People & Histories
1978–1983

A Polish Pope and Solidarity

Karol Wojtyła becomes Pope John Paul II; a year after his 1979 pilgrimage, strikes at the Gdańsk shipyard give birth to Solidarity, which is suppressed by martial law in December 1981.

  • The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (3rd edition) — Timothy Garton Ash, Yale University Press (2002)
  • Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II — George Weigel, HarperCollins (1999)
  • The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom — Andrzej Paczkowski, Pennsylvania State University Press (2003)

Well established democracyfaithuprisingidentity

On 16 October 1978 the Archbishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyła, was elected pope, taking the name John Paul II. He was the first non-Italian pope since 1523. For Poles living under an atheist regime, the news was electrifying.

  • Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II — George Weigel, HarperCollins (1999)

“Let your Spirit descend”

In June 1979 he made his first pilgrimage home. Millions turned out across the country. In Warsaw’s Victory Square he prayed: “Let your Spirit descend, and renew the face of the earth, the face of this land.” Many Poles saw for the first time how many of them there were, and that the state did not speak for them. Timothy Garton Ash called it the beginning of the revolution.

  • Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II — George Weigel, HarperCollins (1999)
  • The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (3rd edition) — Timothy Garton Ash, Yale University Press (2002)

August 1980

In the summer of 1980 meat price rises sparked strikes. On 14 August workers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk struck after the firing of crane operator Anna Walentynowicz. An unemployed electrician, Lech Wałęsa, climbed the fence to lead them. The strike spread along the coast, and a joint committee issued 21 demands, the first being free trade unions. On 31 August the government signed the Gdańsk Agreement.

  • The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (3rd edition) — Timothy Garton Ash, Yale University Press (2002)
  • The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom — Andrzej Paczkowski, Pennsylvania State University Press (2003)

Within months Solidarity (Solidarność) had about ten million members, roughly a third of the working-age population, from shipbuilders to farmers to university lecturers. It was a trade union, a national movement and, for sixteen months, a kind of parallel society, with its own press, debates and hopes.

  • The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (3rd edition) — Timothy Garton Ash, Yale University Press (2002)
  • The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom — Andrzej Paczkowski, Pennsylvania State University Press (2003)

Martial law

On 13 December 1981, under Soviet pressure, General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law. Tanks appeared on the snowy streets; telephones went dead; thousands of activists, including Wałęsa, were interned. Miners at the Wujek mine in Katowice who resisted were shot, nine of them killed. Solidarity was banned and went underground, with its own printing presses, radio broadcasts and an underground culture.

  • The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom — Andrzej Paczkowski, Pennsylvania State University Press (2003)
  • The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (3rd edition) — Timothy Garton Ash, Yale University Press (2002)

Jaruzelski defended martial law until his death as a “lesser evil” that prevented a Soviet invasion; most Poles and many historians doubt that the Soviets would have invaded, and see it as a crackdown to save the regime.

  • The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom — Andrzej Paczkowski, Pennsylvania State University Press (2003)
In 1983 Wałęsa received the Nobel Peace Prize, and martial law was formally lifted. In 1984 security officers murdered the pro-Solidarity priest Jerzy Popiełuszko, whose grave in Warsaw became a place of pilgrimage.
  • The Spring Will Be Ours: Poland and the Poles from Occupation to Freedom — Andrzej Paczkowski, Pennsylvania State University Press (2003)
  • The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (3rd edition) — Timothy Garton Ash, Yale University Press (2002)

Legacy

For many Poles, the pope’s visits and Solidarity are the deepest source of national pride in living memory. John Paul II was canonised in 2014, and portraits and statues of him are everywhere. Since the 2020s reports and documentaries about how he handled clergy sex abuse as archbishop and pope have divided Poles, and church attendance has fallen sharply among the young. Solidarity’s veterans, meanwhile, split long ago: both of Poland’s main political camps, Law and Justice and Civic Platform, grew out of it.

  • Poland in the Modern World: Beyond Martyrdom — Brian Porter-Szűcs, Wiley-Blackwell (2014)
  • Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II — George Weigel, HarperCollins (1999)

How it's seen
Catholic-national memory

John Paul II gave Poles back their dignity and courage, and Solidarity was a moral and Christian revolution as much as a trade union; the pope was decisive in bringing down communism.

  • Witness to Hope: The Biography of Pope John Paul II — George Weigel, HarperCollins (1999)

Secular-liberal memory

Solidarity was a broad civic movement of workers, intellectuals and believers and non-believers alike; the Church mattered, but the movement's legacy belongs to democrats of all kinds.

  • The Polish Revolution: Solidarity (3rd edition) — Timothy Garton Ash, Yale University Press (2002)
  • A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989 — Padraic Kenney, Princeton University Press (2002)

Why it matters today

Poland

The pope and Solidarity are the proudest memories of modern Poland: a peaceful mass movement that cracked the Soviet bloc from within. Both are now also contested, as the Church faces abuse scandals and former Solidarity comrades lead rival political camps.