His address in the Sejm had a lofty, almost triumphant character. John Paul II summed up the difficult Polish path from the fall of the Commonwealth of Poland in the 18th century to the Third Republic of Poland, emphasizing the great role Solidarity had played in Poland’s liberation. “We are all aware that this meeting in the Parliament would be impossible without the determined resistance offered by Polish workers in Pomerania in memorable August 1980. It would be impossible without Solidarity, which chose a path of a peaceful struggle to defend human rights and rights of the entire nation.”

The Pope also gave advice and warnings for the future: “Jointly rejoicing at the positive transformations taking place in Poland before our eyes, we should also realize that in a free society there must be values ensuring the highest good of man as a whole. The objective of any economic changes should be to shape a more humane and just world. I would like to wish Polish politicians and all people engaged in the public life to not spare efforts to build a state which takes special care of the family, human life, and education of the young generation, one that respects man’s right to work, sees issues important for the entire nation, and is sensitive to the needs of the individual, particularly of the poor and weak one.”

John Paul II’s address was strongly applauded by almost all of the assembled, from the right-wing politicians to representatives of the post-communist left. The Pope’s visit to the Parliament was the largest manifestation of joy at regained freedom after 1989 and a moment of the Holy Father’s triumph as a spiritual and political leader of the nation. The exclamation “Long live the king, the nation, and all the states” with which he finished his address and which dates back to the adoption of the Third May Constitution was a humorous verbalization of the leadership role which Karol Wojtyła had played in the life of the Polish nation since the 1978 conclave, when he was elected the head of the Catholic Church.

With the introduction of martial law in 1981, which destroyed the moral fibre of Solidarity, the decade of apathy began. The opposition was made illegal and decimated since its activists were jailed. The Polish authorities did not have any plan regarding effective economic and social reforms. By the end of the decade, it was already clear that the country would handle the economic crisis only with large-scale reforms, the social costs of which would be very high. Combined with the change in the Kremlin’s policy that was introduced by Gorbachev’s government, such a situation provided for an unprecedented change of political system. The round-table discussions were an attempt to engage the opposition representatives in the activities of the government.

Influenced by a wave of strikes from the spring and summer of 1988, the authorities began negotiations with a part of the opposition. During the first stage, which lasted from August 1988 to the end of January 1989, it was necessary to decide a few organisational issues: time, a method of selecting delegates, topics to be discussed and preconditions. First of all, the authorities wanted to share the responsibility for the crisis with the opposition, guaranteeing that they would remain in power. The opposition, however, believed that the participation in the negotiations and then in the undemocratic elections would be the price for the legal activity of Solidarity.

The actual round-table discussions lasted from 6 February to 5 April 1989. At the opposite sides of the table, there were opposition and Solidarity representatives led by Lech Wałęsa as well as coalition and government representatives led by Minister of Internal Affairs General Czesław Kiszczak. Moreover, the meeting was attended by church observers. The sessions were divided into three main working groups that focused on political reforms, economy and social policy and union pluralism. As a result, almost 200 pages regarding the postulated framework of transformation, the range of economic reforms and many other issues were written down.

The most important, however, were political decisions. It was agreed, for example, that Solidarity would be made legal, and a new parliamentary election would be called. In free elections, 35% of the seats in the Sejm, the lower chamber of the Polish parliament, were to be contested, whereas the rest were to be kept by the Polish United Workers’ Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR) and its allies. Moreover, a free election to the Senate, the higher chamber, was assured. Such a structure of the Parliament was supposed to ensure that power would remain in the hands of the communists, who also wanted to create the office of president that was to be led by General Wojciech Jaruzelski.

A crushing victory of the opposition in the election of 4 June 1989 invalidated the majority of the political agreements of the round-table discussions which made Solidarity seize power in September 1989. Some of the agreements, however, remained valid. Wojciech Jaruzelski became the President of Poland which slowed down the process of reforms and settling accounts with communism, including a democratically elected president and the Sejm which would happen in December 1990 and October 1991 respectively.

One of the most important events that took place during the legal activity of the union was the 1st National Congress of Delegates of Solidarity organised in the autumn of 1981 in Gdańsk (precisely on 5–10 September 1980 and 26 September – 7 October). The congress above all ended the almost one-year-long process of selecting the authorities of the union and formulated a plan for the next period of its activities. But, apart from impact on the current functioning of the organisation, the congress also resulted in the adoption of a series of documents of broader significance. One of them was the Appeal of the 1st National Congress of Delegates of Solidarity to the working men of Eastern Europe passed on 8 September. Through the document, Poles directly appealed to other nations subjugated to communism. Although it was very hard for the text to reach its addressees, it infuriated the leaders of communist parties in the Soviet bloc. Workers in the USSR were forced to take part in rallies where the Appeal was condemned. Leonid Brezhnev considered it a provocation and an attempt at promoting the idea of Solidarity in the countries of the communist bloc. Anti-solidarity rallies were also organised in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. Protest letters were being sent to Poland, and the Politburo of the Polish United Workers’ Party (Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza, PZPR) regarded the document passed in Gdańsk as “mad provocation aimed against the allies of Poland.”

