thumb|The Dwarf – the statue of the Orange Alternative symbol at the corner of Świdnicka and Kazimierza Wielkiego streets in [[Wrocław]]
thumb|A preserved Orange Alternative dwarf graffiti
The Orange Alternative (Polish: Pomarańczowa Alternatywa) is a Polish anti-communist underground movement, started in Wrocław, a city in south-west Poland and led by Waldemar Fydrych (sometimes misspelled as Frydrych), commonly known as Major (Commander of Festung Breslau). Its main purpose in the 1980s was to offer a wider group of citizens an alternative way of opposition against the authoritarian regime by means of a peaceful protest that used absurd and nonsensical elements.
By doing this, members of the Orange Alternative could not be arrested by the police for opposition to the regime without the authorities becoming a laughing stock. The Orange Alternative has been viewed as part of the broader Solidarity movement. Sociology professor Lisa Romanienko has argued it was among the most effective of Solidarity's factions in dismantling anxiety and fear surrounding the dictatorial regime, in order to bring about the labor (and later social and cultural) movement's success.
Initially they painted ridiculous graffiti of dwarves on paint spots covering up anti-government slogans on city walls. Afterward, beginning in 1985 and continuing through to 1990, the group organized a series of more than sixty happenings in several Polish cities, including Wrocław, Warsaw, Łódź, Lublin, and Tomaszów Mazowiecki.
It suspended activity in 1989, but reactivated in 2001 and has been active on a small scale ever since.
A statue of a dwarf, dedicated to the memory of the movement, stands today on Świdnicka Street in Wrocław, in the place where events took place.
The Orange Alternative movement inspired several other similar movements in authoritarian countries including Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and it also inspired and influenced the PORA and the so-called Orange Revolution movement in Ukraine, which was in turn supported by Poland.
Some utterances ascribed to Waldemar Fydrych:
:In Poland there are only three places when you can feel free: In churches, but only for prayers; in prisons, but not everyone can go to prison; and on the streets: they are the freest places.
:The Western World will find out much more about the situation in Poland from hearing that I was sent to jail for handing out sanitary pads to women, than from reading books and articles written by other members of the opposition.
:Can you treat a police officer seriously, when he is asking you: "Why did you participate in an illegal meeting of dwarfs?"
Beginnings
The beginnings of the Orange Alternative were in a student movement called the Movement for New Culture created in 1980 at the University of Wrocław. In that year that Waldemar "Major" Fydrych, one of the movement's founders, proclaimed the Socialist Surrealism Manifesto, which became the ideological backbone behind a gazette called "The Orange Alternative". Seven out of the total fifteen issues of this gazette appeared during student strikes organized in November and December 1980 as part of the Solidarity upheaval. The first number was edited jointly by Major Waldemar Fydrych and Wiesław Cupała (a.k.a. "Rittmeister") simply with the aim of having fun. The editors treated the strike and the surrounding reality as forms of Art. For the ensuing numbers, the editorial committee was joined by Piotr Adamcio, known as "Lieutenant Pablo", Andrzej Dziewit and Zenon Zegarski, nicknamed "Lieutenant Zizi Top". Although its avantgarde character, according to the student strike organizers, was a threat to the "higher aims of the strike", and notwithstanding attempts by the strike committee to censor it, the gazette rapidly became very popular among the students.