Introduction

Abstract

In 1980, Poles were the first to jump the communist ship and organize outside of the Communist Party, forming a ten-million strong alternative labor union, Solidarity. When the Communist government banned the Union in 1981, Poles refused to dissolve it. They went underground forming Solidarity-sponsored schools, theaters, newspapers, and political groups. In so doing, Solidarity activists created an alternative civil society that emerged nearly intact in 1989 when Poles were the first to throw off Soviet-backed communism. Yet now, in this land of self-liberation and freedom, the highly conservative Law and Justice party, led by Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczyński, won the 2005 elections on a pro-Catholic, antigay, antiabortion, anticommunist, and xenophobic platform. Now the Kaczyński government is hounding government officials, professors, lawyers, doctors, managers, journalists, judges, and bank managers out of jobs for refusing to declare whether or not they collaborated with the communist security forces. Poles, who during the Solidarność era reached out in solidarity to activists around the world, are now redefining Polish citizenship as singularly Polish and Catholic. Founded as a worker's movement, Solidarity has overseen the diminution of the Polish working class, the emasculation of unions, the downward spiral of purchasing power, and one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe.