By the strike’s second week, the communist government – alarmed by the scale of the unrest – sent a delegation to negotiate in Gdańsk. They made rapid concessions: the authorities agreed to reinstate Walentynowicz and Wałęsa to their jobs, granted raises, and even consented to build a memorial for the workers killed in 1970encyclopedia.comencyclopedia.com. These partial victories led Wałęsa and some others to consider ending the strike on August 16, thinking they had won enough. But Walentynowicz and several militant colleagues (notably another woman activist, Alina Pienkowska) were not ready to stopen.wikipedia.org. They knew many of the boldest demands – free unions, free speech, releasing prisoners – were still unmet and that other factories were counting on Gdańsk to hold the line. As Wałęsa prepared to announce the strike’s end, Walentynowicz and Pienkowska famously intervened to keep the strike goingen.wikipedia.org. According to numerous eyewitnesses, it was these women who shut the shipyard gates to prevent workers from dispersing and passionately argued that they could not abandon fellow strikers across Polanden.wikipedia.org. Walentynowicz implored the wavering men to think of the jailed activists and repressed citizens who had no voice. “Our aim should not be just a slightly thicker slice of bread for ourselves,” she had earlier told her co-workers. “We must consider the needs of others… Your problems are my problems”en.wikipedia.org. Her moral clarity carried the day. The strike continued, broader than before – no longer just for one woman’s job, but in solidarity with an entire nation’s aspirations (indeed, “Solidarity” (Solidarność) soon became the official name of the newborn movement).
On August 31, 1980, the regime capitulated. The government’s negotiators signed the Gdańsk Agreement, acceding to all 21 demandsencyclopedia.com. For the first time in postwar Eastern Europe, a Communist government recognized the right of workers to form independent unions and agreed to sweeping reforms. It was an unprecedented victory for a non-violent popular movement – one that would have seismic consequences far beyond Poland. Yet in the flush of victory, there were signs of the struggles to come. Tellingly, when it came time to formally sign the agreement, neither Walentynowicz nor any other woman was at the table – the accord was signed entirely by male delegates, reflecting a tendency to sideline women even in a movement they had done so much to propelencyclopedia.com. Walentynowicz, who had risked everything to speak truth to power, now watched as others took the spotlight. Still, she had helped awaken a spirit that would not be easily extinguished. In the months after the strike, nearly ten million Poles – more than a quarter of the country’s population – joined the new Solidarity trade union, making it the largest independent labor union in the worldencyclopedia.com. Walentynowicz’s dismissal had indeed “triggered a massive strike movement leading directly to the birth of Solidarity”encyclopedia.com, setting in motion events that by decade’s end would help topple communist rule in Poland and eventually across Eastern Europe.
Solidarity’s Rise and Fractures
In Solidarity’s exhilarating early days, Walentynowicz was celebrated as a hero of the working class. She served on the Presidium (leadership committee) of the Gdańsk Inter-Factory Strike Committee during the August strike and was later elected to the founding Presidium of Solidarity’s Gdańsk regionen.wikipedia.org. However, as the movement transitioned from the barricades to the boardrooms, Walentynowicz’s uncompromising honesty and egalitarianism began to ruffle feathers within Solidarity’s upper ranks. Her once-ally Lech Wałęsa, who became Solidarity’s chairman and the face of the movement, had a vastly different style – pragmatic, media-savvy, and at times autocratic. The two had never been personally close; in fact, when Walentynowicz and Wałęsa traveled to Rome in January 1981 to meet Pope John Paul II (the Polish pontiff whose moral support had buoyed Solidarity), they even bickered in front of the Pope over who should stand first in the reception lineencyclopedia.com. It was a petty spat, but it symbolized a deeper clash of egos and visions.
Walentynowicz remained true to her grass-roots sensibilities. She was wary that Solidarity’s newfound legal status and popularity might be hijacked by political opportunists or diluted by compromise. In April 1981, when Solidarity was formalizing its structures, Walentynowicz’s blunt criticism of certain decisions led to her ouster from the union’s governing body in Gdańsken.wikipedia.org. Officially, she was accused (without evidence) of instigating unauthorized strikes and stirring opposition to Wałęsa’s leadershipen.wikipedia.org.
A later investigation cleared her of any wrongdoing and noted that the committee that removed her had no authority to do soen.wikipedia.org.