Why has Poland’s turning point of 1989 not earned its own visual symbol yet? How are the times of the transformation perceived by both younger and older generations? Grzegorz Brzozowski in conversation with Michał Bielawski, Jacek Borcuch and Józef Pinior, during the Planete+ documentary film festival.

GB: Is there a moment in the way you recall the year 1989 which represents a sense of definite change, one which could form the basis of a national holiday or celebration? And if such moments were missed, then why?

JP: Remembering 1989 – also while watching the film by Michał Bielawski – I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, we were convinced then that we are dealing with events of epic importance, totally fundamental and positive, and on the other, one could feel the disorientation, confusion or even lethargy. At the time, we had no idea, though today we know the process of the Transformation ended with the introduction of radical market reforms, which then led to many thousands of people feeling humiliated and marginalised. At the same time, in the current narratives dedicated to those events there appears an ultra-optimistic tone, along with the conviction that these were wonderful, grand, historical achievements, ones which should be recognised and valued all over the world.

And now speaking totally seriously, I am afraid that it is no longer possible to create a sense of unity around the events of the 4^th of June, and thereby turning the date into something akin to Bastille Day in France or Independence Day in the US. All the more so when we consider 1980, when we did truly witness an authentic, grass-roots revolution, a time of total euphoria for the whole of the nation. That period had a fundamental meaning for today’s Polish democracy.

And so the last moment which could be turned into a national holiday is not the 4^th of June, but the signing of the Gdansk accords?

JP: If we are looking to pinpoint a time when communism was finished, in my opinion this took place on the 31^st of August 1980, when the Gdansk agreements were signed. Even though the state of martial law (1981) prolonged communist rule by a good few years, we can definitely think about the August accords as the Polish knocking down of the Bastille. A transformative moment of the spiritual fall of the old authoritarian regime is the appearance of Solidarity in 1980Tthis can be felt in language itself: talking about this time, we make reference to a carnival. This is, I think, the time of true founding, and hence totally pivotal for Polish democracy.

What sort of civic moods can Jacek Borcuch remember from his own experiences of 1989? Can you recall any sort of visual symbol of this transformation?

JB: In May of 1989, I was preparing for my school finals, I was 19 years old, and in June I took part in my first ever election. Our exams were symbolic, exceptional, because we could feel that once they are over, we would enter a completely different world to the one our parents and grandparents lived in. And this to us was valuable. I remember that enthusiasm. We did not experience subtle, intellectual disputes about the nature of the nation. Back then, at 19, we were happy to be free, something which we associated with symbolic aspects – for example, our borders being once again open. This is perhaps a simplification of the memories to something very basic, but I remember that very clearly.

I found the changes rather intimidating, seeing as someone had decided to offer me the whole world on a plate, while I had spent my whole school years preparing for something completely different. In the mid-’80s, even though we could remember the initial appearance of Solidarity, we didn’t expect the world to change so soon. Something was coming apart at the seams, but we weren’t following it all that closely. We were busy living in the playground, with girls, books, not taking part in the political debate – we were too small for this.

While we were working on the film “All that I love” (“Wszystko, co kocham”), I sometimes told the story of my grandma, who had survived the whole of World War II living in Berlin. Having been shipped out as an 18 year old at the start of the conflict, she then worked in some kind of chocolate factory. She remembers that time as the most wonderful period of her life, because this was the time she blossomed into an adult. For me, 1989 is the same sort of watershed. Today, after 25 years, I can see it was indeed a victory, but it wasn’t wonderful for everyone. Back then, my boyish enthusiasm won over. I remember, on the 4^th of June some cats were born in the basement of my house. It was wild, we were young, and then… we went to vote.

I would now like to ask Michał Bielawski about how he constructed his own vision of those days. Why did you decide, when shooting your film, to not focus on any particular point in that year? You show a vision of changes taking place smoothly, without any sort of breakthrough moment. Was this your intention from the start?

MB: That is how I remember that year, hence why I wanted to show it in that fashion. From the very start, I thought it was a year of ambivalent emotions, a year of chaos, intermixed with enthusiasm. And it was this very aspect, that that time was so complex in terms of emotional experience, which seemed interesting to me as I worked on the film. And later, as if moving step by step towards the event, trying to understand why some feel offended, while others defend the meaning of those days, is when I realised that it is necessary to show it in as neutral a light as possible.

What did the process of gathering material for the film look like?

MB: It turned out to be laborious, although I thankfully had fantastic researchers and I think that we managed to uncover a lot of interesting material. The task we had set ourselves was to come up with things which hadn’t been shown before. This is not at all simple, because there have been numerous films made about 1989. And yet, I didn’t hear in them voices from those who were on the sidelines, by which I mean statements gathered in street surveys, in secret, by accident – say, from a random lady, who walks past a camera and simply says what’s on her mind. I wanted to contrast this sort of footage with material from the Polish film archive, which is defined by a certain kind of undecided narration – as if its authors were unsure whether they should be celebrating or not, whether they could mock that which was happening all across the country, which side to take.

I am interested in the gaps in this story – were you able to access archives which contain materials relating to certain events?

MB: I remember that for me symbolic at that time were Jacek Kuroń’s highly emotional television appearances. Kuroń, I had the impression, became incredibly involved in trying to communicate to people the meaning of the changes taking place. There was a series of his appearances during televised news, or just afterwards, when he explained why things were so bad. Changes were taking place so quickly, that not many could keep up with them. But it was hard trying to track down those records.

When taking on the task of creating a film covering the whole of 1989, did you not feel the pressure of expectations – from either critics or audiences – regarding the creation of a complete metaphor of the transformation process?

MB: It is hard to answer this question. I remember that, for about 10 years after 1989, we kept hearing that Polish cinema is still waiting for a portrait of those days – waiting for film makers to wake up and show what had happened, to explain the world which surrounds us. I had the sense that we were waiting for a synthesis. Such need is present at all times, but one should try to work in a way which doesn’t let the weight of expectations crush you.

They accompanied all of the films which were made about the Transformation. Criticisms were levelled at them, accusations of political bias, glorification of violence, or submitting to needs to make genre cinema, while the 1990s are often talked about as a time of crisis in Polish film making. I have the impression that part of this dissatisfaction comes from an unanswered need for a grand, complete metaphor of the transformation. Maybe one of the reasons for this lack was bitterness about the transition process expressed by its previous enthusiastic supporters?

JB: I think that this was when Polish cinema freed itself from that metaphor. The whole “cinema of moral unease” was built of the idea of figurative communication, because that was the only way then to address intelligent viewers. But then the 1990s brought with them hyper-realism, which made it possible to show good and bad political policemen – at that time, mostly bad – but also ordinary people, to show reality in any way the film maker chose.

This crisis was not therefore down to an inability to create a metaphor. No one was interested in using such devices. All we wanted to do was shoot film. We were also excited by all that was suddenly reaching us from the West. The language of cinema back then became vulgar. Władysław Pasikowski had a great time back then, seeing as he had a great skill-set at his disposal, and in a very conventional way showed us present-day reality, without using metaphors, in an accessible fashion.

