History of Solidarity
Solidarity (, pronounced ), a Polish non-governmental trade union, was founded on August 14, 1980, at the Lenin Shipyards (now Gdańsk Shipyards) by Lech Wałęsa and others. In the early 1980s, it became the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country. Solidarity gave rise to a broad, non-violent, anti-Communist social movement that, at its height, claimed some 9.4 million members. It is considered to have contributed greatly to the Fall of Communism. The People's Republic of Poland attempted to destroy the union by instituting martial law in 1981, followed by several years of political repression but in the end was forced into negotiation. The Roundtable Talks between the Communist government and the Solidarity-led opposition resulted in semi-free elections of 1989. By the end of August 1989, a Solidarity-led coalition government had been formed, and Wałęsa was elected president in December 1990. This was soon followed by the dismantling of the Communist governmental system and by Poland's transformation into a modern democratic state. Solidarity's early survival represented a break in the hard-line stance of the Communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), and was an unprecedented event; not only for the People's Republic of Poland—a satellite of the Soviet Union ruled