There are strong parallels to this course of events in both the 1968 Velvet Revolution in the Czech Republic, and the 1980 events in Poland.
I don't see the parallel to Poland in 1980. Neither in the disparate treatment of working class vs. intelligentsia oppositionists - both were placed in internment camps en masse ( the top several thousand) or fired and blacklisted (the next ones down the line) following the imposition of martial law in December 1981. THe ex opposition has also been very prominent in all spheres of politics and civil society, with the (obvious) exception of those dominated by the ex-Communists. The top two papers are dominated by ex-opposition figures, every non post-communist government has been as well, including the current one.
The 1980 movement had the advantage of a prepared cadre of leaders. The veterans of both the 1968 student/intelligentsia revolt and the workers' revolts of 1970 and 1976 began working closely together after 1976, formulating a program of the creation of an autonomous civil society, a program which was then implemented in 1980.
PS. You mention that the Hungarian revolt was partially sparked by the workers' revolt in Poznan in June. I did not know that. You might be interested to know that in November 1956 Poland was at the highpoint of a brief wave of freedom. Blood drives for the Hungarian revolutionaries were publicly organized. The provincial city Party paper that I went through had articles describing what was going on as revolutionaries vs. counter revolutionaries - with the Red Army in the latter role.
Yes, the Polish link was direct: the protest that turned into a revolution started out as an announced sympathy protest for the workers of Poznan. Interesting input about the Polish response to 1956 - I knew about solidarity, but not that it was so much in the open.
I add a further bit of historical quirk: a still unresolved mystery is the shooting in front of Parliament on 25 October (70 dead). At the time there were protesters and Soviet tanks on the square - with some soldiers befriending the protesters. Someone first shot at the protesters from a roof - followed by some of the tanks also shooting at the crowd, but other tanks shooting at the rooftop shooters! *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
