series of unexpected price changes were announced. Consumer goods only rose a small percentage in price, but certain foods had huge price increases. Flour rose by sixteen percent, sugar rose by fourteen percent, and meat cost seventeen percent more. On the next morning three thousand workers from the Lenin shipyard at Gdansk marched on the provincial party headquarters. The workers were ordered back to work, the maddened workers incited a riot. With fires started and stones thrown, the city militia could not hold the masses back. On Tuesday, December fifteenth, the workers at the Paris Commune Shipyard in Gdynia stopped work and demonstrated in the main streets. A general strike was announced in Gdansk, and the police opened fire on demonstrators. Men on both sides were killed. In the fighting the Party building and the railway station was burned down. The next day the rebellion spread to the towns of Slupsk and Eblag, and the workers at the Warski Shipyards in Szczecin were preparing to strike. Reports were coming in of supportive strikes in other cities.On Wednesday workers began occupation strikes in factories. On Thursday morning, workers walking to the Paris Commune yard were fired on, at least thirteen were killed. Later that day workers from the Szczecin shipyard surged out into the city, and street fighting, costing at least sixteen lives, continued through Friday. By Saturday it appeared a nation-wide strike would inssue. Twenty-one demands were drawn up by the workers, one of which asked for 'independent trade unions under the authority of the working class'. Although this was not achieved in 1970, it is apparent that this was clearly a marking of a new era in the thought process of the Polish workers. The course of action that Prime Minister Gomulka took cost him his job, he was the one who ordered the use of fire arms against workers. Brezhnev himself advised a political rather than a military solution. Gomulka's fate was s...
