>but having known refugees from a tyrannical government

my family escaped Poland as political refugees before the end of communism. Poland famously had bloodless revolution in 1989 exactly this way.

Down tools. stop work and the economy essentially seized up (practically over night).

>Sometimes it will work out, but not without sacrifice.

Sacrifice is always necessary.

If the factories stop, there is no way to move forward, regardless of how tyrannical the government.

Do you believe the results would have been the same under a Stalin instead of a Gorbachev?

This isn't to take away from what Poland accomplished then, or to say that such methods can never work in the right conditions. Violent revolutions against established tyrants do not have a great history. But I have a hard time understanding the belief that these methods can work in the worst of conditions.

I am pretty sure that a general strike could not have been initiated in Poland without the support of traitors from inside the top layers of the communist party and of the security forces.

In any of the communist countries of Eastern Europe everybody hated the government and they wanted to start a general strike. However, immediately after somebody would say this in loud voice, they would disappear. There have been a few cases when strikes have succeeded to start in a place, but then the government succeeded to prevent everybody else to know anything about this for many years, usually until the fall of the communist governments around 1989, and the strikers would disappear in such cases.

The weakness of the communist governments around 1989, after decades of easily suppressing any similar opposition, can be explained only by an internal fight within the communist leadership.