God’s Playground. A History of Poland, Vol. 2. 1795 to the Present

CHRONOLOGY XX111

1980 General strike: formation of Solidarity in Gdansk

1980-1 Legislation of the Solidarity Movement

1980 Signature of Gdansk accords (31 August)

Threat of Soviet intervention (December)

1981 General Jaruzelski's Coup d'Etat (13 December)

1981—90 Terminal phase of Polish Communism

1981 Declaration of Martial Law (13 December, to 1983)

• Rule of the 'Crow': (military Council of National
  Salvation)


• rise of samizdat publishing
  1984 Murder of Father Popieluszko, a pro-Solidarity priest
  1985 Gorbachev begins glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet
  Bloc
  1989 Round Table Talks seeking compromise between the ruling
  and Solidarity


• Solidarity triumphs in partially free elections (4 June)


• induction of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Solidarity activist, as
  the first non-Party Premier (August)


• fall of the Berlin Wall and of Communist regimes in
  Czechoslovakia and Hungary
  1990 Free Presidential Elections return Lech Walesa, and
  terminate all vestiges of Communist control (December)


• dissolution of the PZPR
  
  
  • Walesa accepts the insignia of the pre-war Second
    Republic from the last president of the Government-in-
    Exile
  
  
  • President Gorbachev admits Soviet guilt regarding the
    Katyn Massacres of 1940 (April)
  
  
  
  

Since 1990: the 'Third Republic'
1991 Balcerowicz Plan for economic shock therapy (January)
Collapse of Soviet Union (December)
Full international recognition of Poland's western frontier
with Germany, as part of German re-unification
1992 Poland's first approaches to NATO and the European Union
regarding future membership
1993 Last Soviet (now Russian) forces leave
1994 First official Commemoration of the Warsaw Rising of 1944
1995 Alexander Kwiasniewski, of the post-Communist SLD
Party, elected President
1997 Electoral sucess of the Solidarity Action Group (AWS)
1999 Poland formally enters NATO, whilst still negotiating entry
to the European Union