Polish Roundtable Revolution

In 1989 negotiations between Poland government and the banned Solidarity union produced partially free elections that swept the communists from power.

Overview

Strikes at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 created Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Soviet bloc, with nearly ten million members before martial law crushed it in December 1981. Economic collapse and new strikes in 1988 pushed both sides to roundtable talks from February to April 1989. The agreement legalized Solidarity, allowed a free press, and scheduled June elections in which all Senate seats and a third of Sejm seats were freely contested. Solidarity won every freely contested seat, and in August 1989 Tadeusz Mazowiecki formed the first noncommunist government in the bloc since the 1940s. Poland negotiated exit from communist rule, breaking the first domino of 1989.