MB: Among those artists who spoke at the Gdynia film festival, whose recordings I found while researching my film, I listened to Jacek Skalski, who expressed the hope that it would no longer be necessary to build films out of metaphors. This was accompanied by the sense of shedding ballast – heavy in the sense that it was finally possible to make films in a “different way”. Before then, there was a lot of talk around subjects, and so it was important to try and address things directly after 1989. This too is not that easy.

And did Polish documentary film makers quickly free themselves from this weight of expectation – the need to build a metaphor? What in your opinion are the most important documentaries from the 1990s, showing the process of transformation?

MB: Andrzej Fidyk’s “Shrovetide” (“Ostatki”) seems very interesting to me, seeing as it refers to the very day when the communist Party was dissolved. It shows a certain moment when collective emotions were given free reign – like the people who were outside the Congress Hall and wanted to throw stones. The film shows that they are really ready to do this – which makes an impression on the audience. Of course, we also remember the film “89mm from Europe” by Marcel Łoziński (“89 mm od Europy”). I mention these two, but if I am honest, I didn’t seek out documentary films which would create a metaphor of the Polish Transformation. If I knew such a film existed, perhaps I wouldn’t have wanted to make “1989”.

JB: I don’t think anyone was out there looking for such films. The generation which was growing up back then is starting to talk about those events, but this is from a very different perspective to the one presented by Józef Pinior. These new film do not represent the recording of one’s own experience, I would instead say they are emanating some general idea. We weren’t in the middle of all those dilemmas, this dialogue and hence we were expecting to have the option of choosing the kind of reality we wanted.

Which film from the 1990s is the best depiction of the spirit of those times? Or perhaps it is writers who’ve done a better job than film makers?

JP: This is a problem affecting not only film, but literature also. If we were to try and right now answer the question: which book shows us a true picture of those times, would we be able to find one? Do please note that no one reads poetry in the same way we read it in the 1970s, back in my day. When I was nearing my final school years, we would walk around with books of Herbert’s poetry in our pockets. I think if we tried today to find out a true picture of the world, of society in literature, we would have the same problem as with film.

Coming back, however, to the question of film: I would definitely defend the film “Dogs” (“Psy”) by Pasikowski. It shows a certain honest version of reality back then. A new reality, absent from the press or from television. He showed its aspects – in a way which was a little extreme – which was back then considered taboo. I remember, during a screening in a cinema full to the rafters, I could feel something akin to the classic experience of catharsis: we go to the cinema in order to see something which will cleanse you; this is terrible, but after the screening you leave strengthened.

I want to go back to a point raised by Jacek Borcuch, about looking for a filmic language, with which it is possible to talk about the times of the transformation. In recent years, the limits of what is allowed have widened, in terms of this topic: apart from the film “Wales – Man of Hope” by Andrzej Wajda, there are films such as your “All that I love”, “80 million” by Waldemar Krzystek or “Ticket to the moon” by Jacek Bromski… Can we therefore talk about a greater poetic licence in how we show the Transformation? Has it become acceptable to talk about this period in a voice which is not one’s own – such as through love stories?

JB: There is right now a pop-culture trend for all things 1980s, perhaps because these are the years of childhood experienced by most thirty-somethings. Today, many artists, especially in animation or graphic design, are drawing on those times. Hence the fascination with neon signs or with fonts dating back to that era: the lost, longed for logos, the wonderful “deezayn” of modernist post-War Poland, thanks to which Warsaw has the most beautiful local train stations. Young architects and other artists are beginning to realise that world was not all black and white. I think that this trend is a manifestation of longing for an as-yet untold history, that perhaps there exists a space which can be utilised. And this happens in a variety of ways. In my film, I didn’t want to show this all too consciously. I wanted to talk about music. During that period, the phenomenon we call “punk rock” was born in Poland, thanks to which we joined the ranks of adults. Grown-ups had their Solidarity badges, while we expressed ourselves through a form of music which was becoming more and more accepted. A sizeable majority of songs from the early 1980s talked about a longing for freedom. This is incredibly interesting, that in as much as in Great Britain punk rock expressed the ethos of “no future”, in Poland it was a way of communicating hopes for a better tomorrow.

When shooting “All that I love”, an intimate story about the existentialist experience of youth in those days, have you encountered criticisms about giving into a form of nostalgia, much like in the film “Goodbye Lenin”?

JB: That film was very popular with my peers, because they remembered that time in a similar way. But those slightly older than us had a different attitude. Krzysztof Krauze, for example, told me after a screening that I overdid it, that the film was saccharine, that it was untrue, that things hadn’t been that sweet. I told him: Krzysztof, that was how it was for me, no one shot at me, no one beat me with batons, we did what we wanted to, high on hope. Krzysztof could not believe me, because that was the time when he was handing out leaflets, running from the police, and as a result did not see ordinary life, going on all around him – imperceptibly.

“80 million” by Waldemar Krzystek is a feature film based on, among other things, the experiences of Mr Józef Pinior. How did you come to agree with the film makers about lending your identity to their project, and what aspects of your experience was it not possible to translate into film?

JP: There is always a clash when an artist meets the living person they are making a film about. The artist wants to have a free hand to create their vision. On the other hand, this is my biography, my life, and so I too think I have some right to a say. For me, the process of shooting this film was in some way a terrible experience and I think that the film crew hated me for at least part of the shoot. I had the impression that I can’t interfere with their artistic vision, but keeping a distance was very difficult.

In subsequent drafts of the script, the main character was called Józek, but in order to use my full name the film makers needed my permission. At first, I didn’t want to let them. I was at a certain point actually sure that this will not change, and started to talk about it in public. In the end, when Krzystek hired out Grunwaldzki Bridge in Wroclaw, paralysing the whole town for two days, we met with him and his crew for a last chat over some wine. They were the same age as I had been when I took that money. When I saw their enthusiasm, I realised that for them it was a huge adventure, something existentially real. I became convinced that they are not involved in any sort of politics, but simply identify with events of that time, with the activists of Wroclaw’s underground opposition. I realised this was something interesting, important and good, and agreed to let them use my name on that very last night.

JB: And so Krzystek managed to get one over on you!

JP: You could say that. He also agreed for the premiere of the film to be scheduled around the launch of Katarzyna Kaczorowska’s book “80 million. A true story”, which described the historical background to all those events. This is how it seems to be: when we think today about the People’s Spring or about democratic revolutions of the early 19^th century, we have in our minds the painting by Delacroix – whether we like it or not. Everyone who thinks about martial law in Wroclaw will see it the way Krzystek filmed it. Politicians always lose out to artists’ visions.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.