Three months later, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of PZPR and prime minister of the Polish People’s Republic, imposed martial law in Poland. Solidarity was officially liquidated, and ten thousand activists were interned. And yet the union survived in the underground and led to the fall of communism in Poland Europe in 1989.

The 21 demands (or postulates) of the Committee were drawn up during the night of August 16/17, 1980 by a team composed of Andrzej Gwiazda, Joanna Gwiazda, Bogdan Lis, Alina Pieńkowska, Lech Wałęsa, and Bogdan Borusewicz, on the basis of the demands submitted by striking crews from all over the country. The postulates were published on panels of plywood hung above the main gate of the Gdańsk Shipyard. In 2003 the panels were added to UNESCO’s ‘Memory of the World’ listing (Cultural Heritage of Humanity programme).

The opening postulate called for the establishment of free labour unions. The further postulates demanded that the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution be observed, that repressions against those persecuted for their beliefs or convictions be discontinued, that political prisoners be released, and that communist-party privileges be abolished. This was complemented by a series of economic and social demands put forth in the aim of improving society’s living conditions.

August 31, 1980 saw the signing, on the premises of the Gdańsk Shipyard, of the agreement between the Inter-Factory Strike Committee, representing more than 700 factories, and the government delegation, whereby “independent self-governing trade unions” were established and the government committed itself to implementing the major demands. The communist authorities’ acceptance of the 21 postulates led to the emergence of the Independent, Self-Governing Labour Union “Solidarity” – Poland’s Solidarność.

Poland’s communist authorities viewed the election of Cardinal Karol Wojtyła with consternation. They realised they could not refuse John Paul II (the name Wojtyła took as pope) permission to come to Poland – even though in 1966 the authorities of the People’s Republic of Poland had twice refused to allow Pope Paul VI to enter the country.

John Paul II’s visit to Poland took place from June 2-10, 1979, with hundreds of thousands of people gathered at every ceremony. The presence of the Polish Pope and his speeches, whose depth and beautiful language contrasted sharply with the poverty and hypocrisy of communist propaganda, set in motion a true revolution by giving expression to the freedom-seeking aspirations of the Poles and of the Church in Poland, both stifled under communist rule. During his first pilgrimage to Poland, the Pope visited Kraków, Częstochowa, and the museum at the former German concentration camp at Auschwitz, among many other places.

Particularly important was the first mass John Paul II celebrated, at Victory Square in downtown Warsaw (today, Marshal Józef Piłsudski Square). During that mass, the Pope delivered a homily offering a philosophical vision of Poland’s history and a programme for moral renewal. The Victory Square mass was later recognised as the symbolic beginning of the changes that led to the emergence of Solidarity in 1980 and the eventual downfall of communism. The final words of the homily reverberate in Poland to this very day: “Let thy Spirit descend! And make anew the face of Earth. Here on Earth.”

The founders of ROPCiO referred to the Helsinki Accords signed by the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic. The signatories of the document committed themselves to protecting human rights, which is why ROPCiO announced that they would conduct  activities like information campaigns, appeals and letters of protest to force the authorities to obey the Helsinki Accords.

The rhetoric and activities undertaken by the movement were distinguished by references to patriotic traditions. For instance, its members organised the celebrations of the Independence Day, which had been formally abolished by the communists in the 1940s. The ambitions of the movement leaders were, however, much greater. Its foremost politicians, such as Andrzej Czuma, Leszek Moczulski, Aleksander Hall or Wojciech Ziembiński referred to the traditions of pre-war political movements: the nationalist one and the one represented by Józef Piłsudski. They soon adopted strictly political slogans as well, including the calling for the independence of Poland. ROPCiO activists started publishing Opinia, one of the first underground periodicals.

The establishment and activities of ROPCiO met with reserve on behalf of KOR co-founders. Its members were accused of trying to break up the Committee or even serving the Security Service. This was caused by both political (with ROPCiO being clearly rightist) and social differences. The dispute also led to division within ROPCiO itself, whose members became soon involved in other opposition initiatives, for instance the Movement of Young Poland or the Confederation of Independent Poland.

That announcement brought the entire country to a boil. On 25 June 1976 workplaces in many parts of Poland went on strike, with major protests, also on streets, staged in Płock, Ursus, and Radom. In Radom the protesters showed their discontent by, for instance, setting ablaze the building of the PZPR Provincial Committee. The authorities brutally suppressed that unrest, beating their participants during the protests and also after arrest, with the use of sophisticated torture.

