History of Solidarity of the USSR ruled by a one-party communist regime—but for the whole of the Eastern bloc. Solidarity's example led to the spread of anti-communist ideas and movements throughout the Eastern Bloc, weakening communist governments. This process later culminated in the Revolutions of 1989. In the 1990s, Solidarity's influence on Poland's political scene waned. A political arm of the "Solidarity" movement, Solidarity Electoral Action ("AWS"), was founded in 1996 and would win the Polish parliamentary elections in 1997, only to lose the subsequent 2001 elections. Thereafter, Solidarity had little influence as a political party, though it did become the largest trade
Mass suicide in Demmin course of which 700 people committed suicide" into the "History of the local workers' movement". After the collapse of the East German government, some of the eyewitnesses, including Demmin's current chronicler, "broke the silence" and made their account of the mass suicide public. A new memorial was dedicated at the site of the mass graves. A dedicated issue of a journal published by the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern was released in 1995. Since then, accounts of the event have been published by German media. In 2008, the mass suicide was a theme of a novel. Mass suicides occurred all along the