Solidarność
Organizations
in wich Poland participates or participated

Solidarność

Solidarność means Solidarity. Full name: Niezależny Samorządny Związek Zawodowy "Solidarność" (Independent Self-governing Trade Union 'Solidarity'). This organization is a Polish trade union federation founded in September 1980 at the then Lenin Shipyards, and originally led by Lech Wałęsa. In the 1980s it constituted a broad anti-communist social movement.

The government attempted to destroy the union with the martial law of 1981 and several years of repressions, but in the end it had to start negotiating with the union. In Poland, the Roundtable Talks between the weakened government and Solidarity-led opposition led to semi-free elections in 1989. By the end of August a Solidarity-led coalition government was formed and in December Wałęsa was elected president. Since 1989 Solidarity has become a more traditional trade union, and had relatively little impact on the political scene of Poland in the early 1990s. A political arm was founded in 1996 as Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS) won the Polish parliamentary election, 1997, but lost the following Polish parliamentary election, 2001. Currently, Solidarity, or the remnants of it, has little political influence in modern Polish politics.
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Polonica stamps:

Guinea-Bissau 2010, 10 VIII
 Hungary 2001, 15 VIII