Edward Gierek, former First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party, had energetic dreams about power. Back in the days of General Jaruzelski, work had begun on building an atomic power station in Żarnowiec. Recently, we have once again been hearing about a return to ideas dating back to Communist Poland. Meanwhile, all around us, new phenomena such as climate change and technological advances can be observed, forcing a fundamental revaluation in our ways of thinking about the production of energy. Now that Poland is experiencing a quarter of a century of democratic rule, it is a good moment to reflect upon the Transformation in this context.

We have entered a new era. In Europe, there is widespread discussion about the inevitable running out of coal and oil, the founding ingredients of contemporary world economy. Scientists keep drawing our attention to the role humans have played in global climate change. These two factors demand a response, which cannot be a short term bending of old rules. We are faced with the need to rebuild our energy manufacturing and the economy as a whole – a real revolution. Some members of the EU have already taken up the challenge. Germany is a case in point: even back under the governments of SPD and The Greens (1998-2005), the country adopted a plan to gradually restructure the energy sector, “exiting the atomic” and increasing the importance of renewable sources of energy (OZE) in the production of electricity. The Fukushima disaster simply accelerated this process. A decade on from its inception, it appears not only to be achievable, but – above all – remarkably inspiring. Germany has approached their energy transformation project with the verve of the US or USSR racing to put humans on the moon.

A FORTRESS UNDER SIEGE: POLAND

Meanwhile, in our country by the Vistula, these decisions and actions are either presented in a crooked light, or in categories of endangering Polish national business interests and an “invasion” of alien ideologies – a green blitzkrieg ushered in by cynical agents of foreign powers and well-meaning eco-crazies. Indeed, in many European countries this “new industrial revolution”, the transformation of the energy sector, is causing fear. In Poland, however, this danger being new and unknown unleashes unhealthy defensive mechanisms. The transforming of energy is hence instantly dismissed as an unwise, or indeed mad plan to apparently de-industrialise or even commit economic suicide.

The fossil fuel lobby is just waiting for Germany to trip up. Which isn’t surprising: the success of Energiewende would call into question the already difficult to justify, from an economic and ecological point of view, “cavalier” project designed by the Donald Tusk government of building atomic power stations. In addition, an energy transformation based on the “democratisation” of production – an idea which is roundly liberal – attacks the very foundations of the state/private monster that the energy sector became in Poland, post-1989.

CLIMATE MESSIANISM AND THE STRATEGIC WEAKNESS OF THE STATE

Poland has a fundamental problem with the politics of its energy production. A lack of coherent strategy is compounded by a difficult initial situation (over-dependence on coal) along with factors of a cultural and psychological nature. It is fascinating to observe the energy-climate messianism of the ruling coalition party. In climate politics, according the the deputy prime minister Waldemar Pawlak, “we are alone, yet in the right”, suggesting the whole world has gone crazy, but our country is the last bastion of sane thinking. The Polish Academy of Sciences became famous for officially acknowledging the anthropogenic nature of climate change as the last national scientific institution in the world!

And so, there is nothing surprising in Polish political elites, until very recently, openly doubting the existence of climate change. Today, having been taught that the public repetition of such “arguments” causes them to be ostracised, they have taken to expressing them in private in an attempt to find support. What is interesting, in undermining the need to protect the environment our surprising ally in the community of industrial nations is… Russia. Any movements or organisations involved in protecting the environment are an ideal target for ruling forces. It is no longer remembered how key mass ecological protests were back in the 1980s in the dismantling of the communist regime. It has also apparently been forgotten by the current cabinet how the campaign to protect the Rospuda Valley was key in winning public opinion and added weight to the idea of the previous government being replaced by the Tusk team. Ecologists and their sympathisers have thus become “insane” members of the “green Taliban”, variously blamed for acting in the interests of Russia or of Germany – the heaviest accusations possible, equal to that of treason.

It is impossible, however, for this sort of approach, by political elites, to make sense (considering all the main players in the Polish parliament are in agreement on this) without taking into consideration political economies and the theory of public politics. The transformation of energy production, which is being forced upon us by climate politics (but also by cold reason), is not convenient for any of the “rulers” involved. That which is new is both difficult and uncertain. It is much easier to preside over a status quo, which in this case means clinging to coal – at any cost, against the interests of society. No one is currently suggesting that we abandon coal overnight, but we can start contemplating “decarbonisation” of the economy in terms of the year 2050. These are the visions presented by ecological circles, often called “hooligans” – visions not shared by the state apparatus itself. Antoni Kamiński and Jan Stefanowicz, members of the Institute of Political Studies (PAN) talk in context of strategic incapacity about the syndrome of governmental weakness. Energy politics, along with climate and environmental protection, are not therefore isolated cases, but rather manifestations of a certain malaise affecting the modern Polish state.

ENERGY ANTI-LIBERALISM AND LIBERALISM

The most interesting example of the simultaneous inability to make a sensible decisions and the clinging on to well-worn patterns is the return to atomic power station proposals dating back to communist times. It was initiated in 1990 by the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, as a result of international pressure, as well as demand from his own electorate (vide the now forgotten referendum in the Wybrzeże region, a fascinating example of of democratic self-organisation on the local level). Once the twenty year moratorium was up, dreams of Polish atomic power returned. It is worth however looking at this project not from a purely technical side, but from a socio-political angle. An atomic power station has everything necessary for a grand infrastructural project in styles of old. It is immensely expensive, demands centralised planning and similar forms of management of energy systems, along with government controls and can be presented in terms of “progress” – at least in as much as “progress” was perceived back in the 1960s and 70s.

What is more, in order to build and run an atomic power station, the project must be separated from public influence. Any sort of democratic mechanisms are likely to derail the atomic train – no one is ever going to want to live, of their own free will, near an atomic power station, while many will ask discomforting questions about the disposal of dangerous waste, as well many more asking about the cost of huge subsidies received at present by those producing atomic power.

The building of the first ever atomic power station in a 21^st century democratic state is thus either impossible, or presents an excellent opportunity to remove a portion of the state from the realm of conventional procedures of control. And hence to the limiting of democratic process, under the guise of acting in the name of necessity, rule of law, or stabilising of systems. This is a very attractive proposition, especially in a country in which energy production has become a state oligopoly.

At the other end of the spectrum we find distributed and civil energy resources. These demand a total reconfiguring of the form of thinking about energy strategies. Instead of several giant power plants, which can be centrally controlled, we have a countless number of small and often unstable sources demanding some form of coordination.

These two proposals are not necessarily, as the government would like it to be, a choice between economic growth and deindustrialisation, but are rather a clash of mental centralism and grassroots organisation; progress in Gierek style and real liberal democracy, based upon the empowerment of the individual and on trust. A “democratic” and widespread system of civic energy production demands not only individual enterprise, but a fundamental sense of collective responsibility – solitary elements will only work as a part of a whole and have to become integrated.

And yet, because challenges are, in the Polish way of thinking and governance, treated as a problem and not an opportunity for development, the idea of a widespread system of energy production meets with instant opposition from experts and the energy lobby. Renewable energy in Poland is growing, but it seems to be doing so in spite of the government – outside of official systems. Decisions made by the Donald Tusk cabinet along with their informal advisors, also the de facto responsible for the direction of energy politics government of the previous prime minister Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, are becoming more and more strange and opposed to the values declared by them.

It is hard to grasp why the prime minister and a large part of the post-Solidarity political establishment, with their liberal leanings, are so anti the idea of empowering society by making it a part-owner and part-investor in the a key sector of public politics, which in this case is energy production. What can be clearly seen, however, is that in the past 25 years not much has changed in this sector. Poland has somehow slept through a period of energy production transformation, and the liberal revolution in this field is being stifled by those who were once considered liberal.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.

EVALUATING POLAND’S POLITICAL TRANSFORMATION

Both the Left and the Right wings of Poland’s political divide see the post-1989 Transformation in a singularly negative light.

For the Right, the Round Table agreements between the opposition and representatives of the ruling party, and the June 1989 elections which followed them, were a betrayal of the ideals of Solidarity. They insist that it was wrong for the opposition to engage with representatives of the communist regime, because towards the end of the 1980’s the Soviet Bloc was clearly on its last legs. It was deemed enough to wait for power to be relinquished and handed over to the opposition. According to those on the Right, only a radical – and even brutal – severing of relations with the previous regime could have allowed the founding the mythical Third Polish Republic (III RP).

The Left, on the other hand, considered the elections of the 4^th of June as directly responsible for the radical economic reforms introduced by the then finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz. These reforms were not even discussed by politicians, with parliament giving their direct approval following semi-free elections. This is therefore perceived as a change designed by the ruling elite, without wider public support. Both the Left and Right sides of the debate consider the process of the Transformation of the time to have been contrary to democratic ideals. According to liberal fields of thought, the logic behind these changes was not properly planned, but was instead developed as they were taking place. The results of the elections of June 1989 were a shock to all concerned, and in spite of the success of the Solidarity camp, no one at the time had any idea who would become prime minister, much less finance minister. The postponing and delaying of discussions with the ruling party was also not good strategy – in spite of some indicators which did suggest the Soviet Bloc was weakening towards the end of the ’80s, few suspected that the Cold War geopolitical order would collapse so quickly. Both the Right and the Left analyse the events of those years from the perspective of what is known today, ignoring the lack of information at the time.

ECONOMIC REFORMS

In their critical analyses, representatives of the Polish Left and Right are also in surprising agreement when it comes to both economic and social consequences of those reforms. The economic aspects include features such as high unemployment and inflation, while social impacts include social alienation, the destruction of community capital and pathological individualism.

Liberal critics note social costs which were the result of changes being introduced, while at the same time emphasising the dire economic circumstances the nation found itself in, radically limiting the range of available alternatives. National debt and the lack of free spending power did not allow Poland to borrow more. Economic reforms – in spite of frequently controversial outcomes – calmed things somewhat, while the Polish economy began to grow as one of the first in the former Soviet Bloc.

Along with political decisions, economic choices made at the time are often arbitrarily judged from the perspective of today, while critics refuse to take on board the lack of information available in the 1990s, or the wider circumstances affecting said choices.

THE ROLE OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE

The freedom to run one’s own private business is, for liberal thinkers, one of the more important aspects defining individual dignity. Spiting both the Left and the Right, liberals continue to emphasise that capitalism in Poland was established not by large corporations, but mostly by small traders and entrepreneurs.

These same liberals also respond with caution to statements made by representatives of the Left, who claim that private enterprise has led to the erosion of social capital and interpersonal relationships. The Left continue to imply that towards the end of the 1980’s the sense of community and egalitarian ideals were incredibly highly developed, an unfounded romanticising of Polish civic realities of the time.

FREEDOM AFTER 1989

The Left continues to concentrate on the aspects of reality in which freedom has been substantially reduced, or those which suggest that it is at an unacceptably low level. It hints, among other things, at the lack of respect for women’s reproductive rights, the excessive influence of the Catholic Church on political processes, or intolerance towards the LGBT community. The solutions they put forth involve the importation of legal and institutional frameworks from Western states, ignoring at the same time local contexts in which these happen to operate within. The Right, on the other hand, keeps drawing attention to the supposed erosion of traditional culture and traditions, making reference to some highly-idealised vision of Polish society, unfounded on historical facts. Liberals tend to place the right to choose first, as applying to each individual. The solutions they tend to favour involve an increase in this sphere of personal freedoms, while at the same time respecting the duties each individual has towards one other. They attempt to create a sense of social solidarity without resorting to religious arguments, so common to the Right, or calls for increased equality, a strategy favoured by the Left. Liberals continue to champion the idea of individual freedoms along with respect for the “other” to choose their own way in life. These fundamental values of “liberal patriotism” should also find support among representatives of traditional Polish liberalism.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.

‘To place Poland in the center’ is a book on the Polish transformation 1989-2014, fully available free of cost at Liberal Culture.

Maria is a 70 year-old retired engineer. Following the Transformation of 1989, she worked for over a decade outside of Poland, then returned home to retire. Maria and her family enjoy a decent standard of living, yet she lacks a developed sense of self-worth and fulfilment. Although she is aware of the modernisation taking place in Poland, she can’t see any room for herself in its new reality.

Szymon is a 40 year-old manager. Six years ago, he lost his job in a large telecommunications firm based in Warsaw. For a long time afterwards, he was unable to find any sort of employment sufficient enough to support his wife, son and daughter. Sometime later, he sent his CV out to employers in London. That same month, he was invited for interview and offered a permanent contract. Szymon moved his whole family over to the British Isles, where he earns a handsome wage. There is not a single reason he can think of which would bring him back home.

Janek is a 24 year-old driver, with a wife and two young daughters to support. He spent a year working for someone illegally, having been promised that one day his position in the company would formally be made permanent. Eventually, however, he was fired overnight. Today, Janek works for a public transport company. He drives buses 10 hours a day in order to take home a meagre 2,000 zlotys a month. When he tried complaining to his bosses, he was told: “Shut up, sonny, else you’ll be out on your ear.” Janek is still looking for work, also abroad.

Over the last 25 years of Poland’s independence three new generations of workers have entered the job market, yet the fates of one doesn’t necessarily translate into success for the next. Paradoxically, all three generations are united by a weakened sense of self-worth and anxiety about the future. These two emotional states overshadow any sense of joy they might have about how Poland has developed in the last few decades. Few Poles are interested in the opinions expressed by their politicians, who appear to constantly curse present-day reality, be it through messianic myths about the Smolensk air crash of 2010, or about the economic situation on the Emerald Isle.

Yet Janek, Szymon and Maria are united in their need for some sort of comprehensible narrative, one which would add substance to the idea of a Polish commonwealth. Today’s politicians cannot evade the responsibility of becoming leaders, especially as stories about the failings of the past few generations are becoming ever more common. Certain people – both from the Left as well as the Right sides of the political spectrum – are willing to reinterpret the past 25 years of change as a tale of the excluded, of victims of the Transformation and predatory capitalism, about the sky-high price Polish society has paid for its liberation. This process is aided by political promises, usually made without substance. The political centre is at threat, amorphous and defenceless. It is not only surrounded by myths of lethargy and corrupt affairs, but also by ahistoricity, yet unfairly so. Polish liberal thought has evolved to offer at least some hint of cure for the issues ailing contemporary Poland.

