Solidarity (Polish trade union)

File:Strajk sierpniowy w Stoczni Gdańskiej im. Lenina 05.jpg (left) and Lech Wałęsa (right).]]

{{Main|History of Solidarity}}

In the 1970s Poland's government raised food prices while wages were stagnant. This and other stresses led to protests in 1976 and a subsequent government crackdown on dissent. The KOR, the ROPCIO and other groups began to form underground networks to monitor and oppose the government's behaviour. Labour unions formed an important part of this network.{{cite book| title =KOR: a history of the Workers' Defense Committee in Poland, 1976–1981| year =1985| publisher =University of California Press| location =Berkeley| isbn =0-520-05243-9| url =https://archive.org/details/korhistoryofwork0000lips}} In 1979, the Polish economy shrank for the first time since {{awrap|World War II,}} by two percent. Foreign debt reached around $18 billion by 1980.{{cite book |last1=Paczkowski |first1=Andrzej |last2=Byrne |first2=Malcolm |last3=Domber |first3=Gregory F. |last4=Klotzbach |first4=Magdalena |chapter=1970s |page=xxix |chapter-url={{Google books|wI9TUaZZeAMC|page=PR29|plainurl=yes}} |title=From Solidarity to Martial Law: The Polish Crisis of 1980–1981 |date=2007 |publisher=Central European University Press |isbn=978-963-7326-96-7 }}

Anna Walentynowicz was fired from the Gdańsk Shipyard on 7 August 1980, five months before she was due to retire, for participation in the illegal trade union. This management decision enraged the workers of the shipyard, who staged a strike action on 14 August, defending Walentynowicz and demanding her reinstatement. She and Alina Pienkowska transformed a strike over bread and butter issues into a solidarity strike in sympathy with strikes on other establishments.

Solidarity emerged on 31 August 1980 at the Gdańsk Shipyard when the Communist government of Poland signed the agreement allowing for its existence. On 17 September 1980, over twenty Inter-factory Founding Committees of independent trade unions merged at the congress into one national organisation, NSZZ Solidarity.{{in lang|pl}} [http://www.solidarnosc.gov.pl/files/rola_solidarnosci/rola_solidarnosci_pl.doc "Solidarność" a systemowe przekształcenia Europy Środkowo-Wschodniej] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130807190656/http://solidarnosc.gov.pl/files/rola_solidarnosci/rola_solidarnosci_pl.doc |date=7 August 2013 }} Retrieved on 7 June 2011 It officially registered on 10 November 1980.{{in lang|pl}} [http://encyklopedia.pwn.pl/haslo/3977446/solidarnosc.html Solidarność, wielopłaszczyznowy ruch na rzecz demokratyzacji i głębokich reform ustrojowych PRL] Retrieved on 7 June 2011

Lech Wałęsa and others formed a broad anti-Soviet social movement ranging from people associated with the Catholic Church{{cite book|last=Steger|first=Manfred B|title=Judging Nonviolence: The Dispute Between Realists and Idealists|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VEcHo6QcIUwC&q=Solidarity+Poland+nonviolence&pg=PA114|format=ebook|access-date=9 July 2006|date=January 2004|publisher=Routledge (UK)|isbn=0-415-93397-8|page=114}} to members of the anti-Soviet left. Polish nationalism, together with pro-American liberalism, played an important part in the development of Solidarity in the 1980s.{{cite news | last1=Boduszyński | first1=Mieczysław | last2=Carpenter | first2=Michael | title=How Polish populism explains the surge of Trump and nationalism | work=The Hill | date=2017-08-01 | url=https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/international-affairs/344736-how-polish-populism-explains-trump-and-the-surge-of}}

Solidarity advocated non-violence in its members' activities.{{cite book|editor1=Paul Wehr |editor2=Guy Burgess |editor3=Heidi Burgess |title=Justice Without Violence|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=o8ipY9HVHmcC&q=Solidarity+Poland+nonviolence&pg=PA28|format=ebook|access-date=6 July 2006|date=February 1993|publisher=Lynne Rienner Publishers|isbn=1-55587-491-6|page=28}}{{cite book|last=Cavanaugh-O'Keefe |first=John |title=Emmanuel, Solidarity: God's Act, Our Response |url=https://archive.org/details/emmanuelsolidari00cava |url-access=registration |quote=Solidarity Poland nonviolence. |format=ebook |access-date=6 July 2006 |date=January 2001 |publisher=Xlibris Corporation |isbn=0-7388-3864-0 |page=[https://archive.org/details/emmanuelsolidari00cava/page/68 68] }}{{self-published source|date=December 2017}}{{Self-published inline|certain=yes|date=December 2017}}

