Gdansk – 4

I rarely use audio guides, but I must recommend them at the European Solidarity Centre as the information provided was clear, concise, and fitted in almost perfectly with what I saw. This may seem obvious but there is so much information to process that you have to concentrate all the time during the visit.

In 1980, the Lenin Shipyard was the 5th largest ship manufacturer in the world and the largest in the Baltic region. 17,000 people worked there on a site covering 150 hectares with its own hospital and cinema. Electricians such as Lech Walesa would use bicycles to move around. The industrial scale of the museum is emphasized at the start by the presence of hard hats covering an entire ceiling, an attendance control board with hundreds of available slots, and a wall full of individual lockers for workers’ essentials.

In the next room is a large photo of Leonid Brezhnev kissing Edward Gierek, the Polish Communist party first secretary at the time the Gdansk Agreements were signed. In the summer of 1980, price increases on essential foodstuffs set off protests across the country, especially in the Gdańsk and Szczecin shipyards. Unusually, the Communist regime decided not to resort to force to suppress the strikes. In the Gdańsk Agreement and other accords reached with Polish workers, Gierek’s representatives were forced to concede the right to strike, and Solidarity was born. Shortly thereafter, in early September 1980, he was replaced as first secretary, but from the Polish authorities’ perspective the door had been opened and the damage done. Solidarity kept going in an upwards trajectory.