First of all, localism. What we need is for a language of pride to enter the wider discourse, pride at where one is from, along with a language which gives positive value to the struggle over one’s immediate environment.

The most active group of Poland’s younger citizens can be found at work in this area. Here is where people engaged in the third sector are to be found, as well as those working in social fields, driven by a sense of mission. Here is also where young urban activists gather.

“The street is my motherland,” they say, with utter conviction. Those who learn to how to converse with this social demographic will gain the support of the younger generation. Polish liberals can reliably reach for roots dating back a quarter of a century. They – as some of the first – supported the ideas of regionalisation and a Poland of “smaller homelands”. Today, these stories of the past sound more relevant than at any other time. Here we find room for a sense of pride at things achieved at a certain time and place – plus, endless pro-emigration sentiments can be countered by increased ability to perceive potential for development closer to home.

Secondly, the needs of the individual is once again coming to the fore. Each Pole would like to discover a sense of personal self-belief. The question is, how do we find this dignified aspect in the current political environment? Regardless of generation, voters are ready to speak most vocally about the state of their nation and Polish politicians. When, however, they are asked about their more personal experiences, we are more likely to be presented with a brighter, more positive picture.

So, it is now time to take a look at these individuals and their unique life histories, to set aside the affirmations of bridges built and roads repaired, and to once more affirm the self-reliant abilities of the average Pole, mindful of the changes around the individual and their family. Polish liberals have emphasised the way in which people, during the last few years of communism, ridiculed the idea of trying to achieve dignity through work and possessions. Today, it’s worth remembering those all too real experiences, without forgetting that at present it is the young who are most anxious about the future. Those who are able to talk to them about these concerns and pour hope into their hearts will win their trust.

Thirdly, we need to redefine the concept of freedom. According to data provided by Eurostat and GUS*, social inequality in Poland has not risen in the past few years. In this respect, Poland is doing better than many other EU states, and especially the US. Many people, however, express the opposite opinions, arguing that statistics are not everything, that a subjective perception of inequality must also be taken into account.

And so we must change the language with which we talk about freedom and justice. We can no longer equate the former with free market economics, while ignoring its unifying aspects. Freedom which does not allow citizens to enjoy its benefits will then become an insignificant and hollow word.

Only if we manage to take into account all three of the above mentioned elements will we be able to create a grand new narrative about Poland.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.

Listening to media commentary covering the 25^th anniversary of the first partially free elections in Poland, I couldn’t shake off the impression that older generations – the initiators and participants of those events – are unable to tell us younger ones (and, probably, to each other) what happened that quarter of a century ago. This inability is closely linked to our – if I can use such a phrase – “troubles with the Ttransformation”.

What do these troubles involve? Speaking generally, they involve our inability to clearly express what it was we freed ourselves from, and not to where we are heading. There is no more communism or centrally planned economy, these having been replaced by democracy and a free market. And yet what use is democracy to us, what good this free market? Our elites are unable to satisfactorily answer these questions, because it is difficult to accept their simple narratives of a return to “normality”, about how Poland has once again become an “ordinary” European state. What does normality imply in this case? Who, and how, and in the name of which ideals, defines this concept of normality? Can we talk about France – a random example – being “normal”, after Marine Le Pen won a seat in the EU parliament?

This inability to define “normality” is a consequence of our inability, over those past 25 years, to create a serious meta-political dispute. Political narratives were initially defined by the struggle between “post-commies” and “post-Solidarity” folk, and then – Platforma and PiS party clashes. Paradoxically, the biggest failing of the Third Polish Republic seems to me to have been the failing of the Fourth Polish Republic project. It was, since the Transformation, the only valid attempt at rethinking the foundations of our state, though it did quickly transform into a token of media demagogy. The shameful fate of this concept is a way to measure the failures of our elites: on the one side, those who were unable to recognise the very possibility of formulating some sort of alternative (not even for a liberal democracy, after all!); secondly, those which were unable to define their opposition in a toned-down fashion, so as to clearly show that at stake was reform of the Polish state (as in the original project initiated by Rafał Matyja), and not a bloody political charade.

The success of the past quarter-century (I think we managed to achieve more than we lost in this period) remains therefore something in need of a definition, obscured, unnamed. We toy with phrases such as “a return to Europe”, “economic progress” or “ the building of a free market”. Success can clearly be seen on the scale of micro-history – for example, among small and medium sized businesses, a group which seems to suffer the most intense discrimination in Poland, yet which in so many cases managed to pass muster in terms of independence and self-reliance. Many positive changes also took place in Polish government ministries, even if not in all, where a citizen can now not only be served more quickly and efficiently than ever before, but is also taken seriously, and not as a supplicant trying to interfere with the slow workings of state officialdom. These successes are real, although there is no debate around an overall narrative, one which could encapsulate the period of transformation and Polish society as a whole. Is this due to the ambiguity of the Third Polish Republic’ axiological sphere, without – calling things by their proper names – having held communism to account first? In part, this must be so. I do not think, however, that this is the root of the problem. I would rather look for that in our failure to consider the meaning of “Solidarity”, along with the subjective role of the individual and the collective in history as a key conviction of said movement. In the 1990s, we rather thoughtlessly adopted deterministic narratives from the West. Globalisation and a worldwide free market were introduced in truly Hegelian fashion as a phenomena which were irrevocable, necessary and desirable. Is this not the reason why praise of Transformation is limited to a swaggering demo-liberal affirmation of European normalcy, while criticism of the last 25 years – to conclude that we should have acted “differently” (without specifying how and – much more importantly – at what price)?

Besides, this unnoticed and unnamed symmetry between late heroes of the battle against communism in the political sphere along with the late heroes of the battle against capitalism in the economic sphere is one of the most shocking aspects of our meta-political landscape. In both cases (although it appears they are still talking about “alternatives”) the deterministic theme dominates: in a key historical moment, which decided the shape our society would take, we could have made different choices. It’s as if right now we have nothing left to decide about, as if all the cards have been – once and for all – dealt. We still perceive ourselves as objects carried on the waves of great historical changes, rather than free subjects, capable of influencing them. In this, I think – and not in the reputed resilience of “post-communist arrangement” – lies the burden of Poland’s communist past, which we have failed to fully leave behind.

So, should we view the last 25 years in the spirit of Zorba the Greek, as a “ beautiful catastrophe”? Not at all. It is easy to see all of the things we have managed to achieve in this period, even though the rule of thumb is that the things which work well are much harder to spot than the things which are broken or ineffective. Victories are always ambivalent, paid for with real sacrifices. Only disasters can be interpreted with singular meaning. We have plenty of reasons to cheer the Transformation and the changes it brought, though this cannot be a thoughtless sort of cheer, which would stop us seeing the very real and serious challenges still set before us, as well as a whole host of key things we were simply unable to manage.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.

