Warsaw By John Darnton What happened in Poland in 1980 and 1981 constituted a revolution - one of those magical moments in history when a majority of a society is seized with the inspiration to overturn the existing order. In Solidarnosz, unarmed workers could confront the potentially brutal power of an armed and resourceful state, because they all stood up together, all at the same time, and they could see each other standing there. Martial law worked, in terms of stamping out immediate mutiny, not because it put the whole country into a prison, as some wrote at the time, but because it seemed to put every person inside a solitary jail, and so cut to the heart of what Solidarnosz was all about. Everyone felt, once again, alone and vulnerable. The events in Poland helped bring about the collapse of Communism in less than a decade, not just in Eastern Europe but in the Soviet Union as well. The Polish workers broke the myth that the communist party spoke for the working class and proved the power of united opposition. Ultimately martial law failed. Because the events changed those who lived through them, as revolutions are apt to do, the mass movement could be suppressed but not eliminated. I'm sometimes asked if I could have predicted the momentous changes that would come at the end of the 80's. I can honestly say that I did not know when things would change but I did know that they would change. And that knowledge came in part from the realization that three different Polands I had experienced were really very much the same - because of the spirit and resilience of the people and their unstoppable desire for freedom.