A01=Roman Laba
Activism
Adam Michnik
Ahistoricism
Anna Walentynowicz
Author_Roman Laba
Category=NHD
Central Committee
Chairman
Comecon
Common front
Commoner
Communism
Comrade
Consciousness
Decentralization
Economism
Edward Gierek
Egalitarianism
Employment
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
Equal opportunity
Gdynia
Georges Sorel
Ideology
Imperialism
Independent union
Industrial action
Intelligentsia
Job security
Kulak
Kultura
Lech Walesa
Leninism
Military Council of National Salvation
National Reconciliation
Ostpolitik
Patriotism
Policy
Political party
Politics
Reasonable person
Reformism
Revolutionary song
Right to exist
Safe conduct
Sitdown strike
Social movement
Social revolution
Socialist realism
Socialist state
Solidarity (Polish trade union)
Solidarity Union
Solidarity unionism
Sovereignty
Statute
Strike action
Subsidy
Supervisor
Szczecin
The Internationale
The Public Interest
Trade union
Union organizer
Utilization
Utopia
Wojciech Jaruzelski
Working class
Workplace
Young Poland
Zenon Kliszko
Zionism
ZOMO
Zygmunt Bauman
Product details
- ISBN 9780691606897
- Weight: 369g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 14 Jul 2014
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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In July 1980, two weeks before the Gdansk shipyard strikes, Roman Laba arrived in Poland as an American graduate student. He stayed there for almost two and a half years before he was arrested and expelled from the country for "activities noxious to the interests of the Polish state." Laba had set himself the ambitious task of documenting the history of Poland's free trade union. Martial law was in force for the last year of his stay, but even during that time he continued his rescue of the unique historical materials that contribute so much to Roots of Solidarity. The book uses this hard-earned information to challenge the commonly accepted view of the Polish intelligentsia as the driving force behind Solidarity and to demonstrate that the roots of the movement go back a decade earlier than the 1980 strikes. Laba presents compelling evidence that Solidarity emerged directly from the activities of workers in the 1970s along the Baltic coast.
It was not the intellectual elite but these workers, independent of and unknown to the rest of Poland, who created three crucial strategies for struggle against oppression: the sit-down strike, the interfactory strike committee, and the demand for free trade unions independent of the party state. This concise and provocative work is divided into two parts. The first is a narrative of the creation of Solidarity. The second shows how workers' resistance to the Leninist state gradually generated new forms of democratic organizations and politics. Laba criticizes elitist ways of understanding social movements and also presents an unusual analysis of Solidarity's ritual symbolism. In addition, new evidence transforms our understanding of the role of the police and the army in a one-party state. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions.
The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
