Solidarity (Polish trade union) in the context of "1989 Polish legislative election"

The revolutions of 1989, also known as the fall of communism, were a wave of liberal democratic movements that resulted in the collapse of most Marxist–Leninist governments in the Eastern Bloc and other parts of the world. This wave is sometimes referred to as the "autumn of nations", in reference to the revolutions of 1848 as the "spring of nations". The revolutions of 1989 were a key factor in the dissolution of the Soviet Union—one of the two superpowers—and abandonment of communist regimes in many parts of the world, some of which were violently overthrown. These events drastically altered the world's balance of power, marking the end of the Cold War and beginning of the post-Cold War era.

The earliest recorded protests, which led to the revolutions, began in Poland on 14 August 1980, the massive general strike which led to the August Agreements and establishment of Solidarity, the first and only independent trade union in the Eastern Bloc, whose peak membership reached 10 million. The main region of the 1989 revolutions was Central Europe, starting in Poland with the 1988 Polish strikes, and continued in Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania. On 4 June 1989, Poland conducted the first elections that led to the dissolution of the communist government, with Solidarity winning an overwhelming victory, leading to the peaceful fall of communism in Poland. Influenced by Poland, Hungary organised round table-format talks and began dismantling its section of the Iron Curtain. In August 1989, over a quarter of the Baltic states population physically chained for 675 kilometres (419 mi) in the Baltic Way protesting the occupation by the Soviet Union, while the opening of a border gate between Austria and Hungary set in motion a peaceful chain reaction, in which the Eastern Bloc disintegrated. This led to mass demonstrations in cities of East Germany and the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, which served as the symbolic gateway to German reunification in 1990. A feature common to these developments was the extensive use of campaigns of civil resistance, demonstrating popular opposition to the continuation of one-party rule and contributing to pressure for change. Romania was the only country in which citizens and opposition forces used violence to overthrow its communist regime, although Romania was politically isolated from the rest of the Eastern Bloc.

The Warsaw Pact (WP), formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance (TFCMA), was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republics in Central and Eastern Europe in May 1955, during the Cold War. The term "Warsaw Pact" commonly refers to both the treaty itself and its resultant military alliance, the Warsaw Pact Organisation (WPO) (also known as ‘Warsaw Treaty Organization’ (‘WTO’)). The Warsaw Pact was the military complement to the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Comecon), the economic organization for the Eastern Bloc states.

Dominated by the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact was established as a balance of power or counterweight to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Western Bloc. There was no direct military confrontation between the two organizations; instead, the conflict was fought on an ideological basis and through proxy wars. Both NATO and the Warsaw Pact led to the expansion of military forces and their integration into the respective blocs. The Warsaw Pact's largest military engagement was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, one of its own member states, in August 1968. All member states participated except for Albania and Romania, resulting in Albania's withdrawal from the pact less than one month later. The pact began to unravel with the spread of the Revolutions of 1989 through the Eastern Bloc, beginning with the Solidarity movement in Poland, its electoral success in June 1989 and the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989.

The August Agreements (Polish: Porozumienia sierpniowe) was a set of four accords reached between the government of the Polish People's Republic and the striking shipyard workers in Poland. The accord, signed in late August 1980 by government representative Mieczysław Jagielski and strike leader Lech Wałęsa, led to the creation of the trade union Solidarity and was an important milestone towards the eventual end of Communist rule in Poland.

In summer 1980, faced with a major economic crisis, the Polish government authorized a rise in food prices, which immediately led to a wave of strikes and factory occupations across the country. On 14 August workers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk went on strike after the sacking of Anna Walentynowicz, five months before she was to retire. The Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee, headed by Wałęsa, issued a list of 21 demands to the government. Thanks to popular support within the country, the workers held out until the government gave in to their demands, and an agreement was formalized on 31 August.

The 1988 Polish strikes were a massive wave of workers' strikes which broke out from 21 April 1988 in the Polish People's Republic.

The strikes, as well as street demonstrations, continued throughout spring and summer, ending in early September 1988. These actions shook the Communist regime of the country to such an extent that it was forced to begin talking about recognising Solidarity. As a result, later that year, the regime decided to negotiate with the opposition, which opened way for the 1989 Round Table Agreement. The second, much bigger wave of strikes (August 1988) surprised both the government, and top leaders of Solidarity, who were not expecting actions of such intensity. These strikes were mostly organized by local activists, who had no idea that their leaders from Warsaw had already started secret negotiations with the Communists.

