7 Lech Wałe ̨sa 7This committee issued a set of bold political demands,
including the right to strike and form free trade unions,
and it proclaimed a general strike. Fearing a national revolt,
the Communist authorities yielded to the workers’ prin-
cipal demands, and on August 31, Wałęsa and Mieczysław
Jagielski, Poland’s first deputy premier, signed an agree-
ment conceding to the workers the right to organize freely
and independently.
When some 10 million Polish workers and farmers
joined semiautonomous unions in response to this momen-
tous agreement, the Interfactory Strike Committee was
transformed into a national federation of unions under
the name Solidarity (Solidarność), with Wałęsa as its
chairman and chief spokesman. Solidarity was officially
recognized by the Polish government in October, and
Wałęsa steered the federation on a course of carefully lim-
ited confrontations with the government in order to avert
the possibility of Soviet military intervention in Poland.
The federation’s gains proved ephemeral, however. On
Dec. 13, 1981, the Polish government imposed martial law.
Solidarity was outlawed, and most of the leaders of
Solidarity were arrested, including Wałęsa, who was
detained for nearly a year. The awarding of the Nobel
Peace Prize to Wałęsa in 1983 was criticized by the Polish
government. Fearing involuntary exile, he remained in
Poland while his wife, Danuta, traveled to Oslo, Norway,
to accept the prize on his behalf.
As the leader of the now-underground Solidarity move-
ment, Wałęsa was subjected to constant harassment until
collapsing economic conditions and a new wave of labour
unrest in 1988 forced Poland’s government to negotiate
with him and other Solidarity leaders. These negotiations
led to an agreement that restored Solidarity to legal status
and sanctioned free elections for a limited number of seats
in the newly restored upper house of the Sejm (Parliament).