COMMUNISM'S NEGOTIATED COLLAPSE:
THE POLISH ROUND TABLE TALKS OF 1989,
TEN YEARS LATER
A Conference at the University of Michigan, April 7-10, 1999

Zbigniew Janas (b. 1953) was trained as a transport technician at the Technical School of the Railroad Industry in Warsaw. During the 1970s, he worked for Polish National Railways and the Ursus tractor factory near Warsaw. Active in the Workers' Defense Committee (KOR) from 1978 to 1980, Janas co-organized a strike at the Ursus factory in 1980 and headed the factory's Solidarity local in 1980-81 and 1989. An underground Solidarity activist between 1981 and 1984, he was unemployed for political reasons from 1984 to 1986. From 1985 to 1989, Janas helped organize illegal meetings on the Polish-Czechoslovak border between members of Solidarity and Czech and Slovak civil rights activists. A Deputy in the Sejm since 1989, he has represented the Civic Parliamentary Club, Democratic Union, and Freedom Union.

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