The debate about the recently ended 25-year period of Polish history is becoming enlivened by the voices of critics of modernity. This simple story of historical triumph is now contrasted with apocalyptic perspectives. No one has yet managed to fully grasp the ambivalence of the Third Polish Republic – its skyscrapers, its street markets and Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Marshall Berman, the recently deceased American Marxist, in his book “All that is Solid Melts Into Air” describes something he calls “the experience of modernity”, by which he means the chaos of social, technological and political changes which have been affecting the lives of men and women since the second half of the 18^th Century and the times of the Enlightenment. Wave after wave of modernity have carried promises of adventure, of progress and self-realisation, and yet at the same time they are a threat to everything which we know and value – to our traditional communities and their mores. Berman, a passionate literature expert, follows the pains and the hopes involved in modernity as experienced by metropolitan folk: Baudelaire in Paris, Dostoyevsky in Petersburg and of course his own New York, or more precisely the dramatically changing Bronx of the 1960s, which is where he grew up.

Ninja Tutrtles on Warsaw housing estates

If Berman were to include Poland in his list of modernist landscapes, he could pick out several examples: it could be the 19^th century aggressive and energetic capitalism of the “Promised Land” (“Ziemia obiecana”, a 1898 novel by the Polish author and Nobel laureate, Władysław Reymont), or else the bustle of post-war social changes described in “A revolution beyond dreams” („Prześniona rewolucja”) by Andrzej Leder. Or it could be post-1989 transformation Poland. As for symbols of modernity, these could be skyscrapers and ran-down markets nestling between communist era tower blocks, disco polo music on cable radio and TV stations, as well as cream of broccoli soup replacing the traditional chicken broth at Polish weddings. We could even find room for Gary Cooper, as appearing on the classic posters encouraging people to vote in 1989 (“High noon”), as well as the bankrupt, decomposing Gdansk shipyards.

The power of Berman’s narrative comes from his ability to present and maintain the ambivalent aspects of modern transformations; on being able to capture the stories of its winners and losers. He has also developed a different, key ability – in his stories he includes that which appears to be spurious or marginal. Hence, our history could not do without the gazes of children of that time, who also delighted in the immense attraction of all that was new. All we need to do is compare the cute, yet rather tame Uszatek Bear from Polish television of yore with the world of Mutant Ninja Turtles, to feel the promise new adventures must have held. Yes, Ninja Turtles also have a place in this story of the Third Polish Republic.

Marble and glass, poverty and despair

Berman’s imagination could help overcome the weakness in Polish tales of the Third Republic, often offset by the amazing history of both its successes and bitter failures. On the one hand, the narrative within Poland is dominated by tales of hard-won political freedoms, the growing incomes and social advances; on the other hand, we are also presented with diagnoses of an apocalyptic nature. One of these was presented by Marcin Król in his interview for Liberal Culture (issue 260), in which he described contemporary Poland using conservative and Leftist conventions, in terms of critiques of modernity. In his diagnosis, Poland appears to be a world of ruthless competition, alienation and brutal interactions in places of work, gaping economic inequality, bureaucratic (and yet semi-privatised) academia, along with widespread, primitive consumption.

This rhetoric of economic crises and extraordinary circumstances has massive power, not only because it recounts our all too real problems and pains. It is also considered to be testimony of moral integrity and the ethos of any intellectual performing their duty – criticising the world of social activism. Great thinkers do tend to be gloomy in nature.

It also fits with social perceptions of many people who are tired of being told how great the world they live in is. Unfortunately, such criticism is burdened with serious flaws – first of all, it covers important areas of the Polish experience of the Transformation, and secondly, it doesn’t offer any pointers as to what action to take – when it comes to complex socio-political processes, it simply offers a fatalistic tone and moralising gestures.

Our discussions – according to Berman – can become truly interesting only once we are able to grasp all of the ambivalence inherent in the Third Polish Republic – contradictions which constitute Polish modernity. Or when points of view which avoid the naïve idealising of the past emerge, along with perspectives which manage to appreciate the real achievements of modern formations, while at the same time not to forget about those who have been failed by the process of modernisation and actively present ways in which they can be helped. In meeting these conditions, we see the emergence of ideological formations and political proposals, which would not characterise the Polish market economy solely through the prism of overburdened businesspeople or else huge foreign capital. These would not describe Polish society as affected by “conservative revolution” or else its opposite – the possibly rapidly expanding “gender ideology”.

Towards a wise centre

Analyses of young intellectual circles in Poland today gives cause for hope – it turns out that it is possible to create unexpected ideological constellations – be a socialist Christian, a community-minded liberal or a conservative actively promoting partnership models in the family context. Any attitude which emerges out of the acknowledgement of need to differentiate between “packaged identities” of both Left and Right, can of course meet with serious criticisms, running the risk of being accused of banality, or of utilising the naïve rhetoric of healthy logic. Faced with a lack of aggressive political attitude, it is at risk of doing nothing more than affirming the status quo, adapting to current structures without attempting to radically modify the political landscape.

In what is being proposed here we are not concerned with determinedly searching for a golden mean between Left and Right, but with an attempt to overcome complications and ambiguities of our time, about a multilateral approach. A good example of this is the story of Berman – how to present the ambivalence of the modern day, acknowledging its achievements without justifying its failings, and at the same time to retain the energy needed to act and think, to keep asking questions about the best way to implement modern values in today’s world. In the case of the Third Polish Republic, this questioning will focus on how social is our – constitutionally established – “social market economy”.

A description of Polish modernity therefore demands something described in Leszek Kołakowski’s essay “The priest and the jester” (“Kapłan i błazen”): “a burdensome reconciliation of those elements which we find most difficult to agree on”: “goodness with universal indulgence”, “courage without fanaticism”, “intelligence without discouragement” and “hopes without blindness”. This is the almost impossible task of trying to formulate accurate diagnoses of our times. The Third Polish Republic still hasn’t been provided with such a chronicle.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.

In the spring and summer of 1989, the people of Poland had no energy and no desire to celebrate their revolution. Does it make sense, however, to now regret this and to try to “make up” for lost time? How should we respond to Bronisław Komorowski’s idea about making the 4^th of June a national holiday of Polish freedom?

