This year marks the 20th anniversary of the collapse of communism in Europe, which began with the historic round table talks of February 1989 in Poland, the birthplace of the Solidarity movement.
The Polish community in Ireland has organised a number of events to celebrate this momentous year. These include lectures and seminars held by the Polish Embassy in Dublin, and a film retrospective commemorating the defeat of communism and the re-birth of democracy in Poland during Kinopolis Polish film festival.
Poland’s Irish Ambassador Dr Tadeusz Szumowski, who also holds a PhD in history, explains the importance of remembrance of the events 20 years ago: “1989 constitutes a stepping stone in the contemporary history of not only Poland but also the whole European continent.”
An engine of transition
The political changes in Poland were initiated and driven not by politicians but by workers. Besides the iconic Lech Walesa, Zbigniew Bujak was one of the most resilient Polish opposition leaders fighting against communism. He was an electrician in Ursus, one of the biggest tractor factories in Poland in the late 1970s and 1980s.
He was also one of the leaders of the underground Solidarity movement in Poland, and from September 1980 a chairman of the Warsaw region branch. It was he who organised the underground committees, including the underground press and radio.
In 1984 Bujak was the last Solidarity leader to be captured after evading the secret police (Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa) for more than three years. But a general amnesty saw his release shortly afterwards, and he later participated in the important round table talks with the communist government. He was subsequently elected to the Sejm (Polish parliament) in general elections in the 1990s.
“Zbigniew Bujak is, right beside Lech Walesa, one of the engines of the political transition in Poland,” says Dr Szumowski.
The Solidarity movement and Polish struggles for independence drew Ireland’s attention at the time. In 1980, as a young journalist at the beginning of her career, Jacqueline Hayden went to Poland to write a series of articles for the Irish Press at the request of her editor, who wanted to know a little more about the home country of the then new Pope.
While there, she met the underground opposition act-ivists in KOR, labelled ‘dissidents’ by the communist government at the time. She was also introduced to Lech Walesa when he was still an ordinary electrician in the Gdansk shipyards. She witnessed first-hand the significant political changes in Poland, and interviewed many leaders of the communist party and the opposition.
It was a life-changing experience for Hayden, who went on to get a PhD in political science and now lectures at Trinity College. She is also the author of two books on the Polish transition – a process that ultimately concluded in the fall of the Berlin Wall, and of the Iron Curtain.
