A Meeting With History


Yesterday I had a chance to meet and interview an absolutely incredible woman: Anna Walentynowicz. She is a small woman, perhaps Cindy's height, but with giant hands and feet -- no surprise, as she was for many years a welder and a crane operator at Gdansk's state shipyard, regularly pushing herself to the limit to get the job done. She has the self-confidence of a general facing assured victory.

Anna today, at her home in Gdansk

Anna was highly decorated as a model worker in the 70's, but soon began to realize that all was not well with her employers. The typically communist corruption was rampant, and workers' conditions periodically worsened. She decided to champion the cause of the workers, editing a newsletter that advocated for free trade unions (completely illegal under the Polish communist regime), which she openly distributed at the shipyards.

In 1980, she was fired for her activism, five months before her retirement came through. Rallying around her, 16,000 workers at the Gdansk shipyard went on strike, soon rallying the shipyards in adjacent Gdynia and Sopot. The strike directly resulted in the formation of the first independent trade union in all of communist Europe, Solidarity.

Now, those of you who see Lech Walensa and the Solidarity movement as the crowning glory of Poland's contribution to the fall of communist, brace yourselves, for this may be a shock. Following 1980, Anna describes a very different version of events than are commonly accepted. She contents, for example, that Lech Walesa was actually an agent of the SB, the Polish equivalent of the KGB. She also highlights that the Solidarity party that won elections in 1989 was in composition and ideologically absolutely not the same trade union that came into existence in 1980. She believes that the original Solidarity's identity was taken to rally popular opinion, so that the round-table "deal with the devil" could be made and portrayed as a victory. With the opening of the SB files in past years, there appears to be more evidence to corroborate her claims. I'll be publishing the interview with her in the coming week, likely. -- Jan in Warsaw
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