The Power of the Powerless - The Workers Defense Committee (KOR)

The Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) was founded in 1976 in Poland. Its primal objective was to help people persecuted by the state. A year later it was transformed into the Committee for the Social Self-Defence 'KOR', which took up the continuous struggle for civil rights. Several hundred activists of the dissent movement created a parallel world in which the germs of civic society emerged - uncensored press and publishing houses, independent groups of students and farmers, the Flying University and free trade unions.Thus, KOR's founders created the new model of opposition in the communist system: acting openly in the framework of the law, founded on human and civil rights, non-violent, focused on reconstructing social ties and social consciousness, inciting social activity. This evolutionary strategy set the direction of democratic transition in Poland.