class="MsoNormal">The July strikes lasted two weeks. The
Communist authorities eventually managed to bring them to an end peacefully,
mainly by granting economic concessions to the workers. However, the momentum
generated by the Lublin strikes quickly gave rise to a new wave of strikes in
the Gdańsk region in August 1980. The workers there used similar tactics as the
Lublin workers used a month before, and this time the Communist authorities had
to agree to the strikers' demand to set up an independent trade union, which
soon became the Solidarity