In September 1981, Solidarity's first national congress elected Wałęsa as a president and adopted a republican program, the "Self-governing Republic".{{cite journal |last1=Gliński |first1=Piotr |author-link1=Piotr Gliński |title=The Self-governing Republik in the Third Republic |journal=Polish Sociological Review |date=2006 |volume=153 |issue=1 |pages=55–74 |jstor=41274953 |url=https://www.ceeol.com/search/article-detail?id=19877 }}

The government attempted to destroy the union with the martial law of 1981 and several years of repression, but in the end it had to start negotiating:

Roundtable Talks (from 6 February to 5 April 1989) between the government and Solidarity-led opposition led to semi-free elections on 4 June 1989. By the end of August a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed and Tadeusz Mazowiecki was elected Prime Minister. In December 1990, Wałęsa was elected President of Poland, subsequently resigning his chairmanship of the union. Since 1989, Solidarity has become a more traditional trade union, and had relatively little impact on the political scene of Poland in the early 1990s.

A political arm founded in 1996 as Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) won the parliamentary election in 1997, but lost the following 2001 election. In following years, Solidarity had little influence on Polish politics.

File:President Bush meets privately with Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa of Poland in the residence - NARA - 186403.jpg, 1989]]

{{See also|Poland–United States relations}}

In the year leading up to martial law, Reagan Administration policies supported the Solidarity movement, waging a public relations campaign to deter what the Carter administration had seen as "an imminent move by large Soviet military forces into Poland."{{cite book |url=https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/us-intelligence-and-the-polish-crisis-1980-1981/index.htm |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070613085810/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/us-intelligence-and-the-polish-crisis-1980-1981/index.htm |url-status=dead |archive-date=13 June 2007 |title=US Intelligence and the Polish Crisis: 1980–1981 |date=2000 |access-date=10 June 2019 |website=cia.gov |publisher=Center for the Study of Intelligence |first1=Douglas J. |last1=MacEachin |isbn=9781929667062}} Michael Reisman from Yale Law School named operations in Poland as one of the covert regime change actions of the CIA during the Cold War.{{cite book |editor1-last=Arsanjani |editor1-first=Mahnoush H. |editor2-last=Cogan |editor2-first=Jacob |title=Looking to the Future: Essays on International Law in Honor of W. Michael Reisman |date=2010 |publisher=Martinus Nijhoff Publishers |isbn=978-90-04-17361-3 |page=102 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BlFNeQw2IsEC&q=poland+covert }} Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, a senior officer on the Polish General Staff, was secretly sending reports to CIA officer David Forden.{{cite journal |first=Richard T. |last=Davies |title=The CIA and the Polish Crisis of 1980–1981 |journal=Journal of Cold War Studies |date=2004 |volume=6 |issue=3 |pages=120–123 |doi=10.1162/1520397041447346 |s2cid=57563775 }} The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) transferred around $2 million yearly in cash to Solidarity from 1982 onwards, for a total of $10 million over five years. There were no direct links between the CIA and Solidarność, and all money was channeled through third parties.{{cite book |author=Gregory F. Domber |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Grtub61ScTgC&pg=PA199 |title=Supporting the Revolution: America, Democracy, and the End of the Cold War in Poland, 1981—1989 |year=2008 |isbn=9780549385165 |page=199}}{{Dead link|date=January 2023|bot=InternetArchiveBot|fix-attempted=yes}}, revised as Domber 2014, p. 110 [https://books.google.com/books?id=Hlk7BAAAQBAJ&q=%22although+Casey+initiated%22]. CIA officers were barred from meeting Solidarity leaders, and the CIA's contacts with Solidarność activists were weaker than those of the AFL–CIO, which raised $300,000 from its members, which were used to provide material and cash directly to Solidarity, with no control of Solidarity's use of it. The U.S. Congress authorized the National Endowment for Democracy to promote democracy, and the NED allocated $10 million to Solidarity.{{citation|last=Domber|first=Gregory F.|title=What Putin Misunderstands about American Power|url=http://uncpressblog.com/2014/08/28/gregory-f-domber-what-putin-misunderstands-about-american-power/|date=28 August 2014|publisher=University of North Carolina Press|series=University of California Press Blog}}

