Independent trade unions unite as Solidarity

Emergency Special Session Resolution ES-6/2 deplored the armed intervention and demanded the immediate, unconditional, and total withdrawal of foreign troops. The vote made Afghan sovereignty a...

President Carter publicly called for the Games to be moved or boycotted unless Soviet forces left Afghanistan. The decision linked sport to the intervention and placed athletes in the middle of a...

The Games opened with many countries absent or represented under alternative flags after the Afghanistan invasion. Soviet organizers staged a global spectacle, while the boycott highlighted the...

Workers at the Lenin Shipyard struck after Anna Walentynowicz was dismissed, building on earlier labor protests and local grievances. The strike committee connected workplace demands with political...

The agreement accepted independent self-governing trade unions and a right to strike, alongside other demands. Polish workers shaped the settlement through collective action; Moscow’s regional power...

A Polish court registered the independent union after a legal dispute over its statute. The decision marked an unprecedented opening in the Eastern Bloc and reflected pressure generated by organized...

The congress endorsed continuity under Brezhnev and a new five-year plan, even as economic stagnation and pressures across the socialist bloc deepened. Official unity masked differences among...

General Wojciech Jaruzelski’s government suspended civil liberties, arrested Solidarity leaders, and restricted communications. The crackdown was carried out by Polish authorities under intense Soviet...

During a strike against martial law, Polish security forces shot miners at the Wujek coal mine, killing nine. The killings expose the coercion used by the Polish state to suppress worker resistance.

With members imprisoned, exiled, or threatened, the group announced it could no longer operate safely. Its records and monitoring practice had already connected local rights claims to the Helsinki...