The legacy of a Polish civil resistance is particularly discernable in four major democratic changes:. After the roundtable discussions between the communist government and the opposition, Solidarity leaders had only two months from mid-April to mid-June to prepare for the first open and free election in Poland since It was the self-organizing experience gained during the underground civil resistance, the well-developed underground press already legal by that time , and the extensive network of volunteers that gave Solidarity an important advantage over the communists in that election.
Solidarity ran a breathtaking campaign and eventually won all but one taken by an independent candidate contested seats in the pacted elections in June The design and implementation of major decentralization reforms in the second half of —which established 2, self-governing rural and urban communes with considerable governing powers, financial resources and legal status—had all the hallmarks of the Solidarity movement.
Underlying these reforms was a philosophy of decentralized governance with autonomous local institutions and a non-political, civic organization in charge of training tens of thousands of local civil servants and political officials in governance and empowering local councils and administrations. During the first years of transformation, Poland experienced the largest number of protests, and lost work days due to strikes among all the countries in Central and Eastern Europe.
Good neighborly relations with Germany, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, oftentimes despite a difficult history and problems with Polish ethnic minorities in those countries, were established surprisingly quickly. Learn more about our work here. Hundreds of past and present cases of nonviolent civil resistance exist. To make these cases more accessible, ICNC compiled summaries of some of them between the years You can find these summaries here.
Each summary aims to provide a clear perspective on the role that nonviolent civil resistance has played or is playing in a particular case. To support scholars and educators who are designing curricula and teaching this subject, we also offer an Academic Online Curriculum AOC , which is a free, extensive, and regularly updated online resource with over 40 different modules on civil resistance topics and case studies.
Political History Until the second half of the s, social groups that opposed the communist government were not united and their activities were not well coordinated. Ensuing Events Twenty years later after the roundtable talks and first democratic elections in Central Europe, Poland is a full-fledged democracy with a relatively strong civil society in comparison with other Central European states , competitive media and an increasingly consolidated parliamentary system based on a constitutionally strong executive and a popularly elected post of the president.
The immediate precipitant for the strikes that broke out in the summer of and led to the formation of Solidarity in August was a government decree raising meat prices. Over the next sixteen months, Solidarity and the Polish government engaged in a series of confrontations and negotiations, but without any clear resolution.
On December , General Wojciech Jaruzelski, first secretary of the Polish Communist Party, ordered a massive military operation and imposed martial law. However, in this respect, the BBC had three significant advantages.
The first came as somewhat of a surprise to the assistant head of the BBC Polish Section, Eugeniusz Smolar, one of the new generation of Polish broadcasters, who in this new oral history interview reveals how the BBC outwitted Polish censors. The Istanbul telephone line and the IBM computer link provided the Polish Section of the BBC with vital insights into the unfolding events inside Poland, which were reflected in broadcast output.
However, this technological good-fortune was underwritten by the personal relations of some BBC Polish staff with leading figures in the Polish opposition movement who they had been to school and university with and protested with, before leaving Poland.
These connections were known to some of the managers in Bush House and there were obvious editorial concerns about the risk of manipulation and bias in Polish programme output.
Recording, transcribing and publishing this information became a considerable task in its own right, involving a number of BBC Polish staff, outside of their BBC working hours. The tide of protest can — and will — recede. If the Polish workers are to make permanent gains, strong institutions must be left behind when the tide goes out.
Otherwise, as happened after and , when similar though not as far reaching promises of reform were made, the gains will be gradually eroded. Even the legal and constitutional reforms promised when the Parliament Sejm meets later this year will not be as important as the continued existence of powerful, well-organised independent unions. It is worth remembering that, for the past half century, including the appalling period of Stalinist repression, the Soviet Union boasted the most democratic and progressive constitution in the history of mankind.
It is a safe enough bet that, unless government and party obstruction becomes significantly more powerful and better organised, several million of them will shortly be members of new and independent unions.
But already Mr Walesa and his colleagues are quoted as saying that they would like both money and advice from Western unions — an appeal which has brought bitter condemnation both from Moscow and Warsaw. There is nothing, in principle, wrong with Western unions aiding their East European counterparts, especially now the independent unions are regarded as legitimate by the Polish government and the TUC should say so loud and clear.
After all, the Kremlin raises no objections when aid flows the other way. A party of British steel-workers and their families are even now packing their bags ready for a free holiday in Russia as guests of the Soviet Metal Workers Union — a holiday package donated to our steel union as a reward for its heroic strike against Sir Keith Joseph and Sir Charles Villiers earlier this year. In practice the value of Western union aid will have to be weighed against the danger of the Communist authorities using it as an excuse to smear or restrict the indigenous reform movement.
In the last resort the solution lies with the Polish authorities. Only if it is made impossible for the new unions to recruit and collect dues freely will Western union aid prove necessary.
Sir Frank Chapple and those on the general council who think like him, should now ensure that the TUC honours that pledge. Membership of both bodies now stands at around three million — but, unlike the party, the new unions are still growing. In some ways this is an unfair comparison, since the membership figures of an organisation are not the most important indication of its political power.
The party still regards itself as an elite, the vanguard of the working class. Even so, the coincidence underlines the remarkable transformation that has taken place in Polish politics this summer.
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