Polish Legislative Election of 1989

Solidarity won every freely contested seat, collapsing communist rule within months.

Overview

Under the round table agreement of April 1989, June's semi-free election reserved 65 percent of Sejm seats for the party while the Senate was fully open. Solidarity won all 161 Sejm seats available and 99 of 100 Senate seats, with turnout near 62 percent, demonstrating the regime's total lack of support. The June 4 vote, simultaneous with China's Tiananmen crackdown, triggered a chain reaction: a Solidarity-led government took office in August, and within a year communist governments fell across Eastern Europe. Poland's vote is honored as the system's first electoral breach.