[6] In 1983 Solidarity's leader Lech Wałęsa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and the union is widely recognized as having played a central role in the end of communist rule in Poland.

[10] Anna Walentynowicz was fired from the Gdańsk Shipyard on 7 August 1980, five months before she was due to retire, for participation in the illegal trade union.

On 17 September 1980, over twenty Inter-factory Founding Committees of independent trade unions merged at the congress into one national organisation, NSZZ Solidarity.

[14][15][self-published source] In September 1981, Solidarity's first national congress elected Wałęsa as a president[11] and adopted a republican program, the "Self-governing Republic".

"[17] Michael Reisman from Yale Law School named operations in Poland as one of the covert regime change actions of the CIA during the Cold War.

Potential explanations for this vary; some believe that the CIA was caught off guard, while others suggest that American policy-makers viewed an internal crackdown as preferable to an "inevitable Soviet intervention.

[23] Henry Hyde, U.S. House intelligence committee member, stated that the USA provided "supplies and technical assistance in terms of clandestine newspapers, broadcasting, propaganda, money, organizational help and advice".

For his actions regarding Poland and Solidarity during his pontificate, he has been named by many world leaders, including Wałęsa himself, to be one of the main causes of the downfall of not just the Polish regime, but Communism as a whole in Europe.

[31] Although Leszek Kołakowski's works were officially banned in Poland, and he lived outside the country from the late 1960s, his philosophical ideas nonetheless exerted an influence on the Solidarity movement.

For Kołakowski, Solidarity was "perhaps closest to the working class revolution" that Karl Marx had predicted in the mid-1800s, involving "the revolutionary movement of industrial workers (very strongly supported by the intelligentsia) against the exploiters, that is to say, the state.

Solidarity's influence led to the intensification and spread of anti-Communist ideals and movements throughout the countries of the Eastern Bloc, weakening their Communist governments.

However, David Jastrzębski, the president of Upper Silesia Solidarity, voiced his support of the striking miners: "Neither the British government's mounted police charges nor its truncheon blows, any more than the Polish junta's tanks or rifle fire, can break our common will to struggle for a better future for the working class.

"[33] This was despite the fact that Arthur Scargill, president of the British National Union of Mineworkers had been highly critical of Solidarity, condemning it as an "anti-socialist organization which desires the overthrow of a socialist state".

However, according to Wałęsa, attempts to develop links between the two forces were hampered by their geographical distance, the dearth of media coverage of events outside Poland's borders and especially in South Africa.

After a one-year prison term the high-ranking members of the union were offered one way trips to any country accepting them (including Canada, the United States, and nations in the Middle East).

[2] National Commission of Independent Self-Governing Trade Union is located in Gdańsk and is composed of Delegates from Regional General Congresses.

Solidarity is divided into 37 regions, and the territorial structure to a large degree reflects the shape of Polish voivodeships, established in 1975 and annulled in 1998 (see: Administrative division of People's Republic of Poland).