Re-visiting ‘Solidarność’: Propaganda of Protest and Campaigning of the Social Movement

Abstract

This article analyzes Polish Solidarity’s propaganda practice. Drawing from a discursive archive comprising cultural artifacts, the movement’s policy statements, and augmented by interviews, this Foucault-inspired study reveals how “propaganda of protest” became a “pillar” of the Solidarity movement’s campaigning. This study analyzes propaganda strategies and tactics for mobilization and political engagement among Poles, and how campaigning aided power shifts between the movement and the authorities. Contextualizing this analysis in the Sovietized settings, this study shows that propaganda was inherent to Solidarity’s transgressive and subversive campaigning in multiple areas of the movement’s agency: mobilization and support building, construction of collective identities, coalition-building, issues management and policymaking, and implementation. Finally, I argue, that the qualities of Solidarity’s propaganda were culturally-grounded, based on the self-presentation strategies as well as the zeitgeist belief in engagement of workers’ with trade unionism rather than policies of the state socialist regime.