On 5 February 1982, a group of Świdnik residents decided to go out for an evening walk to express their disapproval of the lies the communist authorities were spreading on television and radio as the media were under their total control. The seemingly innocent walk became so inconvenient for the communists that they had to repress the people taking part in it.

A small group of people attended the first walkout. Residents went out onto the streets of Świdnik (a town in the eastern part of Poland) at 7.30 p.m. – at the time when the ‘Television News’ was broadcast on regime television. The purpose of the walk was primarily to protest against the lying propaganda that was oozing from communist television.  At that time, martial law was being imposed in Poland by the authorities through a resolution of the Council of State by the Military Council for National Salvation. Its aim was to crush the growing democratic opposition. 

In the following days, the group of walkers began to increase and reached several thousand. Protesters also walked demonstratively under the windows of the police station. People, who did not choose to resist actively, displayed television sets with their screens facing the street, to also protest against communist propaganda. These acts were punishable by various forms of repression, above all detention and arrest. 

The phenomenon of walking as a form of resistance was the fact that the communists could not prohibit walking in the streets during the evening hours. So, streetlights, water supplies and so on were turned off. In order to curb the “practice of walking”, the regime even postponed the so-called militia (martial) hour to 7 p.m. However, the actions of the communist authorities were met with a response from the inhabitants of Świdnik, who began demonstratively leaving their homes during the broadcast of the earlier Television News edition at 5 p.m. 

The action ended on 14 February, but it was also taken up by some other Polish cities, such as Lublin, Puławy, Białystok and Sochaczew. 

The protest action was the topic of a piece “Farewell to Maria – Świdnica walks”, written by Jan Kondrak, which was broadcast on Radio Free Europe.