Solidarity: a workers' movement against a workers' state
Gdańsk 1980, martial law 1981, the round table 1989.
What happened
The Gdańsk strike of August 1980 produced the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc — at its peak roughly ten million members, a quarter of the population. In December 1981 Jaruzelski declared martial law, interned around ten thousand activists and banned the union.
The results
Solidarity came back. In 1989 round-table talks produced elections it won overwhelmingly, and the regime gave way. Ten million workers had organised against the government that claimed to rule in their name.
Why it happened
The event destroys the class story the system told about itself. When the workers organised, the "workers' state" declared war on them — because the regime's real constituency was the Party, not the proletariat. What the Polish workers were fighting for was the ordinary right to organise and publish that free countries treat as background furniture.