there was still a chance for its healthy, working class current to prevail, not the KOR-instigated anti-socialist, troublemaking elements. President Jimmy Carter and President-elect Ronald Reagan made urgent phone calls to Brezhnev and the intervention was postponed. In the meantime Solidarity, not quite aware of the looming danger, did its revolutionary work, practicing democracy in the union movement and pushing for sovereign society in a number of ways. The autonomous labor unions, united under the Solidarity banner, strove to "recapture public life from the monopoly control of the party". On 16 December 1980, the Monument to the Fallen Shipyard Workers of 1970 was officially unveiled in Gdańsk in a ceremony that marked the high point in the ascent of Solidarity. Among the mass protests that occurred at that time were the winter 1981 general strike in Bielsko-Biała, the nationwide warning strike in the spring of that year and hunger demonstrations in summer. The warning strike took place in the aftermath of the Bydgoszcz events (March 1981), during which the authorities resorted to violence to suppress Solidarity activists. The planned general strike was called off after Solidarity's questionable deal with the government, but the negotiators worked under a threat of Soviet intervention. Wałęsa's compromise prevented a confrontation with the regime or its foreign allies, but at the price of the protest movement's loss of some of its dynamics. During the months that followed Solidarity kept getting weaker and its popular support was no longer capable of mass determined action. Minister Jaruzelski became also prime minister in February 1981. In June, the Soviet Central Committee pressured the Polish party for a leadership change, but Jaruzelski received strong support from the military members of the Polish Central Committee. The extraordinary IX Congress of the PZPR took place in July. Kania was reelected the party's first secretary, while the organization's internal reformers suffered a defeat. As the economic situation kept deteriorating and the regime avoided implementation of the agreed reforms, the government and Solidarity representatives met in early August to discuss the outstanding issues. The talks ended in disagreement. During a conference of Solidarity's National Commission (a central representative policy making body) that followed, Modzelewski, Kuroń and others proposed a democratic transformation and practical arrangements by which the Union would take upon itself a major political role, participating in governing the country, accepting responsibility for the outcome and keeping social peace, thus relieving the