Solidarność
As a young girl growing up in rural Ontario, I learned of Poland as the old country, the place from which my mother’s family had been torn away; a country that was, in my grandmother’s words, divided up into pieces (w kawałki) by neighbouring powers and dished out like a cake (ciasto).
Staring out the passenger window as we drove through the city to our regular Saturday visits with Grandmother and Grandfather I noticed red & white banners appearing on balconies and porches. Not only does Windsor, Ontario have a large blue-collar community of factory workers in the automotive and tooling industries, it is also host to a large Polish immigrant population. Were these banners early Christmas decorations, I wondered?
“What do the banners say?” I asked my mother.
“Solidarność,” she pronounced each syllable emphatically. “It means Solidarity.”
The English translation was no clearer to me than the Polish word. I pondered it in silence for another kilometre or so, but realized I was lacking the information to crack the code of meaning. I asked my mother what it meant.
“It’s difficult to explain. There is something happening now in Poland. Workers are fighting for their rights, they are fighting to be respected. It is a movement of hope, and of freedom from oppression”
This brought up a whole new set of considerations. Who were the workers fighting exactly? Also, were they actually fighting, or just fighting the way adults I knew fought, which meant shouting a lot about politics? Oppression was another word whose meaning I had difficulty grasping, but it certainly sounded heavy and unpleasant.
As the weeks and months went on, more and more banners went up, and Solidarność entered our household debates. I wondered what this meant for Poland. Were the workers winning the fight?
The Poland I imagined was a blurry place formed of terrible stories my grandmother told me about being sent away to work camps in Siberia during the war ‒ but also of the delicious foods cooked by my grandmother. Mostly it was a place I discovered through the grammar books and illustrated collections of fairy tales that she read to me during long Saturday afternoons while my brother napped and my mother enjoyed her child-free time to run errands and go shopping.
Some of my mother’s family lived there still. I knew that theirs was a serious and unhappy situation. The letters that we received from family were either terse and uninformative, “Happy Easter!” (Wesołych Świąt!), written on a flimsy postcard depicting a cheerful yellow bouquet; or they arrived already opened, with entire paragraphs blacked out in heavy marker. Whenever this happened, there was a lot of frowning concern around the table.
After carefully calculating and recalculating time zones, my mother placed calls that sometimes went through, and sometimes didn’t. When they did go through, they seemed to always cut off at odd moments, leaving her shouting into the void. We regularly brought boxes containing shoes, clothing, and school supplies to a postal counter with a little sign reading “Paczki do Polski” (Parcels to Poland) to send to cousins I’d never met.
Lech Wałęsa became a household name. My Uncle, who sported the same handlebar mustache and ruddy good looks got used to being jokingly called “Lech”.
It would be 10 long years yet before the Solidarność movement came to power. The world watched in disbelief as the seemingly unshakeable iron fist shook with blow upon blow; first with the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989, and then Wałęsa’s election a year later as the first President of Poland ever elected in a popular vote. The Soviet Union was dissolved by Gorbachev in December 1991.
Although hailed as a hero, Wałęsa’s rise to power was to be short lived, as the inevitable in-fighting and recriminations that accompany a long transition from state-run to free-market economy took their toll on a leader who was used to leading the Union, not the Nation. Lech Wałęsa lost his bid for re-election in 1995, but remains a potent symbol of the power of popular movements.
In December 1990, just weeks after Wałęsa’s election, my brother and I visited Poland for the first time with our mother, uncle “Lech” and our cousin. With the fall of communism, my grandparents had decided to return there. “I want to die in my country” Grandmother had announced with her usual melodramatic flair.
The entire country seemed surprised by the recent turn of events. Like a young bride who’s overslept on her wedding day, she was disheveled and only half-dressed, but glowing and giddy. Used to years of food lines, restrictions on movement and strict state control, freedom was intoxicating. Restaurants advertised extensive menus, but when it came time to order, waiters would answer, slightly embarrassed, with a more modest list of choices of what was actually available in the kitchen.
As the Polish diaspora marks the 40 year anniversary of Solidarność, we remember Poland’s long and patient struggle for freedom. It is thanks to the perseverance of oppressed workers who refused to withdraw their demands that state control was ultimately dissolved, and Poland entered the era of democracy. May their victory continue to be celebrated, lest we too quickly forget the sacrifices made to win Poland’s freedom.
#Solidarność40