Jarosław Aleksander Kaczyński (born 18 June 1949) is a Polish politician. He co-founded the Law and Justice (PiS) party in 2001 with his twin brother, Lech Kaczyński, and has served as its leader since 2003. He served as Prime Minister of Poland from 2006 to 2007, and has twice held the post of Deputy Prime Minister of Poland, first from 2020 to 2022, and a second time from June to November 2023. He is considered to have been the eminence grise of Poland, when PiS formed the government in 2005–2007 and again in 2015–2023, with direct political influence over the prime ministers Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, Beata Szydło and Mateusz Morawiecki.

Jaroslaw Kaczyński as a student took part in protest during the March 1968 political crisis. Subsequently, he became involved in the anti-communist opposition as a collaborator of KOR and KSS KOR. He took part in the protests in August 1980 when he was arrested, then joined the Solidarity movement. In 1982 he became a member of the Polish Helsinki Committee. He took part in the 1988 strikes.

Gdańsk (Kashubian: Gduńsk; German: Danzig) is a city on the Baltic coast of northern Poland, and the capital of the Pomeranian Voivodeship. With a population of 486,492, it is Poland's sixth-largest city and its major seaport. Gdańsk lies at the mouth of the Motława River and is situated at the southern edge of Gdańsk Bay, close to the city of Gdynia and the resort town of Sopot; these form a metropolitan area called the Tricity (Trójmiasto), with a population of approximately 1.5 million.

Gdańsk was first mentioned in 997 as part of the early Polish state, and thereafter grew into a trading town under the Piast and Samboride dynasties. Shifting between Polish and Teutonic control during the Middle Ages, it subsequently joined the Hanseatic League and, with considerable autonomy, served as Poland's principal seaport and largest city until the early 18th century. With the Partitions of Poland, the city was annexed by Prussia in 1793, and was integrated into the German Empire in 1871. It was a free city from 1807 to 1814 and from 1920 to 1939. On 1 September 1939, it was the site of a military clash at Westerplatte, one of the first events of World War II. The contemporary city was shaped by extensive border changes, expulsions and resettlement after 1945. In the 1980s, Gdańsk was the birthplace of the Solidarity trade union and movement, which helped precipitate the collapse of communism in Europe.

Presidential elections were held in Poland on 25 November 1990, with a second round on 9 December. They were the first direct presidential elections in the history of Poland, and the first free presidential elections since the May Coup of 1926. Before World War II, presidents were elected by the Sejm. From 1952 to 1989—the bulk of the Communist era—the presidency did not exist as a separate institution, and most of its functions were fulfilled by the State Council of Poland, whose chairman was considered the equivalent of a president.

There were six candidates who successfully managed to register - Solidarity chairman Lech Wałęsa, Canadian entrepreneur Stanisław Tymiński, Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Members of the Sejm Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz and Roman Bartoszcze, and anti-communist oppositionist Leszek Moczulski. Despite for a long time coming first in opinion polls, Tadeusz Mazowiecki's campaign failed to convince voters to his side, and he did not enter the runoff, coming third in the first round. Stanisław Tymiński came second in a large upset unforeseen by every political force in the country, and, being seen by other candidates as a liar and opportunist, managed to unite both the postcommunist and Solidarity establishments against him. In the second round, Wałęsa won almost 75% of the vote, the largest electoral victory for a free election in Polish political history.

Mieczysław Zygmunt Jagielski (12 January 1924 – 27 February 1997) was a Polish politician and economist. During the times of the People's Republic of Poland he was the last leading politician from the former eastern regions of pre-Second World War Poland.

Jagielski became a communist deputy to the legislative body of Poland, the Sejm, in 1957, and he would continue to serve in that capacity for seven consecutive terms until 1985. In 1959, he was posted to be a member of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party and appointed to be the Minister of Agriculture. After he left his position as Minister of Agriculture in 1970, Jagielski became a Deputy Prime Minister, and the next year, a member of the Politburo of the Polish United Workers' Party. In August 1980, Jagielski represented the government during talks with strikers in the city of Gdańsk. He negotiated the agreement which recognized Solidarity, a Polish trade union, as the first officially recognized independent trade union within the Eastern Bloc. Between August 1980 and August 1981, Jagielski continued to interact with representatives of Polish workers, though his health was declining during this period. In late July 1981, Jagielski was fired from the Deputy Premiership, reportedly because he failed to produce a recovery program for the economic crisis Poland was experiencing at that time. The same year, he left his membership of the Political Bureau of the Polish United Workers Party and the Central Committee. He died in Warsaw, Poland from a heart attack at the age of 73.