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Poland marks 41st anniversary of Solidarity

30.08.2021 21:15
Celebrations have started in Poland to mark the 41st anniversary of the signing of the so-called August Accords, a landmark 1980 agreement that ultimately led to the formation of Solidarity, the first free trade union in a Warsaw Pact country. 
Audio
Europejskie Centrum Solidarności European Solidarity Center
Europejskie Centrum Solidarności/ European Solidarity CenterECS, mat. promocyjne

Concluded and signed between striking workers and the country's communist authorities, the August Accords—also known as the Gdańsk Agreement—were widely seen as one of the first steps in a gradual process of bringing down communism in Poland and across the Eastern bloc over the next nine years.

One place to find out more about those historical events is the European Solidarity Center, a museum and library in Gdańsk on Poland's Baltic coast that tells the story of the famous Polish trade union.

A couple of years after the museum opened on August 31, 2014, reporter Maciej Bąk joined the European Solidarity Center's Magdalena Charkin on a tour of the building, which looks like a rusty ship in the middle of the former shipyard.

Click on the audio player above to listen.