This text analyzes the politics of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL) towards the strikes in the Tri-City area (Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot) during August 1980. Drawing from materials from Gdańsk’s regional party archive (KW PZPR), the Central Archives of Modern Records in Warsaw (AAN), the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), and Washington’s National Security Archive, as well as from the accounts of representatives of those in power, the author reconstructs the decision-making processes that lead to signing the Gdańsk Agreements.
The strikes of July 1980 which reached a peak in the Lublin Voivodeship were a prelude to the Gdańsk conflict. During this time the authorities tested the tactics of concessions concerning wages and entertaining “local, institutional” demands. Having survived the first wave of strikes, they concluded that the danger of destabilization had been averted; all the more so, since calm prevailed in the large industrial centers of the country.
Although the strike at the Gdansk shipyards in August 1980 surprised the authorities, the tactics of wage concessions at the largest institution and the promise to build a monument to those killed in December 1970, while ignoring the protests in the smaller workplaces, initially brought success. At first both the government and the workers failed to notice a newly formed force to reckon with – a collective representation of the striking workers, inspired by the activities of the Gdańsk opposition. On August 16, the Gdańsk shipyards became the headquarters of the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee (Międzyzakładowy Komitet Strajkowy, MKS) which was joined by successive workplaces. After a week-long delay, the Government Commission took on negotiations with the Gdańsk MKS. All the same time, the Ministry for Internal Affairs was planning its own alternative “forceful solution” to the problem.
The lack of an efficient blockade of information weakened the position of the authorities, as foreign journalists showed up at the shipyards and Radio Free Europe reported on the negotiations. The arrests of dozens of the more prominent activists also failed to weaken the opposition. While support for the strike was growing throughout Poland, the resulting huge wave of strikes across the country proved decisive. In the face of such an enormous scale of support, the central government had to cool down the radicals within its own ranks and tried to reach an exotic alliance with the Catholic Church and the Americans. The party leaders in the Tri-City area took a pragmatic stance – urging negotiations. The intransigence of the striking workers made the demand for a new trade union seem all the more palatable. The USSR did not protest the decision to sign the Agreements, which was seen by the Polish communist authorities as “no red light.” The agreement itself, in their view, was to be only a temporary concession, forced by their disadvantaged position, which after changing the balance of power could be withdrawn.
