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Communism in Poland was self-consciously the workers-state, largely responsible for creating the modern Polish working class through industrialization and raising expectations of equality and of higher living standards. It is widely believed that Solidarity undermined Communism in Poland, partly by disrupting the Communist program of production through strikes, but more by transferring the trust and loyalty of the Polish people from Communism to itself. The supposed "adversaries" of Polish workers - the church, the officer class, the national leadership - were in fact combined by Solidarity as allies of the workers to "break the resistance" of Communism to reform. What the state never appreciated in Poland was that it was seen as Russian, oppressive, and corrupt, having created the working class they then, in line with Marx's prediction, demonstrated their control of the means of production (strikes) and undermined Communism in Poland. However, one cannot ignore the pull of the capitalist west in displacing communism in the eyes of the people.
In this essay I plan to show the extent to which Solidarity was responsible for undermining communism and also to question how far other factors, such as the Poles hatred of Russians, their strong allegiance to the Catholic church, and the raging Cold War, displaced communism in the eyes, and from the hearts of the people. Solidarity weakened Polish Communism providing a vehicle of transmission for years of grievances against a government out of touch with the ideals of the Polish people. This is shown below in the picture taken from: " web " Solidarity took workers grievances, and grafted onto them more general national grievances (Russian dictatorship, suppression of the church etc. ). Photographs of Solidarity led demonstrations show how they united people to challenge what they believed to be wrong. The challenge to the government's principles undermined it as a unit, lost any credibility, and weakened it in the eyes and minds of the people. Solidarity not only weakened Communism by providing an organized channel for grievances, but also gave people new ideas, as seen in the " 1980 Gdansk Agreement", article 4, issued by Solidarity: "To re-establish the rights...
of all students who have been excluded from... higher education because of their opinions" This idea of free speech and thought was new as Communists devoted mass energies to suppressing this. The Church also received active support, where it had been oppressed by the government, turning the masses towards Solidarity, and against the present government, this possibly being Solidarity's trump card. "High on the list of 21 demands was that the Church should be allowed to broadcast mass on the State radio" The reason given for supporting the Church was that it provided national inspiration, thus Solidarity, by endorsing one of the very things that created antagonism between state and people appealed directly to the masses. Solidarity, for the first time in decades provided an alternative political force, undermining the party centered state. Firstly, Solidarity presented its ideas in a no-nonsense manner. This attitude promised political progress, whereas Communism, through years of policy changing, swapping and promising, had a useless and indecisive reputation.
For example, in the late sixties the party promised to upgrade schools. However, for this to happen real wages had to be cut. The wage cut occurred but education remained unchanged, demonstrating how the government, through decisions and lies, lost the trust and respect of the people which Solidarity was able to regain, by assuming this no-nonsense reputation. Also impressed by Solidarity was the notion of honesty: "We shirk no responsibility for our nations fates... " Peoples trust and respect was lost through the indecisive actions of Communism, and gained by Solidarity.
This enabled the Party to gain the trust and favor of the people, and undermined the government as it was making a promise that further displaced state support. The combination of honesty and decisiveness sold Solidarity to the people, it offering very much what Communism had deprived the people of; an honest political power that seemed to have direction. This appealed to the masses, winning allegiance and displacing state support. Solidarity was able to undermine communism further in the early seventies by the action that the Gomulka took against it. On the twelfth of December 1970, the Prime Minister announced a series of unexpected price changes. Consumer goods only rose a small percentage in price, but certain foods had huge price increases.
Flour rose by sixteen percent, sugar rose by fourteen percent, and meat cost seventeen percent more. The next morning three thousand workers from the Lenin shipyard at Gdansk marched on the provincial party headquarters. Gomulka ordered the demonstrators to be fired at, eventually killing 29 people. This highlighted communism's extreme weakness to deal with another force, and also the leaders inability to deal competently with a difficult situation. More importantly though, the killings gave the demonstrators a symbol of the repression they endured, turning them still further against communism.
This mistake was big enough in the view of the Soviet Union to "seal Gomulka's fate ", as the internet site "Planet papers" argues. Solidarity literally undermined Communism in several direct ways: By striking it halted production, disabling government industrial policy and destroying set production targets. The working class was visibly unified in one body against the government, destroying perception of the government as an authoritarian workers institution. The marches demonstrated loss of power, as it became clear that a massive majority were against the government.
Walesa's martyrdom, his refusal to renounce his beliefs when arrested illustrated to the people the extent to which he believed in Solidarity's cause, giving him hero status. This further undermined, as the majorities' hero was campaigning to change, which they endorsed. According to Marx, a Solidarity style movement was inevitable, as who ever controls the means of production controls the political process: e. g. feudalism landowners control land, so also control politics. Marx believed that workers would seize control of the means of production, leading to them eventually gaining political power.
Communism, imposed by Russia, created a working class which went on to create Solidarity which, through strikes controlled the means of production, demonstrating how a movement like this was inevitable, as predicted by Marx. Solidarity was unquestionably powerful and important but its timing and ethics highlight it as unable to be wholly responsible for felling Communism. Solidarity prided itself on being non-political, rather an organization that campaigned against the Communist governments wrongs. Although Solidarity obviously became a political force in its later days, holding a majority in Parliament, it would be wrong to deem it a political movement from the start.
