4 - Solidarity’s Sacred Politics

Summary

In the transformative decade marked by the rise of Solidarity (1980–1989), the cross came to serve as a source of metaphysical legitimation for the growing opposition movement. Used to imply the “sacred” nature of anti-Communist mobilization, the symbol of the cross became not only a default signal of anti-Communist politics, but also an extremely popular motif that came to dominate both Solidarity’s visual culture and Poland’s memorial landscape. Solidarity used the symbol to mark spaces of anti-Communist dissent, mourn workers killed in standoffs with the police, and foster a rift in the popular mind between “the nation” and the Communist rulers, portrayed as “anti-nation.” Three case studies illuminate how the symbol was instrumental in both solidifying and challenging this boundary. Communist attempts to hijack celebrations held at the foot of the Poznań Crosses in commemoration of the workers’ rebellion of 1956, Solidarity’s campaign to rebrand May Day using Catholic symbols, and the project to display the symbol of the cross during the fortieth anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising throw into relief the contradictory nature of the symbol in the late socialist period