Interviews with Andrzej Gwiazda and Joanna Duda-Gwiazda

JOANNA DUDA-GWIAZDA: Let us first state that martial law [declared by Poland’s Communist government from 1981-1983] was living proof that the authorities were unable to subjugate Solidarity [a labor union formed by Gdansk ship builders that transformed into a nationwide resistance movement], they were unable to destroy its internal democracy, unable to deal with the independence of the union, and so they were left with naked force.

ANDRZEJ GWIAZDA: On December 12 [1981], there was a session of the National Committee, which was the supreme authority of the union, and after the end of the [National] Committee session, it actually ended in the time of martial law because they finished after midnight and that was when martial law came into force. And all – well, almost all the members of the Committee, the National Committee, were arrested.

JOANNA DUDA-GWIAZDA: Andrzej [Gwiazda] came back home, and I came back from some union meeting, during the night they broke down our door and we were driven to an internment camp in Szczebielinek. Thereafter, Andrzej was shipped to Białołęka – which was a prison in Warsaw – so we were technically interned, but when the interment was up, Andrzej was simply arrested and jailed – this is a very strange legal format [which was used], and charged with an “attempt to overthrow established authority by force.” Initially, this was subject to the death penalty. Happily, later on this charge was reduced to “preparation for overthrow of established authority”. For myself, I was released from the internment camp after seven months, at the time when interned women became subject to amnesty. I went back to work, and went back to doing what I had been doing before. So Andrzej was behind bars for a total of three years.

When he was released on July 22, 1984, he immediately set out traveling around the country, and trying to do what he had been doing before. Well, he was arrested on December 16, 1984 and was in jail until May 16, 1985. But we kept our good health, we kept our strength, kept our optimistic outlook, which unfortunately you could not say about some of our colleagues who already decided that [since] Solidarity had lost the war, you should accommodate any compromise at all.

Andrzej Gwiazda, born in 1935 in Pinczow, Poland, and his wife, Joanna Duda-Gwiazda, born in 1939 in Krzemieniec, Poland, were prominent anticommunist opposition leaders in the 1970s and 1980s.

Andrzej studied electronics at Gdansk University of Technology and graduated in 1966. Joanna Duda graduated from the Gdansk University of Technology in 1963 with a degree in engineering and shipbuilding.

After marrying in 1961, Andrzej and Joanna became more active in opposition movements. Andrzej participated in the student protests against the Polish government in 1968; he also took part in the December 1970 demonstrations that were sparked by sudden increases in food prices. In 1976, the Gwiazdas wrote a letter to the Polish Parliament expressing their support for the Workers’ Defense Committee, an anticommunist underground civil society organization in the 1970s, formed to provide assistance to laborers and others persecuted by the government. Soon after, the Gwiazdas were officially banned from leaving Poland and were placed under surveillance.

In 1978, Andrzej helped to found the Free Trade Unions of the Coast and began publishing and delivering its bulletin, Worker of the Coast. Joanna worked as the bulletin’s editor. Andrzej was a member of the Presiding Committee of the Strike at Gdansk’s Lenin Shipyard in August 1980, a workers strike that attracted nationwide, popular support and forced the communists to the negotiating table. Joanna also participated in the Lenin Shipyard strike and, along with her husband, co-authored the 21 demands issued by the Inter-Enterprise Strike Committee to the communist authorities advocating for the establishment of an independent trade union and other workers’ rights. The government accepted these demands in what became known as the Gdansk Agreement.

In 1980, Andrzej became the Vice President of the Founding Committee of Solidarity, and served as the Vice President of Solidarity, the first independent labor union in the communist world that transformed into a nationwide freedom movement. Joanna was a member of the Regional Board of Solidarity in Gdansk until December 1981, when the Gwiazdas were imprisoned after the government declared martial law in an effort to crackdown on political opposition. Joanna was released in July 1982 and Andrzej was held in prison until May 1985.

While the Gwiazdas opposed the Round Table Talks that led to semi-free elections in 1989, believing that Solidarity shouldn’t meet the demands of a weakening Communist Party, they remained active in their opposition to communism until its collapse. They have since retired to Gdansk.