Worried by the scale of those protests, the authorities cancelled the price increases and introduced sugar rationing. But that did not mean that the workers’ protests in June were deemed justified. On the contrary, they were officially condemned and their participants were called hooligans. During the subsequent weeks the Security Service (Służba Bezpieczeństwa, SB) repressed the individuals engaged in the protests; a lot of people were fired or received prison sentences.

The victims of those persecutions received financial and legal aid organized by the young people associated mostly with the scouting milieu of the Czarna Jedynka Scout Team, the ‘Commandos’ milieu, the Warsaw Club of Catholic Intelligentsia (Klub Inteligencji Katolickiej, KIK), and the Catholic University of Lublin. Deprived of means of livelihood, the arrested individual’s families could also count on their help. In September 1976 the milieus engaged in those efforts decided to establish an organization to deal with the issue of human rights violation in communist Poland. Among its leaders were Piotr Naimski and Antoni Macierewicz (the scouting milieu) and also Jacek Kuroń and Adam Michnik (the ‘Commandos’ milieu). That was how the Workers’ Defense Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR) was formed — the first overt opposition organization in Poland since the 1940s. Some of its members and co-workers, particularly printers and distributors of independent publications, operated in the underground. The KOR collected information about violations of human rights, helped the repressed, distributed underground periodicals, leaflets, and publications, and also organized protests and hunger strikes. KOR members and co-workers were often repressed — they were imprisoned, fired, beaten up by ‘unidentified perpetrators’, or surveilled by the SB. The Committee, later transformed into the KOR Social Self-defense Committee (Komitet Samoobrony Społecznej KOR), operated until 1981, when it was dissolved because its tasks were taken over by the Solidarity Independent Self-governing Trade Union (Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy „Solidarność”).

He was an accountant by profession, physicist by education and a Home Army (Armia Krajowa) soldier during the war. Siwiec despised communism, the lies the system resorted to and the brutality of the methods it used to hold power. In the 1960s, he distributed leaflets he wrote himself as a means of protest against lack of freedom of speech and the degradation Poles were put into by the communist authorities.

Siwiec closely monitored the changes taking place in Czechoslovakia since January 1968: lifting censorship, opening borders, rehabilitating political prisoners and introducing a plan of economic reforms gave hopes for a normal life. The system he opposed was just disintegrating across the southern border of Poland. Next months brought progressing liberalization, as if the Czechs and Slovaks truly liberated themselves from the yoke of communism.

When the Prague Spring was suppressed in August 1968, Siwiec was shocked. His dreams of freedom, shared with the Czech and Slovak neighbours, were brutally crushed by the soldiers of the Warsaw Pact, including Poles. The sixty-year-old accountant could not accept that. During the harvest festival at Stadion Dziesięciolecia in Warsaw on 8 September 1968, Siwiec poured gasoline over himself and set himself on fire, after recording his appeal on a tape and scattering leaflets calling people to oppose to the evil. Suffering from terrible burns, he soon died at the hospital.

Unfortunately, the Security Service managed to impose a complete information blockade on the topic and Siwiec’s act went unnoticed. It was announced only in 1969 by Radio Free Europe. His story was publicized in the 1990s through Maciej Drygas’s documentary entitled Usłyszcie mój krzyk [Hear my voice]. Today, Siwiec is remembered as a Polish, Czech and Slovak hero.

It was very important for the Polish Episcopate that the celebrations be joined by as many representatives of other national episcopates as possible. This is why Polish bishops sent 56 letters to hierarchs of other nationalities in 1965. They informed the addressees about the anniversary of the Polish baptism and invited them to Częstochowa to participate in the main celebrations of the millennium on 3 May 1966.

It is in those circumstances that Polish bishops wrote an appeal to the German ones. Its main author Archbishop Bolesław Kominek from Wrocław was a Silesian by descent and privately a true promoter of reconciliation between Poles and Germans. The letter was unique because of the difficult past of both nations and was written for two main reasons. The first one was of moral and religious nature. In a spirit of the Vatican Council, Polish bishops sought dialogue, reconciliation and better understanding between the parties during the preparations for the celebrations in 1966. The second reason was the opening of permanent dioceses in the lands previously belonging to Germany in the northern and western Poland by the Holy See. The Polish Episcopate wanted to encourage their German fellow clergymen to accept the Polish-German border set along the Oder and the Lusatian Neisse after the end of the Second World War. This was particularly difficult as German clergy had a rather negative opinion on the issue and for a long time did not want to accept that Poles had been victims of the German aggression in 1939.

36 Polish bishops signed the letter on 18 November 1965 in Rome including Primate Wyszyński followed by Archbishop Kominek and Karol Wojtyła, later Pope John Paul II. The letter from Polish to German bishops did not meet with a favourable reaction from the Polish society, who still had a vivid memory of the events of the Second World War. The communist authorities used the situation to attack the Polish Episcopate and portrait its acts as anti-patriotic. Unfortunately, the letter was negatively received also by German bishops from both the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Years later, however, it has been acknowledged as one of the milestones in the history of Polish-German reconciliation.