Twenty-five years ago, on January 27, 1989, a joint statement from the communist government of Poland, the Solidarity trade union, and the Catholic Church announced a national “Roundtable” to discuss the country’s future, including major structural issues of political and economic reform.
The Roundtable began the following month; basic agreements were reached in April; partially-free elections, swept by Solidarity candidates, were held in June; and in September a Solidarity leader, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, became Poland’s first non-communist prime minister since World War II.