The explosion of industrial militancy in Poland during July and August 1980 left few who followed the daily developments untouched. The ironies inherent in the confrontation were so numerous, complex, and profound, that they generated considerable interest throughout the Western world. Whether it was the phenomenon of Polish workers apparently demanding communism without the communists, that of the AFL-CIO providing aid to workers in an ostensibly socialist system, or that of Western financial capital interests lining up on the side of a communist government against its own working class, many an observer has discerned in some aspect of the crisis a unique development which demands adjustment in the way in which we think about industrial relations, communist systems, and politics more generally in the industrial societies of the late twentieth century. Even those of us who had been interested in Polish industrial relations before the recent crisis discovered in it much food for thought; for although it is to some extent obviously another (albeit more extreme) instance of the long historical trend of working class-state confrontation in Poland, there are also a number of aspects of the crisis which seem importantly different from those of 1956, 1970-71 and 1976. The three most obvious of these concern the historically unparalleled staying power and organizational self-discipline of the striking workers; the different social groupings, with the intellectuals allying themselves to the workers and the Catholic church equivocating and finally coming out against the continuation of the strikes and for the forces of "order"; and the response of the Party to the crisis, which was more subtle and sophisticated than in previous years. The authorities seemed more genuinely concerned, perhaps because they had no other option, to search for a political resolution