Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: One seldom finds a consensual view among historians of recent events, but very few would object to calling the 10 years that preceded the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe the 'Solidarity Decade'.It is spanned by two crucial events, both related to the Polish Solidarity movement but also, and indirectly, sharing wider international importance.The first was the formal recognition by the communist regime of the first 'free and independent' trade union and, in reality, a powerful social reform movement in Poland in late August to early September 1980.The second event was the swearing in of the 'Solidarity government' in Poland on 12 September 1989-the first noncommunist government since the consolidation of communist rule in 1948.The first date marks the beginning of a mass, organised social dissent that not only fatally undermined communist legitimacy in Eastern Europe, but also created a powerful collective social force capable of directing change beyond the confines of 'reformed communism' and into 'post-communism'.1 The second date marks what we call the 'Breakthrough'-a shift of emphasis from reforming to transforming the communist system, from the monopoly of power vested de jure in the Soviet-style Communist Party to the first freely elected non-communist government in the Soviet Bloc.It was a tipping point initiating the processes of the domino-like collapse of the Eastern European communist regimes.What was remarkable about this decade-and what is worth returning to on its anniversary-was its regional and worldwide impact, which was largely unanticipated by the major actors, including Gorbachev, Wałęsa, Reagan, Bush, Kohl, Jaruzelski and Havel.We are armed now with a better historical hindsight 2 1 This was acknowledged even by General Jaruzelski-for example, in an interview with Codogni (2009:301).The concept of 'post-communism' has been elaborated by Holmes (1997). 2 One should mention here recent general historical analyses and comments by Ash (2009aAsh ( , 2009b)); Beres and Burnetko (2009); Engel (2009); Judt (2005); Karatnycky and Ackerman (2005); Kramer (2003, 2004,
Source: Humanities Research
Authors: Jan Pakulski, Stefan Markowski
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W289166124