Introduction

Abstract

During the night of 13 December 1981, an unprecedented process of liberalisation inside the Soviet bloc came to an abrupt halt when the Polish authorities imposed martial law in their country. Dissidents and members of Solidarity – the first independent trade union in communist Poland – were arrested, and the rights and freedoms they had fought so hard to extract from the authorities were revoked. These dramatic events did not pass without notice in Western Europe and the United States. Western governments had anxiously followed the uprising in Poland that had led to the process of liberalisation, starting with the Gdansk Agreement in August 1980, which had given workers the right to organise freely. When martial law was imposed 16 months later, Western governments expressed their dissatisfaction by imposing a number of sanctions against the Soviet Union and Poland.