Prague, 6 November 1997 (RFE/RL) - Tomorrow in Warsaw opens a three-day international conference on the 1980 emergence of the independent labor union, Solidarity, and the subsequent imposition of martial law in Poland.
Organized by the National Security Archive of Washington and the Polish Academy of Sciences, the conference will bring together leading political and military personalities of the period.
Among those in attendance will former U. S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, former Warsaw Pact commander Viktor Kulikov, former Polish communist leaders General Wojciech Jaruzelski and Stanislav Kania and several other ranking officials from the U. S, Russia, Germany and other countries.
Solidarity was the first independent labor organization to emerge in the communist system. Its emergence is widely considered as vital to the subsequent collapse of that system.
The Polish commmunist imposed martial law on Poland in December in a move designed to suppress the independent union.