Notes on the Solidarity movement in Poland.

The first 200 words of this essay...

Solidarity

How it started:

* Throughout the years of communist rule in Czechoslovakia, strikes relating to low wages or high food prices have been evident.

* Strikes took place in both 1956 and 1970 which resulted in the increase in wages, decrease in food prices or both.

* The polish did not intend to get rid of their government or put up resistance against the USSR; they only wanted to improve their standard of living.

* The Poles were aware that they lacked behind the workers in the West.

* The government was aware that it could not survive unless it fulfilled the Poles demands for consumer goods.

* Poland performed well economically during the first half of the 1970s. In a survey conducted in 1975, 60% of Poles thought that living conditions were going to continue to improve. Summary: The poles were becoming more well-off and were optimistic about the future.

* Poland faced an economic crisis in the late 1970s. The situation got worst from 1976. 1979 was the worst year for the Polish industry in their history of communist rule.

* The government used propaganda to