The Promise of Solidarity? The Ambiguous Legacy of Contentious Politics in Postcommunist Europe

Polish opposition to communism, culminating in the formation of the Solidarity Trade Union, was an early example of an innovative form of social revolution, which was urban, civic, contentious, and non-violent. This paper traces how the contentious political tactics pioneered by Solidarity proliferated in other Eastern Bloc countries in the 1980s and was transformed under postcommunist rule, in both the eras of Color Revolutions and populist backsliding. It assesses the long-term effects of this form of contentious politics for the prospects of democracy in the region in the contemporary era and finds the results decidedly mixed, and it prospects somewhat gloomy.