1970 Gdynia massacre of 42 workers remembered

Protesters carry dead body of Zbigniew Godlewsk on a stretcher made from a door after massacre of 42 workers in Gdaynia, 1970: photo - IPN

Flowers were laid this morning at the foot of the Monument to the Victims of December at the Gdynia Shipyard on the Baltic coast and later on Monday, there will be a march to city town hall in memory of the dead protesters.

Poles took the streets in December 1970 after communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka announced a sudden rise in the price of many basic commodities after years of unsustainable price freeze.

Meat rose by 18 percent, flour by 17 percent and coal prices by 12 percent.

Demonstrations and strikes broke out in Gdansk, Gdynia and Szczecin in the north, which were brutally suppressed by 27,000 communists troops, and a hail of bullets were fired at workers in Gdynia on 17 December, with 42 killed during the month-long protests and over 1,000 wounded.

With the agreement of the Soviet leadership in Moscow under Leonid Brezhnev, Gomulka was removed from the communist leadership in Poland, price rises were reversed and a new regime of 'political renewal' was put in place under Edward Gierek.

The killing of 42 workers shocked Poles and led to new impetus in the opposition to communist rule, leading, eventually, to the forming of the Solidarity trade union in 1980 and the fall of the communist regime in 1989. (pg)