The Polish government enacted martial law in December 1981, however, Solidarity was not alerted. Potential explanations for this vary; some believe that the CIA was caught off guard, while others suggest that American policy-makers viewed an internal crackdown as preferable to an "inevitable Soviet intervention."MacEachin, Douglas J. [https://web.archive.org/web/20070613085810/https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/us-intelligence-and-the-polish-crisis-1980-1981/index.htm "US Intelligence and the Polish Crisis 1980–1981."] CIA. 28 June 2008. CIA support for Solidarity included money, equipment and training, which was coordinated by Special Operations.[https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-holy-alliance-time-magazine-february-24-1992 Cover Story: The Holy Alliance] By Carl Bernstein, TIME, February 24, 1992 Henry Hyde, U.S. House intelligence committee member, stated that the USA provided "supplies and technical assistance in terms of clandestine newspapers, broadcasting, propaganda, money, organizational help and advice".{{cite book |last1=Sussman |first1=Gerald |title=Branding Democracy: U.S. Regime Change in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe |date=2010 |publisher=Peter Lang |isbn=978-1-4331-0531-9 |page=128}}

{{See also|Holy See–Poland relations}}File:Ostrowiec Solidarnosc 20100815.jpg depicting the murdered priest Jerzy Popiełuszko who publicly supported Solidarity during the 1980s]]

In 2017, Solidarity backed a proposal to implement blue laws to prohibit Sunday shopping, a move supported by Polish bishops.{{cite news |title=Polish bishops back Sunday trading ban |url=https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-41025700 |work=BBC News |date=23 August 2017 }} A 2018 new Polish law banning almost all trade on Sundays has taken effect, with large supermarkets and most other retailers closed for the first time since liberal shopping laws were introduced in the 1990s. The Law and Justice party passed the legislation with the support of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.{{cite news |last1=Gera |first1=Vanessa |title=Most Stores Shut in Poland as Sunday Trade Ban Takes Effect |url=https://www.usnews.com/news/business/articles/2018-03-11/most-stores-shut-in-poland-as-sunday-trade-ban-takes-effect |agency=Associated Press |date=11 March 2018 |work=U.S. News & World Report }}{{cite news |title=Stores shut across Poland as Sunday shopping ban takes effect |url=https://globalnews.ca/news/4076186/poland-sunday-shopping-ban/ |work=Global News |first1=Vanessa |last1=Gera |date=March 11, 2018 |agency=Associated Press }}{{cite news |url=https://www.rte.ie/news/2018/0311/946597-poland-shopping/ |title=Sunday trading ban comes into effect in Poland |work=RTÉ News |date=11 March 2018 }}{{cite news |title=Stores closed as Poland phases out Sunday shopping |url=http://archiwum.thenews.pl/1/2/Artykul/353341 |work=Polskie Radio dla Zagranicy |date=11 March 2018 }}

Lech Wałęsa has said that Pope John Paul II, and more specifically, his 1979 visit to Poland, was a significant factor in the creation of Solidarity.{{cite book |author=Pope John Paul II |title=Memory and Identity – Personal Reflections |publisher=2006 Weidenfeld & Nicolson |location=London |isbn=978-0-297-85075-5 |year=2005 |title-link=Memory and Identity }} As John Paul II was a Poland native, he was a figure that the citizens in Poland could identify with personally, but was beyond the reach of the Communist regime. For his actions regarding Poland and Solidarity during his pontificate, he has been named by many world leaders, including Wałęsa himself, to be one of the main causes of the downfall of not just the Polish regime, but Communism as a whole in Europe.{{cite news |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/apr/04/catholicism.religion13?INTCMP=SRCH |title=The first world leader |newspaper=The Guardian |date=4 April 2005 |access-date=4 November 2013}}

Although Leszek Kołakowski's works were officially banned in Poland, and he lived outside the country from the late 1960s, his philosophical ideas nonetheless exerted an influence on the Solidarity movement. Underground copies of his books and essays shaped the opinions of the Polish intellectual opposition. His 1971 essay Theses on Hope and Hopelessness, which suggested that self-organised social groups could gradually expand the spheres of civil society in a totalitarian state, helped inspire the dissident movements of the 1970s that led to the creation of Solidarity and provided a philosophical underpinning for the movement.

