Kor and the transformation of political dissent in Poland: the significance of the workers' defence committee

ABSTRACT

The emergence in 1976 of KOR, the Workers' Defence Committee, transformed dissident politics in Poland, and its long tradition of clandestine operations, spontaneous action and violent insurrection. By contrast, KOR promoted open, institutionalised dissent involving a process of trial and error subject to public criticism. Establishing itself as a model for dissidence, KOR encouraged the proliferation of decentralised activities including an uncensored samizdat press, and the formation of the independent trade union Solidarity. It also deliberately forged links among groups which had been isolated by the communist regime: the intelligentsia, workers, and peasants; and also between the Roman Catholic Church and non‐believers. KOR's impact on dissident activity survived the imposition of martial law — and its own dissolution — and was seminal to the collapse of communism in Poland in 1989.