Solidarity
full_name= Independent Self-governing Trade Union "Solidarity" | native_name= Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy "Solidarność" | image=  | Solidarnosc.png |
| founded= September, 1980 | country= Poland | affiliation= ICFTU, WCL, ETUC, TUAC | office= Gdańsk, Poland | website=www.solidarnosc.org.pl
(In English) | footnotes= | current= | head= | dissolved_date= | dissolved_state= Merged into | merged_into= | people= Solidarity (Polish: Solidarność; full name: Independent Self-governing Trade Union "Solidarity" â€" Niezależny SamorzÄ…dny ZwiÄ…zek Zawodowy "Solidarność") is a Polish trade union federation founded in September 1980 at the GdaÅ„sk Shipyards, and originally led by Lech WaÅ‚Ä™sa. In the 1980s it constituted a broad anti-communist social movement. The government attempted to destroy the union with the martial law of 1981 and several years of repressions, but in the end it had to start negotiating with the union. In Poland, the Roundtable Talks between the weakened government and Solidarity-led opposition led to semi-free elections in 1989. By the end of August a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed and in December WaÅ‚Ä™sa was elected president. Since 1989 Solidarity has become a more traditional trade union, and had relatively little impact on the political scene of Poland in the early 1990s. A political arm was founded in 1996 as Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) won the Polish parliamentary election, 1997, but lost the following Polish parliamentary election, 2001. Currently Solidarity has little political influence in modern Polish politics.
The survival of Solidarity was an unprecedented event not only in Poland, a satellite state of the USSR ruled (in practice) by a one-party Communist regime, but the whole of the Eastern bloc. It meant a break in the hard-line stance of the communist Polish United Workers' Party, which had bloodily ended a 1970 protest with machine gun fire (killing dozens and injuring over 1,000), and the broader Soviet communist regime in the Eastern Bloc, which had quelled both the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the 1968 Prague Spring with Soviet-led invasions. Solidarity's influence led to the intensification and spread of anti-communist ideals and movements throughout the countries of the Eastern Bloc, weakening their communist governments. The 1989 elections in Poland where anti-communist candidates won a striking victory sparked off a succession of peaceful anti-communist counterrevolutions in Central and Eastern Europe.
Solidarity began in September 1980 at the Gdańsk Shipyards, where Lech Wałęsa and others formed a broad anti-communist social movement ranging from people associated with the Catholic Church[* Józef Tischner]
* One Big Union
* Soviet invasion of Afghanistan
* Space of Freedom - Jean Michel Jarre's concert (Gdańsk, August 262005)
*Solidarity official English homepage
*Presentation The Solidarity Phenomenon
*Solidarity 25th Anniversairy Press Center
*International Conference 'From Solidarity to Freedom'
*Advice for East German propagandists on how to deal with the Solidarity movement
*The Birth of Solidarity on BBC
*Solidarity, Freedom and Economical Crisis in Poland, 1980-81
*The rise of Solidarnosc, Colin Barker, International Socialism, Issue: 108
*Arch Puddington, How American Unions Helps Solidarity Win
* Solidarity Center Fundation - Fundacja Centrum Solidarności*
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