According to Kołakowski, a proletarian revolution has never occurred anywhere, as the October Revolution in Russia had nothing to do with Marxism in his view because it was achieved under the "Peace, Land and Bread" slogan. For Kołakowski, Solidarity was "perhaps closest to the working class revolution" that Karl Marx had predicted in the mid-1800s, involving "the revolutionary movement of industrial workers (very strongly supported by the intelligentsia) against the exploiters, that is to say, the state. And this solitary example of a working class revolution (if even this may be counted) was directed against a socialist state, and carried out under the sign of the cross, with the blessing of the Pope."Leszek Kołakowski. [https://www.firstthings.com/article/2002/10/what-is-left-of-socialism What Is Left of Socialism]. First Things, October 2002

Solidarity endorsed Karol Nawrocki the Law and Justice (PiS) candidate for the 2025 Polish presidential election, Solidarity also endorsed Andrzej Duda the Law and Justice (PiS) candidate in the 2020 Polish presidential election.{{cite web |url=https://notesfrompoland.com/2025/02/13/polands-solidarity-trade-union-endorses-opposition-presidential-candidate/ |title=Poland's Solidarity trade union endorses opposition presidential candidate |date=13 February 2025 |first=Alicja |last=Ptak}}

File:A T-55 on Václavské náměstí, Prague.jpg in Prague in 1990]]

File:Solidarity petition, Edinburgh.JPG

File:ETUC, Solidarity Trade Union - Budapest, 2011 (2).JPGThe survival of Solidarity was an unprecedented event not only in Poland, a satellite state of the USSR ruled in practice by a one-party Communist state, but the whole of the Eastern bloc. It meant a break in the hard-line stance of the Communist Polish United Workers' Party, which had bloodily ended a 1970 protest with machine-gun fire (killing over thirty and injuring over 1,000), and the broader Soviet Communist government in the Eastern Bloc, which had quelled both the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the 1968 Prague Spring with Soviet-led invasions.

Solidarity's influence led to the intensification and spread of anti-Communist ideals and movements throughout the countries of the Eastern Bloc, weakening their Communist governments. As a result of the Round Table Agreement between the Polish government and the Solidarity-led opposition, elections were held in Poland on 4 June 1989, in which the opposition was allowed to field candidates against the Communist party—the first free elections in any Soviet bloc country. A new upper chamber (the Senate) was created in the Polish parliament and all of its 100 seats were contestable in the election, as well as one-third of the seats in the more important lower chamber (the Sejm). Solidarity won 99 of the 100 Senate seats and all 161 contestable seats in the Sejm—a victory that also triggered a chain reaction across the Soviet Union's satellite states, leading to a mostly bloodless chain of anti-communist events in Central and Eastern Europe known as the Revolutions of 1989 ({{langx|pl|Jesień Ludów|lit=Autumn of Nations}}), which ended in the overthrow of each Moscow-imposed regime, and ultimately to the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Given the union's support from many western governments, relations with trade unions in capitalist countries could be complicated. For example, during the UK miners' strike of 1984–85, Wałęsa said that "The miners should fight, but with common sense—not with destruction" and said of Margaret Thatcher "With such a wise and brave woman, Britain will find a solution to the strike." However, David Jastrzębski, the president of Upper Silesia Solidarity, voiced his support of the striking miners: "Neither the British government's mounted police charges nor its truncheon blows, any more than the Polish junta's tanks or rifle fire, can break our common will to struggle for a better future for the working class."{{Cite news|url=http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2009/10/08/workers-unite-east-and-west|title=Workers unite, east and west!|date=2009-10-08|publisher=Alliance for Workers' Liberty|newspaper=Workers' Liberty|language=en|access-date=2017-01-29}} This was despite the fact that Arthur Scargill, president of the British National Union of Mineworkers had been highly critical of Solidarity, condemning it as an "anti-socialist organization which desires the overthrow of a socialist state".{{cite news|last1=McKinlay|first1=John|title=Scargill angers unions with Solidarity attack|url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=2507&dat=19830908&id=hfU9AAAAIBAJ&pg=2345,1392758|access-date=1 September 2014|newspaper=The Glasgow Herald|date=8 September 1983}} In 2005, the trade union Solidarity – The Union for British Workers was created by the far-right British National Party in honour of the original Polish union.

