In post-’89 retrospect the rise of Solidarity appears as the opening fusillade in the final struggle against Communism. But the Polish ‘revolution’ of 1980–81 is better understood as the last in a rising crescendo of workers’ protests that began in 1970 and were directed against the Party’s repressive and incompetent management of the economy. Cynical incompetence, careerism and wasted lives; price increases, protest strikes and repression; the spontaneous emergence of local unions and the active engagement of dissident intellectuals; the sympathy and support of the Catholic Church: these were
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