Solidarity, a Polish non-governmental trade union, was founded on August 14, 1980, at the Lenin 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.
Gdańsk, 25th anniversary of Solidarity, summer 2005
Millions cheered Pope John Paul II during his first visit to Poland as pontiff in 1979.
Monument to Shipyard Workers Fallen in 1970, created following the Gdańsk Agreement, and unveiled December 16, 1980
Strikers waiting in front of the Lenin Shipyard
Lech Wałęsa is a Polish statesman, dissident, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who served as the president of Poland between 1990 and 1995. After winning the 1990 election, Wałęsa became the first democratically elected president of Poland since 1926 and the first-ever Polish president elected by popular vote. A shipyard electrician by trade, Wałęsa became the leader of the Solidarity movement, and led a successful pro-democratic effort, which in 1989 ended Communist rule in Poland and ushered in the end of the Cold War.
Wałęsa in 2019
Wojciech Harasiewicz with Lech Wałęsa
Wałęsa during the strike at the Lenin Shipyard, August 1980
Wałęsa signs autographs during the strike in August 1980.