During the late 1980s, Solidarity had attempted to establish connections with the internal resistance to apartheid in South Africa. However, according to Wałęsa, attempts to develop links between the two forces were hampered by their geographical distance, the dearth of media coverage of events outside Poland's borders and especially in South Africa. As a result, relatively little engagement took place between the two groups.{{cite journal |last1=Macqueen |first1=Ian |date=15 March 2022 |title=Shaka Zulu in the Polish People's Republic (PRL): exploring South African-Polish links in the late Cold War |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14682745.2022.2027913 |journal=Cold War History |volume=22 |issue=3 |pages=265–286 |doi=10.1080/14682745.2022.2027913 |hdl=2263/84873 |s2cid=247510454 |access-date=31 January 2023|hdl-access=free }}

In late 2008, several democratic opposition groups in the Russian Federation formed a Solidarity movement.[https://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hVkTJkESxuu6x3qpAjxPQrkik3ZAD951R7BG0 Kasparov starts new Russian opposition movement]. The Associated Press. 13 December 2008. {{dead link|date=May 2016|bot=medic}}{{cbignore|bot=medic}}

In the United States, the American Solidarity Party (formerly the Christian Democratic Party USA), a Christian democratic political party, attributes its namesake to Solidarity.{{cite web|url=http://www.patheos.com/blogs/anxiousbench/2016/08/could-the-u-s-finally-get-a-significant-christian-democratic-party/|title=Could the U.S. Finally Get a Significant Christian Democratic Party?|last=Gehrz|first=Chris|date=16 August 2016|publisher=Patheos|language=en|access-date=16 August 2016|quote=The nominees of the American Solidarity Party (ASP), which takes its name from the Polish movement of the late Cold War and calls itself "the only active Christian Democratic party in the United States."}}

In a 2011 essay "The Jacobin Spirit" in the American magazine Jacobin, philosopher Slavoj Žižek called Solidarność' one of the "free spaces at a distance from state power" that used "defensive violence" to protect itself from state control. The notion of "defensive violence" runs in the vein of ideas postulated by Alain Badiou.{{cite web|url=https://www.jacobinmag.com/2011/05/the-jacobin-spirit|title=The Jacobin Spirit}} In a conflict summary commissioned by the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, Maciej Bartkowski wrote that "Solidarity always pursued its political objectives with a high degree of nonviolent discipline as well as self-imposed limitations."{{cite web|url= https://www.nonviolent-conflict.org/polands-solidarity-movement-1980-1989/|title= Poland's Solidarity Movement (1980-1989)}}

The union was officially founded on 17 September 1980, the union's supreme powers were vested in a legislative body, the Convention of Delegates (Zjazd Delegatów). The executive branch was the National Coordinating Commission (Krajowa Komisja Porozumiewawcza), later renamed the National Commission (Komisja Krajowa). The Union had a regional structure, comprising 38 regions (region) and two districts (okręg). At its highest, the Union had over 10 million members, which became the largest union membership in the world. During the Communist era, the 38 regional delegates were arrested and jailed when martial law came into effect on 13 December 1981 under General Wojciech Jaruzelski. After a one-year prison term the high-ranking members of the union were offered one way trips to any country accepting them (including Canada, the United States, and nations in the Middle East).

Solidarity was organized as an industrial union, or more specifically according to the One Big Union principle, along the lines of the Industrial Workers of the World and the Spanish Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (workers in every trade were organized by region, rather than by craft).{{in lang|pl}} [http://portalwiedzy.onet.pl/12313,,,,solidarnosc_nszz,haslo.html Solidarność NSZZ] in WIEM Encyklopedia. Last accessed on 10 October 2006 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061118215206/http://portalwiedzy.onet.pl/12313,,,,solidarnosc_nszz,haslo.html |date=18 November 2006 }}

In 2010, Solidarity had more than 400,000 members. National Commission of Independent Self-Governing Trade Union is located in Gdańsk and is composed of Delegates from Regional General Congresses.

