Influence Abroad
The survival of Solidarity was an unprecedented event not only in Poland, a satellite state of the USSR ruled (in practice) by a one-party Communist regime, but the whole of the Eastern bloc. It meant a break in the hard-line stance of the communist Polish United Workers' Party, which had bloodily ended a 1970 protest with machine gun fire (killing dozens and injuring over 1,000), and the broader Soviet communist regime in the Eastern Bloc, which had quelled both the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and the 1968 Prague Spring with Soviet-led invasions.
Solidarity's influence led to the intensification and spread of anti-communist ideals and movements throughout the countries of the Eastern Bloc, weakening their communist governments. The 4 June 1989 elections in Poland where anti-communist candidates won a striking victory sparked off a succession of peaceful anti-communist revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe known as the Revolutions of 1989 (Jesień Ludów). Solidarity's example was repeated in various ways by opposition groups throughout the Eastern Bloc, eventually leading to the Eastern Bloc's effective dismantling, and contributing to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, in the early 1990s.
Solidarity Party has strongly inspired and influenced the protests of the Arab Spring. The leader, Lech Walesa has visited Tunisian protestors in Tunisia in 2011.
In late 2008, several democratic opposition groups in the Russian Federation formed a Solidarity movement.
Read more about this topic: Solidarity (Polish Trade Union)
Famous quotes containing the word influence:
“Only let the North exert as much moral influence over the South, as the South has exerted demoralizing influence over the North, and slavery would die amid the flame of Christian remonstrance, and faithful rebuke, and holy indignation.”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“The Spirit of Place [does not] exert its full influence upon a newcomer until the old inhabitant is dead or absorbed. So America.... The moment the last nuclei of Red [Indian] life break up in America, then the white men will have to reckon with the full force of the demon of the continent.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)