1 - The Rise of Dissent in Poland

Summary

This chapter provides an overview of the history of dissent in Poland from the late 1960s to the suppression of Solidarity in 1981. It makes three points: It highlights the importance of transnational interactions for the rise of dissent, it demonstrates that Poland's Solidarity movement was indebted to dissident activism, and it shows the political dimension of dissident antipolitics. To do so, the chapter’s first section reconstructs the two cultural milieus out of which Poland's first dissident organizations, the Committee to Defend the Workers and the Movement to Defend Civic and Human Rights, evolved. The section also demonstrates that dissent has to be seen as a transnational movement by showing the impact which the rise of dissent in the Soviet Union had on these two groups as well as by looking at interactions between Polish and Czechoslovak groups. The second section shows how the Solidarity movement clearly evolved out of 1970s dissents even as it went beyond its narrow formula.