What is the story of the women behind the Polish democratization movement?
The women in my book belonged to Solidarity, the only independent grassroots trade union movement in the Soviet Bloc. We all remember that Solidarity was headed by Lech Walesa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner, and other muscular, mustachioed working class heroes. But when the Communist government imposed martial law in December 1981 and arrested almost all the male leaders and forced the rest into hiding, a group of women in Warsaw – the journalists I mentioned – immediately found one another and put together a plan to rescue their splintered trade union by organizing an underground network reminiscent of what had been done under Nazi occupation in WW II. These women were communication experts with business and managerial savvy. Their strategy was to find and protect all the men in hiding, preserve their role as the leaders and spokespersons for Solidarity, and publish a weekly forum in which the leaders could inform the population and inspire hope. The newspaper they produced, Tygodnik M
