Rural Solidarity for formal registration of their independent union. However, on December 30, 1980, the Supreme Court announced that its ruling on Rural Solidarity had been postponed. As a result, tensions rose rise between the peasants and local governments across the country. Southeastern part of Poland was the area in which individual farmers were very numerous and where position of the Roman Catholic Church was the strongest. Therefore, in early 1981, main center of farmers’ protests was established in the city of Rzeszów, where the strike and the sit-in began on January 5, 1981 and where the center of the movement was
History of Solidarity excuse to bring security forces into play. After 27 Bydgoszcz Solidarity members, including Jan Rulewski, were beaten up on March 19, a four-hour warning strike on March 27, involving around twelve million people, paralyzed the country. This was the largest strike in the history of the Eastern bloc, and it forced the government to promise an investigation into the beatings. This concession, and Wałęsa's agreement to defer further strikes, proved a setback to the movement, as the euphoria that had swept Polish society subsided. Nonetheless the Polish communist party—the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR)—had lost its total control over society.