Gdańsk's Solidarity Museum

Another absolute must-visit Museum in the Tri-city area is (to give it its official title) the European Solidarity Centre. Another world-class museum that attracts visitors from far and wide, to see where the course of our human history was changed for the better.

I'll start with a personal reflection. It was conventional wisdom in the mid-1980s that the world was split into the West, the Soviet bloc and its allied communist states, and the non-aligned Third World. And that is how things would remain for ever and ever and ever. My British friends advised me to forget about Poland's struggles for freedom from the Soviet yoke; Martial Law in 1981 showed how such things would end. Just as they did in Berlin in 1953, in Budapest in 1956, in Prague in 1968 – with tanks in the street. All protest is futile. That's just the way things are. But the peoples of Central and Eastern Europe did not give up. The system under which they lived was unjust, brutal and stupid. They knew that one day it must topple. The only questions were when, under what circumstances, and what they had to do to achieve their dream of freedom and dignity.

The planned economy imposed on the Soviet satellite states was unable deliver toothbrushes effectively, let alone cars or flats or good food at affordable prices. Protest against this system and you're met with repression. And with every decade that passed since the end of WW2, the gap in living standards with the West grew wider and wider.

Something had to snap; Gdańsk was the place where a crack opened up that would within a decade topple the entire system based on Marxism, Leninism and brute force. But how did that happen? 

That's what the Solidarity museum is all about. In terms of narrative, it takes up the story of Poland (and more broadly of Central and Eastern Europe) where the WW2 museum left off – in 1945, with the region subjugated by Stalin's Soviet Union. 

When visiting the museum, it's worth the extra money and time to start by visiting the separate 'temporary' exhibition dedicated to the Gdańsk shipyard. [It's been here for four years, according to the museum's website!] This presents the city's history of shipbuilding from the days of the Prussian kingdom, through the role of the shipyards (two of them – one private, one state-owned) in building U-boats in WW1 and WW2 (making Gdańsk a target for allied bomber in the latter conflict), and on to its development in postwar communist Poland. By the 1960s, a unified shipyard became the world's fifth-biggest producer of ships (nearly all built for the Soviet Union). It was here, in 1980, that the Solidarity story begins.

But before the strikes, triggered by the sacking of crane operator Anna Walentynowicz, there were workers' protests in Poznań (1956), Gdynia and Szczecin (1970) and Radom, Ursus and Płock (1976), when Polish workers rose up against the 'workers' paradise' imposed upon them by Soviet tanks. Upstairs in the main exhibition, we are taken through halls explaining how the system had come into existence, the failures of the planned economy, the price-hikes in basic foodstuffs that kicked off street protests, and the first attempts to set up independent and free trades unions.

Below, from left: the cabin from which Anna Walentynowicz operated her crane; an electric truck that Lech Wałęsa* would use as a podium from which to address striking workers, and the Board with the 21 Demands, written down by striking workers on 17 August 1980, originally displayed on the shipyard's gates. This board is on UNESCO’s international Memory of the World Register, a list containing 570 of the most valuable documents of global significance.

The first attempt at wresting major concessions from the communist authorities ended in success with the August agreements of 1980, which included recognition by the government of free and independent trade unions. This was reneged on with the coming of martial law in December 1981. 

Left: an interrogation cell in a militia station. Over the next few years of repression when the economy continued deteriorating further, the Solidarity movement went underground, the reemerge in 1987. Price-hikes were followed by new waves of strikes; by early 1989 the government sat down behind a round table for talks with Solidarity, which resulted in the partially-free election of 4 June 1989. Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first non-communist prime minister for decades; by the end of the year, the parliament had amended the constitution to abandon the 'leading role' of the communist party and change Poland from a 'people's republic' to a normal republic.

The role of Pope John Paul II, who visited Poland three times before communism finally fell, is well documented in the museum. Below: a Popemobile, as used by the Pope during his visits to his native Poland. The most significant of all his foreign trips was his first visit to Poland in June 1979; it set in train a series of events leading up to the establishment of Solidarity and thus to the fall of communism across the region.

One exhibit concerns the creation of the Solidarność logo by poster artist, Jerzy Janiszewski. An inspired work of genius – it absolutely belongs to the ages.

The Soviet communist system collapsed not because the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, but because of the Polish shipyard workers who created a free trade union.

Something Poles would note when visiting the museum is a lack of partisan bias. No mud-slinging, no name-calling. Just the historical objectivity. 

Below: take the opportunity to go up to the viewing gallery on the top floor of the museum for this vista of Gdańsk's shipyards; 77 firms operate on its grounds today, busy building everything from offshore wind-turbine masts, to yachts for the mega-rich (Sunreef Yachts), as well as more traditional products such as ferries, container ships and LNG/LPG carrier vessels.

General impressions of Gdańsk tomorrow.

* Lech Wałęsa's offices and library are housed in the European Solidarity Centre building.

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