Editor’s note: During the spring 2026 semester, Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) will highlight examples of survival, contemplation, competition, protest and learning in their exhibition, “Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections.”

Curated by six faculty members from the Hesburgh Libraries and featuring pieces housed in six of RBSC’s distinct collections, “Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections” showcases the universality of constructing community and cultivating hope across time and place.

Throughout the semester, the Hesburgh Libraries website will feature news articles about each of the six faculty curators, providing insight into the stories behind their individual exhibits. Previously, we featured stories about the exhibits “A Community of Learners in Colonial America and the Early Republic,” “The Gay Olympic Games: Community Through Sport,” “Ireland’s Idealized Community,” “Transnational Communities of Resistance during El Salvador’s Civil War,” and “Women Religious in Male Spaces.”

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Printed secretly in homes and underground workshops, the materials were meant to be discarded—the movement wasn’t.

Founded by workers at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdańsk, Poland, in August 1980, Solidarność (Solidarity) was an independent, self-governing trade union. Dedicated to workers' rights and social change, the grassroots movement was led by former electrician Lech Wałęsa, who later won the Nobel Peace Prize and went on to serve as Poland's president in the early 1990s.

With its red “Solidarność” (Solidarity) logo, the trade union became a powerful force that challenged the communist government.

That logo, along with photographs, a comic book, and several handmade handbills, is featured prominently in “A Community of Solidarity.” The exhibit, curated by Natasha Lyandres, Russian and East European studies librarian and curator, is currently on display as part of “Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections.”

“People tend to think about Solidarity as a trade union and movement that stood for the economic rights of workers, but it was also a political movement for human rights and against the totalitarian state,” Lyandres said.

The organization's membership peaked at about 10 million in 1981, and despite the government's attempt to suppress it through martial law, the movement continued underground.

As its operations went underground, so did the printing of its materials. To stay under the government's radar, many items created in support of Solidarity, such as the armband and the handbills featured in the exhibit, were created in secret.

“It was dangerous to publish it, it was dangerous to distribute it, and it was dangerous to have it,” Lyandres said. “These types of materials were not meant to survive. They were meant to rally support and be disposed of, because you could get in trouble with authorities if they were found in your possession.”

Despite government interference, Solidarity continued its efforts, supported in part by funding from the United States and the Vatican.

In fact, Catholic support for the movement went all the way up to then Pope John Paul II, a Polish native who Wałęsa later credited—particularly his 1979 visit to Poland—as influential in Solidarity's genesis.

All items in the exhibit are part of the Solidarity Ephemera Collection, which Lyandres believes should interest more than just individuals studying Polish history.

“This is a Catholic campus, so even individuals without a particular interest in Polish history may still be intrigued about the history of John Paul II and the Catholic Church,” she said. “More broadly, this is a story about universal values—freedom of speech, expression and religion. It highlights peaceful protest, grassroots organizing and—most importantly—a community coming together to support one another.”

“Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections” is generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment. The exhibition is open to the public and will remain on display in 102 Hesburgh Library, Rare Books & Special Collections, through June 15.