Solidarity never set out to displace the government, merely to change unpopular features of it. The movement was strengthened as the government was unsure whether to repress it, as it was trying to reform and not overthrow Communism. Solidarity aimed to reform and improve, but by setting a political agenda and providing a focus for a variety of existing grievances ended up undermining Communism. However, the full extent of this couldn't be seen until circumstances changed in the mid to late eighties with greater freedom of speech. Solidarity accidentally provided the focus for grievances and therefore is seen as the immediate cause for the undermining and fall of Communism, but in fact the real causes were the existing grievances which needed uniting. Thus any movement, not necessarily Solidarity, could have caused the collapse.
This poses a question over the extent to which Solidarity was responsible for weakening the government, or channeling grievances that created so much of the antipathy to it. In the next section of the essay I plan to show that the fall of Communism cannot be exclusively attributed to Solidarity, as although it was important it only really emerged as a force in the last years of the Communist regime, thus one must consider the pre-history to Solidarity. Communism was imposed in 1945 allowing nearly four decades for grievances to build up against and undermine the government. Solidarity came from nowhere in 1977 and became a major political force in the early eighties thus a short-term cause contributing to Communism's fall. One must not be fooled with the weight attached to Solidarity today by certain sources, as it has quite possibly been overrated, due to the chronological similarity between the fall of Communism and Solidarity. Human nature likes to connect big historical events with a certain figure, glamorizing them somewhat.
Naturally factors which contributed to weakening Communism occurred pre Solidarity - this being it's pre-history, and what I would define as the longer term factors that contributed to the spectacular weakening and fall of the Communist government. The essay will now show other factors involved in the pre-history to Solidarity that could have also undermined the regime in the people's eyes. Although Solidarity was important in felling Communism, religion was important in undermining it, as religion was the principle factor in the creation of two sides, people and state. To most Poles the Church symbolized national identity thus government abuse of the Church antagonists the people, leading to the state alienating itself from the majority of the population. Examples of abuse include the mass imprisonment of the episcopacy and confiscation and taxation of church lands and assets.
The Church transmitted their misgivings about the government through sermons and so, to the people, it seemed as though the word of God was against the government. One can see the active contempt preached by the church: "When they tell you that we are already on the pinnacle of achievement do not believe it. When they tell you that man has already said all he can say, that we have the best system, a complete ideology, a perfect philosophy, the last word in economics, do not believe it" In the short term Communism strengthened itself by weakening the material force and size of the Church, but intensified hatred in the long term as the remaining clergy only preached harder and more vehemently against the government losing it respect The appointment of Pope Jean-Paul II in 1978 was also fundamental in felling Communism, as it created and amplified nationalism in the population, which Solidarity channeled positively towards achieving democratic changes. Throughout the period of Communist rule there had been confrontation between the Church and the state, and this appointment accurately signified the shift in power, from the state, towards the Church. This inspired a burst of nationalism into many, possibly contributing that little extra to the antipathy that was created and stored from previous decades.
Although the state survived conflict with the Church since the start of Russian rule, had religion been as powerful as one is led to believe this surely would have forced acceptance by the state? Religion was, a long-term factor in weakening the government. The latter created a massive amount of tension that turned people against Communism, but didn't make it fall. Solidarity however combined the power of workers with intellectuals and clergy to amplify the government's wrongs.
Alone neither would have been capable of undermining Communism to the extent of felling it, but the combination was sufficient to do so. Another source of hostility was the state's inability to provide for the population. The economic pre-history to events of the eighties that created grievances that Solidarity was later able to tap. The "revolution of rising expectations" was an important economic factor in turning people against the government. This occurred in the early fifties, and was where workers had a high social and occupational mobility, necessitated by rapid industrialization and economic development of Poland. As the regime concentrated on the sacrifice of consumer goods to build industry, or "under-investment in the consumer section" the overall standard of living declined (only 16 % of people believed they had improved between 1970 and 1975), but individual workers had considerable opportunity to move ahead.
Polish workers perceived much higher levels of inter-generation upward mobility than their fathers did. This generated even higher expectations and the sociologist Szczepanski called attention to this problem in the late 1960 s stating the standard of living was moving nowhere near as fast as expectations, thus workers became irate when the economy was unable to provide what they desired. The government also raised expectations with propaganda campaigns, glamorizing Communism. This increased working class expectations, as Communism claimed to have created the workers-state. As the "Plant Papers" internet site argues "Poland's economy was disastrous. In fact the national income fell by two percent in 1979.
Industrial output was showing negative growth of five percent. From having one of the highest growth rates in the world, only five years later Poland had an economy in such shambles that it was dependent on Western banks to keep functioning." The government failure not only to provide for the population as a whole, but also to miss-allocate the few resources that Poland actually had leading to economic strife was important in the creation of antagonism between government and workers, and Solidarity was essentially able to exploit this shortfall years later. The lack of progress, especially in the 1960 's, can have a number of explanations, one of these being Khrushchev's inabilities regarding policy m...
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