Solidarność 1980 - 1989. Polska droga do wolności

The 1980s were the most important decade in the history of modern Poland. It was then that a great uprising of Poles took place and a movement emerged which, after many years of difficult experiences, led to the end of the Polish People’s Republic, a communist semi-colony of the Soviet Union, and to the rebirth of a free Republic of Poland. This book presents that extraordinary Polish road to freedom, which became the beginning of the collapse of the communist bloc in Europe. The author recounts the history of “Solidarity” in the first and most important decade of its existence, revealing the background to the events that led to the August strikes from which the union was born, the period of the “festival of freedom” with more than a year of legal activity by Solidarity, the time of martial law when the communist authorities sent the army and militia against their own nation, the years of underground opposition and clandestine struggle under the tyranny of the Polish United Workers’ Party, and finally the renewal of hope and strength, the strikes of 1988, and the events of 1989 that led to profound systemic, social, and political transformations in Poland and opened the path to full freedom.