The Gdańsk Agreement (or Gdańsk Social Accord(s) or August Agreement(s), ) was an accord reached as a direct result of the strikes that took place in Gdańsk, Poland. Workers along the Baltic went on strike in August 1980 in support of the 21 demands of MKS which eventually led to the creation of Solidarity. Background The labor strikes did not occur because of problems that emerged shortly before the unrest, but due to political and economic difficulties the previous ten years. Under the rule of Władysław Gomułka in the late 1960s, Poland's economy was in disarray. To counter this, the government increased food prices just before Christmas 1970 which irritated the entire populace of the nation. On December 14, 1970, workers from the Lenin shipyard in Gdańsk began a strike against party headquarters within the city insisting on the formation of independent trade unions. In this disturbance 75 people were killed after Gomułka ordered that the revolt be put down with force. As R. J. Crampton wrote: "The Kremlin did not agree and intervened to urge the need for a political solution. For the nationalist communist Gomułka, Soviet dictation of internal Polish policies was too much." Edward Gierek, who appeared to be more open to workers' needs and have strong political ties to the working class, soon replaced Gomułka. This was the first occasion in Europe since World War II that labor strikes were able to remove a ruler from power. Gierek was able to stress economic reforms during the first half of his tenure of office. According to R. J. Crampton: "The stated objective of the reforms was to increase living standards; a less publicly attested motivation was the knowledge that, with prices fixed and with demand increasing, goods had to be put into circulation to avoid rampant inflation." In the years prior to the Gdańsk strikes in 1980 the reforms of Gierek did succeed as planned, but the economy of Poland became progressively more unstable. This was due to Poland's reliance on western markets and loans that the nation could not repay. Fueled by large infusions of Western credit, Poland's economic growth rate was one of the world's highest during the first half of the 1970s, but much of the borrowed capital was misspent and the centrally planned economy was unable to use the new resources effectively. The growing debt burden became insupportable in the late 1970s and