Solidarity is divided into 37 regions, and the territorial structure to a large degree reflects the shape of Polish voivodeships, established in 1975 and annulled in 1998 (see: Administrative division of People's Republic of Poland). The regions are:

{{Div col|colwidth=25em}}

• Gdańsk, based in Gdańsk
• Warmia-Masuria, based in Olsztyn
• Elbląg, based in Elbląg
• Lower Silesia, based in Wrocław
• Pila, based in Piła
• Western Pomerania, based in Szczecin
• Land of Łódź, based in Łódź
• Częstochowa, based in Częstochowa
• Land of Sandomierz, based in Stalowa Wola
• Płock-Kutno, based in Płock
• Lesser Poland, based in Kraków
• Opole Silesia, based in Opole
• Seashore, based in Koszalin
• Słupsk, based in Słupsk
• Zielona Góra, based in Zielona Góra
• Podbeskidzie, based in Bielsko-Biała
• Konin, based in Konin
• Southern Greater Poland, based in Kalisz
• Podlachia, based in Białystok
• Piotrków, based in Piotrków Trybunalski
• Cuiavia and Dobrzyń Land, based in Włocławek
• Carpathia, based in Krosno
• Land of Rzeszów, based in Rzeszów
• Toruń, based in Toruń
• Silesia-Zaglebie, based in Katowice
• Land of Radom, based in Radom
• Greater Poland, based in Poznań
• Gorzów, based in Gorzów Wielkopolski
• Holy Cross, based in Kielce
• Middle-East, based in Lublin
• Bydgoszcz, based in Bydgoszcz
• Jelenia Góra, based in Jelenia Góra
• Leszno, based in Leszno
• Chełm, based in Chełm
• Przemyśl-Jarosław, based in Przemyśl
• Mazovia, based in Warsaw
• Copper Basin, based in Legnica

{{Div col end}}

The network of Solidarity branches of the key factories of Poland was created on 14 April 1981 in Gdańsk. It was made of representatives of seventeen factories; each stood for the most important factory of every voivodeship of the pre-1975 Poland. However, there were two exceptions. There was no representative of the Koszalin Voivodeship, and the Katowice Voivodeship was represented by two factories:

• Lech Wałęsa (1980–1991)
• Marian Krzaklewski (1991–2002)
• Janusz Śniadek (2002–2010)
• {{Interlanguage link|Piotr Duda|lt=|pl|Piotr Duda (związkowiec)}} (2010–present)

{{Eastern Bloc sidebar}}{{Portal|Poland}}

• 1981 warning strike in Poland
• 1988 Polish strikes
• 31 August 1982 demonstrations in Poland
• 80 Million
• Conference of Solidarity Support Organizations
• European Solidarity Centre
• Fighting Solidarity
• Hungarian Solidarity Movement
• Jastrzębie-Zdrój 1980 strikes
• Lublin 1980 strikes
• Polish 1970 protests
• Rural Solidarity
• Summer 1981 hunger demonstrations in Poland

{{reflist}}

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• Paczkowski, Andrzej. Revolution and Counterrevolution in Poland, 1980–1989: Solidarity, Martial Law, and the End of Communism in Europe (Boydell & Brewer, 2015).{{ISBN?}}
• {{Cite book|last=Penn|first=Shana|title=Solidarity's Secret : The Women Who Defeated Communism in Poland|year=2005|publisher=University of Michigan Press|isbn=0-472-11385-2|url=https://archive.org/details/solidarityssecre00penn}}
• {{Cite book|last=Perdue|first=William D.|title=Paradox of Change: The Rise and Fall of Solidarity in the New Poland|year=1995|publisher=Praeger/Greenwood|isbn = 0-275-95295-9}}
• Pope John Paul II, Sollicitudo rei socialis, [https://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0223/_INDEX.HTM on Vatican website]
• Shaw, Tamsin, "Ethical Espionage" (review of Calder Walton, Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West, Simon and Schuster, 2023, 672 pp.; and Cécile Fabre, Spying Through a Glass Darkly: The Ethics of Espionage and Counter-Intelligence, Oxford University Press, 251 pp., 2024), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXXI, no. 2 (8 February 2024), pp. 32, 34–35. "[I]n Walton's view, there was scarcely a US covert action that was a long-term strategic success, with the possible exception of intervention in the Soviet-Afghan War (a disastrous military fiasco for the Soviets) and perhaps support for the anti-Soviet Solidarity movement in Poland." (p. 34.)
• {{Cite book|last=Staniszkis|first=Jadwiga|author-link=Jadwiga Staniszkis|title=Poland's Self-Limiting Revolution|year=1984|publisher=Princeton University Press}}
• Smolar, Aleksander, {{"'}}Self-limiting Revolution': Poland 1970–89", in Adam Roberts and Timothy Garton Ash (eds.), Civil Resistance and Power Politics: The Experience of Non-violent Action from Gandhi to the Present, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009. {{ISBN|978-0-19-955201-6}}.[https://web.archive.org/web/20120606163100/http://www.oup.com/uk/catalogue/?ci=9780199552016].
• {{Cite book|last=Szporer|first=Michael|title=Solidarity: The Great Workers Strike of 1980|year=2014|publisher=Lexington Books|isbn=978-0739192801}}
• {{Cite book|last=Weigel|first=George|author-link=George Weigel |title=The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism|year=1992|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn = 0-19-516664-7 }}

