their communities. I

was aware of the importance of such changes from my research
into the civil rights movement and because of my own experience participating in social movements in the sixties.
^rhere is more than one way to get at such changes. In my
research on the civil rights movement. I was frequently able to
make use of written sources: interviews, memoirs, autobiographies, and biographies. That was not really an option for me
with regard to Solidarity, both because there were not very
many such pubhshed sources in Poland, and because my Polish
did not permit me to mine what was available. So, as I contemplated how I would go about my research in Poland, I decided
that gathering such interviews would both open up opportunities for me and would also create a body of scholarly material
that might be of use to other researchers.
My work on each of these movements aided me in understanding the other. For instance, during my first trip to Poland,
when I was introduced to the priest who ran the underground
Christian workers' university in Krakow, I told him. after attending a community "mass" that was quite political and filled with
opposition references and statements by local activists, that the
experience reminded me of what had taken place in the civil
rights movement and that I was moved by it. That statement
was what led him to invite me to speak to his students about the
civil rights movement.
Similarly, after traveling around Poland and having spent
hundreds of hours in people's homes, speaking with them about
their experiences in the opposition movement, I felt that I had
participated in an intense seminar, in which the learning curve
was very high. As I thought about this experience, I wondered if
there was some way I could bring it to my students. Obviously, I
could not bring them to Poland, nor could I expect them to sit
through the many sometimes tedious hours of translated interviews. So. I developed a course that brought activists in the civil
rights movement into my class and interviewed them about
their lives."' They were able to show my students what their
' See Jack M. Bloom. "Hyewitness to the Movement: Conducting Oral Histories in
the Classroom." in Julie Buckner Armstrong, Susan Huit Edwards. Houston Bryan
Roberson. and Rhonda Y. Williams, Teaching the Civil Rights Movement: Freedom's
Bittersweet Song {New York: Routledge, 1982).

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lives had been like before the movement, why they became
involved, what kinds of choices they made, and how those
choices affected history. Every time I have taught this course,
the students have enthusiastically received it.
Interviewees
Parentheses record when and where the interview was carried out.
Zbignew Bogacz (Sacramento, California, 1993)
A member of the Solidarity National Miners Commission;
leader of an underground coal miners strike that lasted two weeks
after martial law was declared
Bogdan Borusewicz (Gdansk, 1988)
A long-time member of the opposition; he was one of the
organizers of the strike in Gdansk Shipyards during 1980; one
of the leaders of the Solidarity union; one of the leaders of the
Solidarity underground after martial law was declared
Ryszard Brzuzy (Warsaw, 1989)
A miner in the brown coal fields; became a Solidarity representative to parliament in 1989
Wladyslaw Frasyniuk (Wroclaw. 1988)
Leader of the regional Solidarity union in Wroclaw and a
member of the Solidarity national committee
Winicjusz Gurecki (Toronto, 1994)
Served on the National Tourist Workers Commission
Stanislaw Handzlik (Krakow, 1988)
Leader of Solidarity in the Lenin Steel Mill in the Krakow
suburb of Nowa Huta and in the Krakow region
Andrzej Jarmakowski (Chicago, 1991)
An activist in the Young Poland movement, who worked
closely with Solidarity
Seweryn Jaworski (Warsaw, 1988)
Leader of the strike in the Warsaw Steel Mill in 1980 and
vice-chair of Warsaw regional Solidarity

The Solidarity Revolution in Poland, 1980-1981

Krzysztof Kasprzyk (Boulder, Colorado, 1988)

Leader of the Polish Journalists Union in Krakow during
1980-1981 and an activist in the Party reform movement
Aleksander Krystosiak (New York. 1994)
A secondary leader of strikes in Szczecin in 1970; one of
the organizers of the shipyard strikes in Szczecin in 1980 and the
deputy chair of Solidarity in Szczecin
Ginter Kupka (Gliwice, Poland, 1989)
A coal miner leader in Solidarity
Helena tuczywo (Warsaw, 1991)
Along-time oppositionist: she edited an underground opposition newspaper before Solidarity; tbe editor of one of the main
Solidarity papers during the period of legal Solidarity; the editor of the main Solidarity opposition newspaper after martial
law was declared; organized safe houses for many of the Solidarity leaders in the Warsaw region during martial law
Marek Muszynski (Gdansk, 1988)
A Krakow activist in the student upheaval of 1968; worked
with the dissident intellectual group KOR; active in Solidarity
Janusz Palubicki (Wroclaw, 1997)
Head of Solidarity in the Wroclaw region
Piotr Polmaski (Piekary, Upper Silesia, 1989)
Local miner Solidarity leader
Mieczyslaw Rakowski (Warsaw, 1997)
A long-time leader of the Communist Party; was deputy
prime minister in 1981 and thereafter; later, became prime minister; was the last General Secretary of the Communist Party
Zbigniew Regucki (Krakow, 1988,1989)
Served as chief of staff for Stanislaw Kania, the reformist
General Secretary of the Communist Party as a result of the
strikes that established Solidarity
Andrzej Rozplochowski (Sacramento, California. 1998)
Leader of Solidarity in the Katowice Steel Mill and in the
Katowice region; member of the Solidarity National Commission

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Ryszard Sawicki (Toronto, Canada. 1998)

Leader of the copper miners in Solidarity; member of the
Solidarity National Commission
Gregorz Stawski (Zory, Silesia, 1989)
Leader of Solidarity among coal miners and in the coalmining region of Jastrzbie
Mirosiawa Strzelec (Katowice, 1989)
A leader of Solidarity in the Katowice Steel Mill; one of the
leaders of the strike in response to the declaration of martial
law; participated in the Solidarity underground for several years
Alojzy Szablewski (Gdansk, 1988)
Leader of Solidarity in the Gdansk Shipyard
Jan Waszkiewicz (Wroclaw, 1988)
Longtime oppositionist; Solidarity leader in Wroclaw; served
as Solidarity public spokesman

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