1192 Ch. 29 • Democracy and the Collapse of Communismby Lech Walesa (1943- ), an electrician from Gdansk, Solidarity put forward
twenty-one demands for reform. Much more than a trade union, Solidarity’s
membership reached 10 million and came to represent opposition to com
munism. In the meantime, underground publishing had since the late 1970s
emerged as a huge dissident industry undertaken by Polish intellectuals,
who published more than 2,000 titles. In 1980, strikes and riots in protest of
living conditions spread rapidly in industrial areas, particularly in the vast
shipyards of Gdansk. The Polish government agreed to tolerate the creation
of new unions as long as they did not engage in political activity. Solidarity
represented the first major challenge to the Communist system since the
“Prague Spring” of 1968.
In September 1980, the Communist Central Committee responded to
the ongoing crisis by forcing Gierek to resign as head of state. Two months
later, the government officially recognized Solidarity’s existence. However,
accommodation between the government and the non-Communist trade
unions did not last long, particularly after Solidarity members called for
free elections. In December 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski (1923- ),
the new head of state, imposed martial law and replaced key Communist
Party officials in government with military officers. He suspended Solidar
ity and put hundreds of leading dissidents under arrest, including Walesa.
Troops brutally crushed strikes that broke out in response to the repres
sion. In 1982, the government declared Solidarity illegal again. Although
martial law ended a year later, the murder of a militant priest by policemen
in 1984 generated enormous popular anger and protest.
In the meantime, East Germany, Bulgaria, and Czechoslovakia were the
Eastern European nations that were most loyal to the Soviet Union. The
German Democratic Republic’s chief, Erich Honecker (1912-1994), who
came to power in 1971, proved absolutely intransigent to reform. The
Stasi, the East German secret police, employed 90,000 people and had
about twice that number as informers. The Lutheran Church provided a cen
ter for some dissidents, organizing weekly “prayers for peace” in Leipzig. In
Czechoslovakia, the state campaign against dissidents was more intense.
In 1977, about 1,200 writers, philosophers, intellectuals, and musicians
signed a protest against government limitation of freedoms in an attempt
to force the government to respect the Helsinki human-rights convention
it had signed. Despite the fact that this was anything but a revolutionary
document (those who signed pledged not to engage in political activity),
members of the “Charter 77” group suffered repression.
Gradual economic liberalization helped make Hungary the second (after
the German Democratic Republic) most prosperous of the Eastern bloc
countries. The gradual development of a market economy and a private
agricultural sector helped stabilize the Communist regime, with the help
of Soviet subsidies. In 1985 Hungary became the first Communist state to
declare political pluralism to be an ideal. However, Hungary had no orga
nized and tested opposition force such as Solidarity.