Women fighting Stalinism: the story of Anna Walentynowicz and the Solidarność movement

Submitted by cathy n on 12 March, 2019 - 11:52 Author: Jill Mountford
Anna Walentynowicz

How does a woman who adamantly refused to call herself a feminist and was vehemently “anti-communist”, who was a passionate Roman Catholic and held Pope John Paul II as one her heroes, and later friend, become an inspirational hero for socialist feminists?

She does so by being astonishingly courageous; by organising an underground workers’ group; and by challenging the Stalinist, anti-working class bureaucracy in her workplace over two long decades.

Anna Walentynowicz (1929-2010) was a crane operator in the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, where she had worked for thirty years and where she was a highly respected trade union activist. She had spent years being harassed and threatened by management for her efforts organising her fellow workers, and was sacked only a few months before she was due to retire, on August 7 1980. Her sacking sparked a strike. The strike ignited a movement.

Early on the morning of Thursday 14 August, a team of trade union activists leafletted for the strike, meeting trams and trains that dropped workers coming from the north. Another team met trains coming from the south. They were calling for Anna Walentynowicz's reinstatement and a pay rise of 1,000 złoty per month. Workers marched through the shipyard, collecting colleagues as they went. Before long the crowd had grown to a thunderous 8,000 workers.

A strike committee was set up with representatives from each department. The committee refused to negotiate until Anna Walentynowicz was with them and insisted that the Director's car was sent to pick her up. By August 16 management had caved into the workers' demands and Lech Wałęsa and other men on the strike committee declared a return to work.

It was Anna Walentynowicz and a number of other women, who argued with Lech Wałęsa to keep the strike going. Henryka Krzywonos was a transport workers’ shop steward, who used her tram on August 16 to bring Gdańsk to a total standstill. Alina Pienkowska was a 27-year old nurse and trade unionist at the shipyard, who organised local students to build solidarity with the workers' occupation and bring food and supplies. Ewa Ossowska was a militant who, learning about the strike from Danuta Wałęsa, ran to the shipyard and joined in with organisational efforts. All of these women were impressive orators, and together they stopped the workers from leaving. It was Henryka Krzywonos who, from the floor of the mass meeting deciding the fate of the strike, shouted, “If you abandon us, we’ll be lost. Buses can’t face tanks!”

The strike spread and took on the demands of other strikes on the Baltic coast. By 21 August Anna Walentynowizc and Lech Wałęsa were leading the new Solidarność (Solidarity) movement. In just over three weeks Solidarność forced the Stalinist authorities to sign up to a 21-point workers' charter that included the following demands: free and independent trade unions, the right to strike, the freeing of political prisoners and a free, uncensored media. By its first anniversary in August 1981, Solidarność had ten million workers in its ranks.

Solidarność was one of the first free trade unions in the Eastern Bloc and was the beginning of the end for the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe.

Solidarność had a membership that was more or less 50/50 women and men, despite the fact that women made up only 30 percent of the manual workers in the Lenin shipyard. And though they were underrepresented in the leadership of Solidarność, these women played a vital role in building the movement. And they did so despite carrying the double burden of hard wage-slavery for very poor pay and conditions, at the same time as carrying the responsibility of mothers and homemakers. When women were not working they were standing in long queues for basic food items, often at highly inflated prices.

Gender inequality in Poland was (and continues to be) shaped and bolstered by the Catholic Church, by traditional nationalist values about women and motherhood, and by Stalinism and the glorification of the family and a mother’s role within it. Despite the role played by women such as Anna, Henryka, Alina and Ewa and despite the solid support and involvement of millions of women in Solidarność, there was a lot of sexism within the movement. The top leadership of Solidarność included a president, two deputies, a presidium of 10 and a council of 100 workers, and there was not one woman to be seen among them.

Polish women were among the first to get the vote in 1918, they had limited abortion rights from 1932 and full abortion rights from 1956 (in fact, women from Sweden and Germany would travel to Poland to access abortion services). Poland is also the only post-Stalinist country that has developed a large women’s movement. This is out of necessity, in response to, in part, an anti-abortion policy introduced by none other than Lech Wałęsa, leader of the Solidarność strikes. He was elected President in 1990, and in 1993 introduced a law that completely reversed Poland's virtually free access to abortion, permitting abortion in only four situations: when a panel of doctors certifies that the pregnancy endangers the mother's life or seriously threatens her health; when a prosecutor certifies that the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest; when the foetus is determined to be seriously, irreparably damaged; and when needed to save the mother's life during an emergency. Today, Poland has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in Europe.

Stalinism was never socialism, but the revolt against it was socialism in the embryo, and having the freedom to organise, to think freely and independently, to make and fight for our independent class interests is the beginning of human emancipation. History has shown us the failings of Solidarność and its leaders, and the Polish working class continues to pay the price for those failures to this day. Nevertheless, the story of Anna Walentynowizc, Alina Pienkowska, Henryka Krzywonos, Ewa Ossowska and the other courageous and inspiring women at the heart of this historic, world-changing struggle in 1980 deserves to be remembered.

For a more in-depth history read our short book, Solidarność: The Workers' Movement and the Rebirth of Poland, 1980-1981 (2020), by Mark Osborn. Available to buy here: https://www.workersliberty.org/solidarnosc

Comments

Submitted by ali (not verified) on Sun, 15/09/2019 - 07:17

This is very informative article you can also check our article about Women's Right to get more information.

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