{{wikisourcelang|pl|Statut_NSZZ_Solidarno%C5%9B%C4%87|Solidarity}}

{{Commons category|Solidarność}}

• {{official website|http://www.solidarnosc.org.pl/en/}}
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20101112225004/https://www.solidarnosc.gov.pl/index.php?document=2 Presentation on The Solidarity Phenomenon]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20090724151750/https://documentos.fundacionfaes.info/document_file/filename/471/00052-02_-_the_polish_trade_union.pdf FAES The Polish trade Union Solidarity and the European idea of freedom]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20081207104753/http://www.solidarity.org.pl/cgi-bin/news.pl?lang=en Solidarity 25th Anniversary Press Center]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20140915050748/http://metropolitanka.ikm.gda.pl/who-is-anna-walentynowicz-film/ Who is Anna Walentynowicz?, a documentary film about Solidarity]
• [http://archives.lib.byu.edu/repositories/14/resources/2496 Katherine Kenning collection of Joanna Wojciechowicz papers, MSS 8081] at [https://sites.lib.byu.edu/sc/ L. Tom Perry Special Collections], Brigham Young University. Contains materials about Wojciechowicz's participation in the Solidarity movement.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20190404074508/http://www.solidarnosc25.pl/ International Conference 'From Solidarity to Freedom']
• [http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/poland.htm Advice for East German propagandists on how to deal with the Solidarity movement] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121012082458/http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/poland.htm |date=12 October 2012 }}
• [http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/special_report/1999/09/99/iron_curtain/timelines/poland_80.stm The Birth of Solidarity on BBC]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20110308234448/http://culture.polishsite.us/articles/art52.html Solidarity, Freedom and Economical Crisis in Poland, 1980–81]
• [http://libcom.org/tags/solidarnosc Solidarność collection at the Libertarian Communist library]
• [http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/barker-c/1982/solidarnosc/index.html Solidarność from Gdańsk to Military Repression] by Colin Barker and Kara Weber (1982)
• [http://www.aft.org/periodical/american-educator/summer-2005/surviving-underground Arch Puddington, How American Unions Helps Solidarity Win]
• [http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+MOTION+B6-2005-0500+0+DOC+PDF+V0//EN Motion for a resolution], the European Parliament on the 25th anniversary of Solidarity and its message for Europe
• [https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/solidarity-lost/ Solidarity Lost], by Daniel Singer
• {{in lang|pl|cap=yes}} [http://www.fcs.org.pl Solidarity Center Foundation – Fundacja Centrum Solidarności]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20111006061819/https://www.podst.ru/?area=posts&id=99 A Simple Way to Learn an Old Song] A radio programme about the song "Mury", the anthem of Solidarność. In Russian with English transcript
• [https://culture.pl/en/article/the-solidarity-movement-anti-communist-or-most-communist-thing-ever The Solidarity Movement: Anti-Communist, Or Most Communist Thing Ever?] on Culture.pl

{{European Trade Union Confederation}}

{{Leaders of Solidarity}}

{{Fall of Communism}}

{{Cold War}}

{{Polish uprisings}}

{{Eastern Bloc}}

{{History of the People's Republic of Poland}}{{Gdańsk}}{{Authority control}}

Category:Trade unions in Poland

Category:Eastern Bloc

Category:Trade unions established in 1980

Category:1980 establishments in Poland

Category:Nonviolent revolutions

Category:Organisations based in Gdańsk

Category:Lech Wałęsa

Category:Self-governance

Category:Anti-communist organisations in Poland

Category:Polish nationalism