Lech Walesa

On August 31, 1980, waves of labor union strikes emanated from the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, Poland, and communist authorities agreed to allow workers to be represented by democratically elected trade unions. The Solidarity movement, led by Lech Walesa, spearheaded a bloodless revolution that eventually toppled the communist regime and inspired democratic movements across the Soviet Union and its satellites. Twenty-five years later, speakers gathered in Gdansk to examine the success of and inspiration provided by Solidarity at an event co-hosted by AEI’s New Atlantic Initiative, Freedom House, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the International Republican Institute, the Lech Walesa Institute, the National Democratic Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The conference began, fittingly, with remarks by Lech Walesa, who rose from leader of the Solidarity movement to become president of Poland. Walesa credited Pope John Paul II, along with Solidarity, for the collapse of Poland’s communist government. He described communism as a system beyond hope of reform, one whose denial of freedom and human rights can no more be sustained where communism still holds power today than in Poland twenty-five years ago.
 
Peter Ackerman of Freedom House spoke of the need for today’s dissidents to be prepared for a long struggle and added that “people power works from the bottom up when it sticks to nonviolence,” as Solidarity demonstrated. Adrian Karatnycky, also of Freedom House, highlighted the pillars of people power, including using alternative means of communication and channeling growing discontent into street movements in smaller towns, as well as in cities.

Additional speakers considered the communist regimes that still exist today. Kang Cheol-Hwan, a North Korean defector, described North Korea as “a giant concentration camp” where people are imprisoned for crimes like “reading a foreign newspaper, complaining about the scarcity of food, or refusing any arbitrary request from a state official.” Harry Wu of Laogai Research Foundation defined “laogai” as the “political violence in China and the forced labor camp system under China’s communist regime,” and he faulted world leaders for trusting that money, trade, and technology transfers will improve human rights in China.

Susana Alvarez discussed the imprisonment of her father Pedro Pablo Alvarez, secretary general of the United Council of Cuban Workers, who was threatened by government authorities that his twenty-five-year sentence for defending the rights of Cuban workers would be extended to the maximum penalty if his daughter attended the Solidarity conference. Noting that she spoke with her father’s blessing, Alvarez declared: “It is truly inspiring to come to Poland and speak about my father and his colleagues within the independent labor unions of Cuba. Your movement gives them hope. They too are brave individuals who will struggle endlessly.”

AEI’s Christopher DeMuth considered how protest movements can transform “public anger over the old regime’s abuses into a self-conscious majority demanding redress and reform” by recognizing that the democratic process is a dynamic discovery process and not a settled or frozen state; that there needs to be robust, independent criticism of any new government as well as the old regime; and that government power should be disbursed and decentralized through federalist systems.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security advisor, concluded with a lesson for the descendents of the Solidarity movement: “Solidarity was one of the greatest revolutions of the world because it has achieved its success peacefully. It was a cultural revolution as well as a political revolution, and its works are still in the making in today’s Poland. To achieve a long-lasting success, it is important to pursue political modernity and civil modernity beyond the scope of immediate political change.”