The Emergence of Solidarity

581 Words2 Pages

Yes, the Soviet grip on Eastern Europe was complete. It was not until the emergence of ‘solidarity’, which became the first ‘mass’ movement against soviet communism that actually challenged the system effectively. By the early nineteen eighties solidarity had more than nine million members, that was over a third of the Polish workforce and in a survey at the time ninety five percent of poles said they trusted solidarity. Solidarity also had the support of the Catholic Church, which was a part of glue that held Poland together, in other Eastern European countries religion had been crushed because communism was anti religious but they could not do so in Poland because nearly all the Poles were Catholics. The head of the Catholic Church was a pole that made an influential visit home to Poland during the height of Solidarity. Lech Walesa was the man behind all of these new and ‘capitalistic’ ideas. Throughout his working career he fought the powers that were. Having led the strikes in the Gdansk shipyard in the summer of 1980. He then eventually founded solidarity in August of 1980 and ...

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