Poland Celebrates Freedom And Civil Rights Day

The holiday is associated with the June 4, 1989 election as a turning point on the road to restoring democracy.

36 years ago, on June 4, 1989, Poland held the first round of parliamentary elections organized under the terms agreed upon during the Round Table talks. These were the first partially free elections to the Sejm and fully free elections to the restored Senate in the country's post-war history, Polish Radio reported.

The Senate was abolished in the Polish People's Republic after a rigged referendum in 1946. Solidarity, led by Lech Walesa, won a convincing victory in the 1989 elections.

For the first time since 1945, the opposition was allowed to vote. For the first time, the Senate was also elected, making Poland's National Assembly bicameral.

Historian, Professor Andrzej Paczkowski in 2011 called in He emphasized that this election reflected the true mood of society and sent a clear signal to the communist government:

"It was a public response to what was developed and proposed at the Round Table. Did society have a say in it? After all, this was the beginning of democracy building. Which means the public's opinion was the most important. The scale of this victory meant a real knockout - the Communist Party lost its legitimacy not only to govern, but to exist itself."

The election results changed the political landscape of the country. On August 24, 1989, Tadeusz Mazowiecki became the first non-socialist prime minister in Central Eastern Europe since the end of World War II. Following Poland, changes began in other countries of the socialist bloc. Thus began the so-called "Autumn of Nations" in Europe, symbolized by the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989.

On June 4, Poland celebrates Freedom and Civil Rights Day, a public holiday established by the Sejm in 2013 to commemorate the momentous elections of 1989.

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