Tomasz Jastrun, a poet and perceptive observer of the end of the 1980s, recalls the 5^th of June, the day the initial results of Poland’s first free, post-communist elections were announced in the following way: “I went […] to check out the results […] in our local voting station. Of the people who were there, none were shouting, or dancing, or cheering. Their hope and their triumph were both cloaked in silence. The scale of the success was so vast, it crushed us”. Aleksandra Domańska, a theatre director, had a similar experience: “Such a great outcome, so clear we had won everywhere – yet nothing. […] We haven’t retained any symbolic image of those days – […] the city just as grey as before. I was talking to a Solidarity activist from Siedlce, and he said the same thing that I was feeling: he was alone then, busy doing the same old, watching television – and no one even rang him. The pastel shade of that day is for me incomprehensible” (Łukasz Bertram, Wolność z wyboru, Karta Magazine 2014, nr 79). Stanisław Świerad, a journalist from Białystok, wrote in his diary at the start of July: “And the streets? The people? They just keep on living their grey lives. The queues in the shops the same as before. And the fear of something even worse to come, at any moment. People are irritated. Why aren’t they happy about the win over communism and the new light shining over Poland? Maybe they are afraid of what it will bring, this raw and uncertain future?” (from the KARTA Archive) These individual observations confirm surveys of public opinion dating back to the summer of 1989. Poles were overcome by a sense of doubt and helplessness. It was impossible to grasp the end of a political era, while the future was viewed with suspicion.

Historical breakthroughs, given specific dates or protected by censorship, are artificial constructions, formulated after the event by experts or politicians. 1989 is no different in this respect, this epoch-defining grey zone between an inert, expiring dictatorship and the first steps of a new order, more and more confidently pushing in to take over power. Poles did not charge into independence with any cavalier gusto. This unrevolutionary end to the Solidarity revolution lacked its Jacobeans, and was not provided with its own Bastille. This march towards freedom resembled more a slow, gasping crawl, the dragging on of an exhausted nation, which had over several decades been torn between resistance and adaptation, between nine million members of Solidarity and more than three million members of the Communist Party, as of August 1980. And yet on the 4^th of June 1989, in a partially democratic show, the old regime’s last attempts at retaining power were brought to a definitive end. Yes, pastel-coloured in places, but bitter too – that is how the victory of those elections feels today. And yet, do Poles need a national anniversary celebration in memory of its importance? The effects of a government-sanctioned celebration could have two outcomes. On the one hand, specific dates printed in all calendars in red could help fix things in people’s memory, helping the nation gel through stable points of reference for a collective identity, and even as moral pointers. On the other hand, however, there is the risk of heavy over-simplifications and mythologisations coming into play. Giving the celebrations of a given event the status of a national holiday means we are more likely to see it in an idealised light, concealing any controversies which would otherwise interfere with the carnival of self-satisfied celebration.

Hence, the 4^th of June 1989 is a lot more important in terms of who we are and what our options are today than 11^th of November 1918. There is in this a little of our own fault, that we weren’t able to celebrate that earlier moment of reclaimed independence with anything other than pitiful processions or a sequence of film adaptations featuring Marshall Piłsudski. It would therefore be a terrible shame if celebrations of the 4^th of June – regardless of whether it would be a day free of work, or free from barbecues – were to be only about revelling in the electoral act as carried out by the populace then and the watching of one more actor, dressed as Lech Walesa, arriving in a polished-up Polonez car to re-stage the historic moment when he placed his voting card in the ballot box. It would awful if in celebrating the 4^th of June we forgot that in 1989 four out of ever ten Poles did not go to vote. It would also be terrible if in this way we tried to hide from the awareness that 1989 is a moment when our – undoubtedly our – Third Polish Republic was created, yet in a dual context: both of successes, as well as failures and inefficiencies.

Wanting to celebrate the date in a sensible fashion, we have to locate the point of balance between – maybe even socio-technological and to a certain extent manipulative – trying to improve one’s own sense of self-worth (for it was us, as a nation, who went to those polling booths), and the constant questioning about the costs and alternatives (for there is nothing more dangerous than a collective which delights in itself). The same is also true of the 31^st of August, the anniversary of the August accords, another symbol drowning in formalin and political bickering. The Day of Freedom, which we do seem to need – in order to learn how to enjoy the success we attained – must also be a Day of Responsibility – so that we don’t grind to a halt convinced that we are living in the best of all possible worlds.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.

My hypothesis is as follows: in order to sum up the past 25 years of Polish history, we must take into account the sense of frustration which comes with being offered endless possibilities. The map of Polish frustrations is thus sewn from many misshapen scraps of individual disappointment.

Why do people think the things they think? This is down to their immediate circumstances. Why do they keep changing their minds? Because their circumstances have also changed. There is no need to elaborate on the weakness of such naïve sociology of knowledge. It is accompanied by a mistrust of ideas and a reluctance to assign to them any sort of influence. Perpetration in the spiritual sphere is for us today an unnecessary aspect, for we can manage with the causative impact on structures, configurations and systems, out of which, unheeding of the vicious circle tightening around us, we wish to make sense.

Considerations of collective self-understanding, expressed in the debate about the most recent 25 years of Polish history, clearly belong to the school of thought described above. The many changes which have taken place in society can easily be observed with the naked eye. Yet the naked eye is a totally unreliable instrument when it comes to studying social contexts, though it has its uses where one must, for the sake of ease and time, simplify things to the absolute maximum – by which we of course mean in the spheres of media and politics. The naked eye can also observe that society is beginning to reconsider this change. Such reconsideration is also the self-questioning of a society which is both the subject and the object of said changes.

We would like to see the state of the discourse around this 25^th anniversary as a sign of the times among a religious society, seeking causes due to which, from the perspective of this quarter-century, our view of the Transformation is in itself undergoing a change. No social phenomenon is caused by a single factor, nor can any ever be explained fully and without further additions: this would be a sociological banality. And yet, further partial explanations can be put forward. My hypothesis is as follows: in order to sum up the past 25 years of Polish history, we must take into account the sense of frustration which comes with being offered endless possibilities.

I am not concerned with the possibility of something defined, as the excess of possibility is omnipresent. We can stay put or emigrate, and having emigrated, we can choose to remain away or return. We can work for less or for more money, we can lose jobs, we can get them back, we can start up our own businesses, we can shut them down and we can choose bankruptcy. We can vote or not vote. We can study for free or for a fee. We can gather resources and come up short. We can then take out loans in Swiss Francs and we can fail to pay them off. We can struggle, we can win, we can lose.

This excess of choice is not by any means unique to Poland, or even to societies which have experienced systematic transformation. In Poland, the comparison between now and pre-1989 times (known to an increasing number of Poles from second-hand tales alone) can only increase perceptions of negative outcomes of these changes, the most notable of which is a sense of frustration.

This frustration is quite different to the one caused by the widespread lack of choice imposed upon people by the previous regime. This powerlessness is characterised by the fact that when the vast majority of people share a common poverty, the sense of disappointment cannot be fed by comparisons with those same neighbours. Of course, because lack of choice was egalitarian in pre-1989 Poland, frustrations arising from comparisons with how others perceived us did happen. What didn’t happen, however, was the pain which comes with switching to a period of existential conditions of unreality.

