Читать реферат по английскому: "Solidarity The Movement And It" Страница 3

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Men quickly gathered around to read the signs and leaflets,

ignoring the party officials calls to go back to work. A mass

meeting formed at one of the gates. Klemens Gniech, the manager,

argued and pleaded the workers not to form a strike committee.

The meeting was starting to loose steam as some workers began to

go back to their jobs. At that moment, a man embittered by the

deaths of the strikes of 1970, maddened by being imprisoned over

one hundred times, stepped out. This was a man who was still

furious over being fired four years earlier from that very

shipyard, a man who had a keen understanding of the workers

struggles, he jumped up to the bulldozer roof and yelled at

Gniech “Remember me? I gave ten years to this shipyard. But you

sacked me four years ago!” His name was Lech Walesa. He

turned to the men and women below him and shouted that an

occupation strike would begin now. He was cheered loudly, and

soon they were asking for him to be reinstated also.

No one realized what this would set off. By the next day

strikes began to spread throughout the ‘Triple-City’. The

demands were far bigger now, even asking for the right to

establish free trade unions. The leaders began to negotiate with

Gniech, but what they had not realized was that the whole city

basically gone on strike. The strike committee agreed on a 1,500

zloty pay raise, and was ready to return to work. Walesa went

outside and announced the news, to his surprise he was jeered.

He had misread the mood. Instantaneously he changed his mind and

went around the shipyard pleading everyone to continue

striking. The strike continued and it spread. One of the

biggest developments in the history of Polish strikes and

uprisings happened soon after. Intellectuals came in to help out

the workers in drafting documents and demands. They began what

eventually led to the legalization of trade unions. They played

for the high stakes, they issued ultimatums that said that they

would not negotiate until all political prisoners were freed.

These were demands that previously would not have been made.

With both groups working together, both benefited. The

government, having no choice, complied. The rest, as they say,

is history.

The Solidarity Union would soon have ten million members,

one-third of the Polish workforce. The changes that ensued

promised the downfall of socialism in Poland. Although martial

law slowed down the process in 1981, Solidarity was working in

the underground. Solidarity forced the roundtable talks that led

to free elections in 1989, and the eventual fall of communism,

not only in Poland, but in all the Soviet bloc countries.

The work of the Polish worker, and that of the Polish

intellectual accomplished what many thought would never happen.

Poland is a country with a history of uprisings, all of which

failed, except for this one. No other movement connected the

Polish intelligentsia and the Polish worker. Would Polish

insurrections have worked earlier in history if this was also the

case? One can always second guess, but it is clear the changes

that occurred in Poland, occurred because of the intellectuals

working with the workers. They had the vision, the workers had

the mass to demand that vision to become a reality.

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