SOLIDARNOŚĆ
b. August 31, 1980
KATOWICE (POLAND) COAL MINE
Published in the February 15, 1982,
issue of BUSINESS WEEK (p. 68)
On August 31, 1980, Lech Walesa, representing the striking workers in the Gdansk shipyard, signed the August Accords wrenching certain rights from the Polish communist government.
The development of what became a ten-million-strong movement growing out of the strike, called Solidarność, or Solidarity, was amazing, but also fraught with complications.
One of them was the relationship between Warsaw and Moscow, discussed in the Sol W. Sanders Business Week article ("The high price Russia will have to pay in Poland") for which the photograph above was the illustration. His conclusion: "The Soviet Union can only lose economically in the continuing crisis insider her largest satellite."
The USSR ultimately lost far more than economically; a brief discussion can be found here.
Today, thirty-one years after the founding, Poland's president, Bronisław Komorowski, came to Gdansk to honor Solidarity. Walesa had a more bittersweet take on the movement: "'It was such a big victory, but the effects don't match it,' he was quoted by TVN24 as saying."
