1970 Polish protests

In December 1970, the government suddenly announced major increases in the prices of basic foodstuffs, especially dairy products, after bad harvests throughout the year. The increases proved to be a major shock to ordinary citizens, especially in the larger cities.[1]

Demonstrations against the price increases broke out in the northern Baltic coastal cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia, Elbląg, and Szczecin. The regime was concerned about an emerging wave of sabotage, which may have been inspired by the secret police, who wanted to legitimize a harsh response to the protestors.[2] Another possible reason why the secret police would instigate sabotage and violence would be to precipitate a change in the leadership of the ruling party, by causing violent deaths among the workers and then blaming the party for them.[3] It is known that the secret police had their agents among the striking workers (and recruited more in the aftermath). Actions of the secret police before and after the protests were codenamed akcja "Jesień '70".

Protests started on December 14. When a party official tried to convince the strikers to return to work, addressing them using loudspeakers on a police car, the strikers took over the police car and used the loudspeakers to announce a general strike, and to call for a manifestation in front of the party building to be held the same day. Fighting against the police started in the afternoon, and widespread fighting and rioting, including arson, continued until late in the evening.[4]

The police started rounding up workers, often random ones who did not participate in protests or rioting, and brutally beating them, commonly using a technique where the detainee was forced to move along a long row of policemen, all of them beating the detainee with their batons.[5]

On December 15 in Gdańsk, strikers set fire (reportedly twice) to the building of the Provincial Committee of the ruling party, which became an iconic moment of the protests. They also took some policemen prisoner, transported them to the shipyard, forced them to change into the workers' work clothing, and then transported them to a police station. Fire consumed the roof of the Provincial Committee's building until the protesters were repelled by a column of twenty OT-62 military armored personnel carriers. At least six people are known to be killed on December 15 in Gdańsk. Two more were shot to death the next morning, at or near the shipyard.[4][6]

In Gdynia, a neighboring city with its own shipyard, the protests were generally more peaceful than in Gdańsk - until the events of December 17.

Vice prime minister Stanisław Kociołek, in his televised speech on the evening of December 16, condemned the protesters but also called for the workers to get back to work. However, on the December 16/17 night, the shipyard in Gdynia was surrounded by the police and the military, including tanks. Responding to the vice PM's appeal proved deadly to some of the workers. In Gdynia, the soldiers had orders to stop workers returning to work and on December 17 fired into the crowd of workers emerging from their trains; at least 11 of them were killed. Then, in other parts of Gdynia, people were shot dead while protesting, bringing the official death toll in Gdynia to 18. The number of the wounded in Gdynia is far from certain but is estimated to be in the hundreds.[7][8][9][10][11]

The protest movement then spread to other cities, leading to strikes and occupations. The government mobilized 5,000 members of special squads of police and 27,000 soldiers equipped with heavy tanks and machine guns. Overall, more than 1,000 people were wounded and at least 44 killed,[9][12][13] and 3,000 arrested, by modern accounts. Only six people were initially reported dead by the government. All who died were buried overnight, with only the closest relatives present or no relatives present at all, in order to avoid spreading the riots.

The Party leadership met in Warsaw and decided that a full-scale working-class revolt was inevitable unless drastic steps were taken. With the consent of Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow, Gomułka, Kliszko, and other leaders were forced to resign: if the price rises had been a plot against Gomułka, it succeeded. Since Moscow would not accept Mieczysław Moczar, Edward Gierek was drafted as the new leader. The price increases were reversed, wage increases announced, and sweeping economic and political changes were promised. Gierek went to Gdańsk and met the workers, apologised for the mistakes of the past, promised a political renewal and said that, as a worker himself, he would now govern for the people.[14]

Stanisław Kociołek lost the position of vice prime minister. For a short time he remained a member of the Central Committee, but in February 1971 he was reassigned to diplomatic service. That was soon after in January 1971, in a reversal of the previous policy of secrecy, government-controlled media published the list of 44 people who were killed during the protests.[9] Kociołek is vilified in a song related to the events of December 1970, Ballada o Janku Wiśniewskim, as the person responsible for deaths of children and women. When workers were shot dead after listening to his appeal (seemingly being lured into a trap), the blame fell on him.

Although the aims of the protesters were mostly social and economic rather than political, the riots reinvigorated the dormant political activity of Polish society.[15] Nevertheless, the workers from the coast did not prevent the government from implementing its goal of increased food prices, which was achieved a few weeks later, after the 1971 Łódź strikes.

The Polish protests elicited broad sympathy and support, both in Western Europe and the Soviet bloc. There were copycat strikes on the Kühlungsborn Pier in East Germany and in Riga; Russian sailors on stranded Soviet ships shared their food with the citizens of Gdansk and Szczecin, while Polish strikers shielded Russian families in Poland from reprisals.[16]

• 
  Monument to victims of the 1970 protests in Gdynia
• 
  Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970 in Gdańsk
• 
  Monument to victims of massacres during the 1970 protests in Elbląg

• Jack Strong, a 2014 Polish film about Ryszard Kukliński, who was partly motivated by the massacre to spy for NATO
• Janek Wiśniewski, a fictional name given to then-unknown young victim, immortalised in Janek Wiśniewski poem and songs.
• Kosheh massacres, a similar event in Egypt
• Man of Iron, a movie by Andrzej Wajda in which the massacre plays an important role.
• Sharpeville massacre, a similar event in South Africa during the apartheid era
• Strike, a Polish-German movie about the Solidarity Movement.
• Tlatelolco massacre, a similar event in Mexico, just before the 1968 Summer Olympics, held in Mexico City
• Wanpaoshan incident, a similar event in Manchuria
• Czarny Czwartek. Janek Wiśniewski padł (Black Thursday. Janek Wiśniewski (in Polish) died), movie 2011

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Polish 1970 protests.

• Poland: The uprising of December 1970 (photos)