A Peaceful Revolution

During the 1980’s, a genuine popular movement arose in Poland that ended up toppling the communist regime in that country. Although there were many anticommunist intellectuals writing and being read in Poland at the time, the spark that ignited the peaceful revolution that ended Soviet rule was lit not by the educated elite but by the working class: workers at the Lenin shipyard in Gdańsk launched a strike in 1980 that quickly spread to workers across industries and throughout the country. These workers formed the Interfactory Strike Committee, which drew up a list of 21 demands. Then, in a move reminiscent of the apocryphal story of Martin Luther nailing his 95…

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