Lublin July (1980)

[1] On January 1, 1980, Edward Gierek, First Secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party, gave a New Year's speech in which he admitted that Poland was in an economic slump, adding that the difficulties had been caused both by drought in the summer of 1979 and by the severe winter of 1979-1980.

More than a month later, on February 9, the Central Statistical Office disclosed data about Polish State revenue, announcing that compared to the previous year, it shrank by 2%.

On February 18, Polish hierarchy with Primate Stefan Wyszynski, emphasized bad economic situation of the country and urged the government to talk to the nation.

In the Ursus tractor factory, the workers organised assemblies, composed a list of demands, and elected a strike committee.

On the same days, following Świdnik's example, workers of Lublin's branch of the state Polmozbyt auto parts and repairs service joined the strike.

Workers of the Truck Factory also created their Strike Committee of 80 members, and demanded, among others, abolition of hard-currency shops and special outlets for privileged groups of society, as well as raising their family allowances to the levels received by the army and militia.

The strikes of the Lublin and Dęblin junctions paralyzed rail links between the Soviet Union and the Red Army garrisons in the German Democratic Republic.

[5] It must be mentioned, that during the strikes, the workers did not repeat mistakes of the Poznań 1956 protests and the 1970 events in Pomerania and avoided going out on the streets, instead staying in their factories.

[9] In most cases, the government was willing to resolve the strikes in favor of the workers, by "buying them off", so long as the strikers did not demand independent trade unions.

[15] The last strikes in Lublin ended on July 25, after a delegation of the government, together with Mieczyslaw Jagielski, Jozef Pinkowski, and Zdzislaw Kurowski, agreed to most of the demands, such as free Saturdays, improvement in food supplies and earlier retirement age.

The events of Lublin in July 1980 brought a final break in the official, Communist so-called "propaganda of success" that systematically exaggerated the country's economic performance to keep the population in line.