Polish, Ukrainian and Global Solidarities and Transformations in Epoch Ends

Michael D. Kennedy, Professor of Sociology and of International and Public Affairs The Polish Solidarity movement of 1980–81 inaugurated the decade ending communist rule in Europe. We can’t know the global consequence of Ukrainian solidarity since 2022, but it has been presented in similarly definitive fashion, as a struggle to end Russian imperialism – now reinforced with рашизм/rashism – in defense of principles, as in Poland 1980–81, of sovereignty, democracy, and civil society. In this epoch end, and despite Putin’s efforts, there is no global polarization as in the Cold War, but universal platitudes about freedom and peace, and even planetary survival, seem to crash on the contradictions of the multiple catastrophes through which we live. I propose an alternative method for engaging our world’s cataclysms by seeking how solidarities within crises can be rearticulated with emergent global transformations, beginning with the relationship between Poland and Ukraine in these times, and concluding with the contradictions and possibilities of more global solidarities in defense of peace and justice.