„Nasz brak programu był w pewnym sensie również naszym programem” – myśl polityczna Wolnych Związków Zawodowych Wybrzeża
- Institution: Uniwersytet Gdański
- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7033-8216
- Year of publication: 2024
- Source: Show
- Pages: 147-165
- DOI Address: https://doi.org/10.15804/npw20244007
- PDF: npw/40/npw4007.pdf
“Our lack of programme was in a sense also our programme” – political thought of the Free Trade Unions of the Coast
The Free Trade Unions of the Coast were one of the most important organizations of the pre-August opposition. The purpose of the article is to reconstruct the political thought of the organization and to answer questions about who its exponents were, how they perceived the reality of the Polish People’s Republic and how they planned to change it. The concepts built by the WZZ of the Coast have been contrasted with other programs of such organizations in Poland. Also pointed out are the programmatic themes of the WZZ that remain relevant today. The article uses an analytical method of abstracting individual ideas contained in the political output of the members of the organization in question and reconstructing them as a certain ideological whole. The conclusions recognize that the WZZ of the Coast had a primarily worker-oriented and practice-oriented character, which distinguished it from the more intellectual KOR and ROPCiO. Also important to the organization were the traditions of patriotic socialism derived from the Polish Socialist Party and the events of December 1970.