Poland

Stefan Garsztecki

pp. 179-187

in: Martin Klimke, Joachim Scharloth (eds), 1968 in Europe, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2008

Abstract

The year 1968 was a year of great significance in Polish postwar history and a turning point for the country's breakthrough to democracy in 1989. It saw student protests, an anti-intellectual and anti-Semitic campaign, and power struggles within the ranks of the governing Communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR, Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza). It brought the end of revisionism in the Polish Left and bridged the gap between the opposing Left and the Catholic Church—the basis for the success of the independent trade union Solidarność at the beginning of the 1980s.