Andrzej Gwiazda is an engineer and prominent opposition leader, who participated in Polish March 1968 Events and December 1970 Events; one of the founders of Free Trade Unions, Member of the Presiding Committee of the Strike at Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk in August 1980, Vice President of the Founding Committee of Solidarity, then Vice President of Solidarity in 1980 and 1981; in December 1981 interned and next imprisoned with six other Solidarność leaders. His wife, Joanna Duda-Gwiazda also was a prominent member of the anticommunist opposition in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Motorized Reserves of the Citizens' Militia, commonly known as ZOMO, were paramilitary-police formations during the communist era in Poland. These elite units of Citizens' Militia (MO) were originally created to fight dangerous criminals, to provide security during mass events, and help in the case of natural disasters and other crises; however, they became known instead for their brutal and sometimes repressive lethal actions of riot control and their role in quelling civil rights protests.
Czesław Jan Kiszczak was a Polish general, communist-era interior minister (1981–1990) and prime minister (1989).
Martial law in Poland existed between 13 December 1981 and 22 July 1983. The government of the Polish People's Republic drastically restricted everyday life by introducing martial law and a military junta in an attempt to counter political opposition, in particular the Solidarity movement.
WujekCoal Mine is a coal mine in Katowice, Poland. It is widely known in Poland as the place of the massacre of striking miners in 1981, as well as being the site of a deadly mining accident in 2009.
The following events occurred in December 1981:
Solidarity, a Polish non-governmental trade union, was founded on August 14, 1980, at the Lenin Shipyards by Lech Wałęsa and others. In the early 1980s, it became the first independent labor union in a Soviet-bloc country. Solidarity gave rise to a broad, non-violent, anti-Communist social movement that, at its height, claimed some 9.4 million members. It is considered to have contributed greatly to the Fall of Communism.
Fighting Solidarity was a Polish anti-Soviet and anti-communist organization. It was founded in June 1982 by Kornel Morawiecki in the Polish city of Wrocław. Its creation was in response to the de-legalization of the Solidarity movement and associated communist government repression of the opposition symbolized by the imposition of martial law in 1981. Many consider this faction as one of the most radical and uncompromising splinters of the wider Solidarity movement.
The Paint Creek–Cabin Creek Strike, or the Paint Creek Mine War, was a confrontation between striking coal miners and coal operators in Kanawha County, West Virginia, centered on the area enclosed by two streams, Paint Creek and Cabin Creek.
The Westmoreland County coal strike of 1910–1911, or the Westmoreland coal miners' strike, was a strike by coal miners represented by the United Mine Workers of America. The strike is also known as the Slovak Strike because about 70 percent of the miners were Slovak immigrants. It began in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, on March 9, 1910, and ended on July 1, 1911. At its height, the strike encompassed 65 mines and 15,000 coal miners. Sixteen people were killed during the strike, nearly all of them striking miners or members of their families. The strike ended in defeat for the union.
The June 1976 protests were a series of protests and demonstrations in the Polish People's Republic that took place after Prime Minister Piotr Jaroszewicz revealed the plan for a sudden increase in the price of many basic commodities, particularly food. Prices in Poland were at that time fixed, and controlled by the government, which was falling into increasing debt.
Tadeusz Pyka was a former Polish communist politician, who served as a Deputy Prime Minister of Poland. In August 1980, he led a government commission which attempted to end a strike in the Polish city of Gdańsk, but he was replaced on August 21 without an explanation offered by state radio at the time for the change.
In the early spring of 1981 in Poland, during the Bydgoszcz events, several members of the Solidarity movement, including Jan Rulewski, Mariusz Łabentowicz and Roman Bartoszcze, were brutally beaten by the security services, such as Milicja Obywatelska and ZOMO. The Bydgoszcz events soon became widely known across Poland, and on 24 March 1981 Solidarity decided to go on a nationwide strike in protest against the violence. The strike was planned for Tuesday, 31 March 1981. On 25 March, Lech Wałęsa met Deputy Prime Minister Mieczysław Rakowski of the Polish United Workers' Party, but their talks were fruitless. Two days later, a four-hour national warning strike took place. It was the biggest strike in the history of not only Poland but of the Warsaw Pact itself. According to several sources, between 12 million and 14 million Poles took part.
The 1988 Polish strikes were a massive wave of workers' strikes which broke out from 21 April 1988 in the Polish People's Republic. The strikes, as well as street demonstrations, continued throughout spring and summer, ending in early September 1988. These actions shook the Communist regime of the country to such an extent that it was forced to begin talking about recognising Solidarity. As a result, later that year, the regime decided to negotiate with the opposition, which opened way for the 1989 Round Table Agreement. The second, much bigger wave of strikes surprised both the government, and top leaders of Solidarity, who were not expecting actions of such intensity. These strikes were mostly organized by local activists, who had no idea that their leaders from Warsaw had already started secret negotiations with the Communists.
The 1982 demonstrations in Poland refers to anti-government street demonstrations organized by underground Solidarity to commemorate the second anniversary of the Gdańsk Agreement. The bloodiest protest occurred in southwestern Poland, in the town of Lubin, on August 31, 1982. The Lubin demonstration resulted in three protesters killed by Communist services, and an unknown number of wounded. On the same day, rallies and demonstrations took place in several cities across the country. According to Solidarity sources, there were four more victims—in Wrocław, Gdańsk, Nowa Huta, and Toruń. According to official government sources, there were demonstrations in 66 cities.
The 1981 strike at the Piast Coal Mine in Bieruń was the longest underground protest in the postwar history of Polish mining, and the longest strike of the martial law in Poland. It began on December 14, 1981, one day after introduction of the martial law, and ended on December 28, when approximately 1,000 protesting miners emerged from the mine. They spent two weeks underground, including Christmas, and ended the protest after the government guaranteed their safety.
Anti-union violence in the United States is physical force intended to harm union officials, union organizers, union members, union sympathizers, or their families. It has most commonly been used either during union organizing efforts, or during strikes. The aim most often is to prevent a union from forming, to destroy an existing union, or to reduce the effectiveness of a union or a particular strike action. If strikers prevent people or goods to enter or leave a workplace, violence may be used to allow people and goods to pass the picket line.
The Upper Silesia 1980 strikes were widespread strikes, which took place mostly in the Upper Silesian mining cities Jastrzębie-Zdrój, Wodzisław Śląski and Ruda Śląska and its surroundings, during late August and early September 1980. They forced the Government of People's Republic of Poland to sign the last of three agreements establishing the Solidarity trade union. Earlier, agreements had been signed in Gdańsk and Szczecin. The Jastrzębie Agreement, signed on September 3, 1980, ended Saturday and Sunday work for miners, a concession that Government leaders later said cut deeply into Poland's export earnings.