Poles had to learn that the majority of the choices open to them did not bring fulfilment, for these can turn out badly or not turn out at all. This is when opportunities pass, remaining in the realm of “if only”. What’s worse, because there is a myriad of possibilities, those around us seem to make better use of theirs, seem more efficient, more innovative and creative. We see social spheres arising out of nowhere, spheres we are not invited into, because we are that little bit too old, too young, too slow, too poor at English, or at Cantonese, our family is too numerous, our holidays are too short or the websites we visit are not of the right kind. If only we could… But no. This isn’t even a case of something being our fault or being down to those who make it instead of us. It is simply the way possibilities are always distributed.

The pattern of this distribution is very uneven and changeable. As a result, even those who in certain respects find themselves socially aligned will have completely different sets of options open to them, and furthermore completely different reasons to feel frustrated. Their contexts for assessing their own standing will also be different. Even if the starting point for all is the same – a boom in options following 1989 – the eventual outcome is different for everybody. After all, “choices” can be awkward and refuse to arrange themselves in easily predictable combinations of criteria relating to class, origin, profession, education or even age.

Our map of Polish frustrations shows a collection of many scraps of personal disillusionment. It is difficult to grasp its influence on thought, and even harder to make generalisations about this understanding, in order to speak about society as a subject of self-reflection regarding the most recent two-and-a-half decades. Perhaps some kind of summary of individual desires and disappointments is being drafted in our nation today, but even if so, this is taking place beyond the limits of generalisations and simplifications, which tend to be the feature of most media and political conflicts.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.

On the subject of Paulina Wilk’s book “Special characters”

They can remember Poland under communism, yet they have been raised and educated in a new reality. Not yet old, but no longer young. Who are today’s thirty-somethings, those who grew up in the shadows of Poland’s most recent political transformation?

When, at the start of the new millennium, one of my university professors stated that Poland needs young people who are not weighed down with the miserable baggage of communism and the syndrome of being the poorer relation to Western Europe and beyond, I thought he was talking about me and my fellow students. “No, Piotr, it’s not you I’m referring to. I mean those younger than yourselves,” he said with grave seriousness. I felt a tinge of disappointment. I can remember the fall of communism as if through a mist, more of a series of images preserved in memory than any sort of real sense of having been there. My head was full of snapshots – yellowed ration cards to be exchanged for scraps of meat, “Relax” moon boots, milk bottles with silver tin caps and a black & white television sets, showing Communist era news reports. This was, indeed, my earliest childhood, but my formative years came in the 1990s. Along with my friends, I could by then travel around Europe (the Western parts were obligatory), study foreign languages and aspire to be independent in a “normal country” – as the generation of our parents would say, with hope in their voices.

And yet, memories of communism – or rather that which in the years that followed was left of it – really did impact on me and others like me. The Number 1 political subject of debate was “de-communisation”. It stirred up passions not just among the adults. During breaks in high school, we debated current political ongoings, transferring family disputes onto awkward, teenage territories. Finishing high school, we were very much already in a new Poland, but our trendy footwear still bore the stains of a less than happy road – the mud of the dark and impoverished ’80s, as well as the dust of the classier, yet still cheap and cheerful, early ’90s. We still didn’t have the sense that we were living in a truly modern state (“modern” being the key word in all disputes about Poland at the time), and yet we were no longer the citizens of a Soviet-style horror show.

How to describe the hybrid identity developed by those born around 1980? And, most of all, how can those who are members of this generation define their overall experience?

Until now, few thirty-somethings have taken it upon themselves to answer these questions in any sort of depth. Unlike the previous generation, for whom the defining event of that era had been the State of Martial Law (1981-82), the “Children of the Transformation” have not yet recorded their histories. This doesn’t however mean that they remain silent, occasionally making attempts at describing their fates in various formats. The trouble is that thirty-somethings who have suffered at the hands of the 2008 global economic crash, not so much financially, as in losing a sense of a certain tomorrow, all too often fall into the trap of anachronistic forms of thinking, transferring onto the past problems of the present. What we end up with is a Manichean picture of the Polish Transformation. What is it about it which is so bleak? The answers are obvious – free market economics, liberalism and individualism. What is hopeful? Here, the conclusions are less clear. More and more often, they are tinged with a note of nostalgia for the days of communism, which can be perceived as a haven of social egalitarianism, washed away in the wake of changes which took place in 1989. Are we not too keen, however, to reverse the polarity of our value systems, forgetting just how completely hopeless and grey the 1980’s were in Poland, and just how great a wave of social energy the transformations of the early 1990s unleashed? The question is all the more pertinent in that the picture which emerges of generations born around 1980 appears to be formed in a crooked mirror, hence some of its features are over-emphasised. The generation raised during the times of the Transformation tends to take on the dangerous characteristics commentators from both the Left and the Right wish to assign them – including their imagined desire to achieve success at any cost, as well as egocentric and consumerist tendencies. And, what’s even worse, that it was betrayed in some way, as it had aspirations which were nurtured, yet which could never be realised. But are these characteristics really defining of our generation?

A good starting point for our musings on this topic is Paulina Wilk’s book “Special characters” (“Znaki szczególne”). The back cover blurb describes it as a “personal record of growing up” – a story told by a child of the Transformation about her peers who “were raised alongside a new reality” and who “today, have plenty to say about a Poland currently celebrating 25 years of freedom”. The pronoun “they” is here ill-chosen, however. The story told by Wilk is an excellent example of issues regarding generational contexts being narrowed down to a single, over-inflated and demonised denominator – the reputed disease that is individualism.

THE PLAYGROUND AXIS MUNDI

Overall analysis of “Special characters” should best start with its evident qualities, or rather one specific quality which seems most obvious. Wilk, who has written what is essentially a memoir, is a fabulous collector of objects. Objects and descriptions of actions relating to those objects. “Special characters” is overall a catalogue of things which surrounded the writer during the 1980s and around the time of the Transformation. How many of us, born during the carnival days of Solidarity, don’t recall swinging on playground carpet beating frames, the axis mundi of our childhoods, or collecting empty Western beer and soft drinks cans, or the first BMX bikes, colourful stickers and transfers, toy film projectors, Commodore computers with their early versions of Pac-Man, orangeade drank out of plastic sachets purchased from school tuck shops, or Kasprzak tape players and the first Walkmen? The list of these childhood mementos gathered by Wilk is truly impressive, and described with some gusto. Today’s thirty-somethings do with some surprise admit that almost all of these constituted the imaginary landscape of their formative years. They could add a few missing items or introduce some corrections (Wilk had a Soviet-made handheld computer game featuring a wolf which stole eggs out of a henhouse, while my brother and I had one with a little chef who juggled pancakes and chicken legs with his pan), yet overall they will find things of interest in the narration provided by Wilk. Older readers will not be disappointed either, as they will be able to discover what sorts of things had thrilled their children when these were little. And perhaps it is only the youngest readers, those born after 1989, who will be forced to “google” the odd tidbit, in order to confirm what this “transformative” reality looked like, in actual fact.

All of this begins to resemble the trend of “ostalgie” (the longing for aspects of life in East Germany). Objects produced under Polish communism are also coming back into fashion, though most often this is down to those who value their “old school” charm without being old enough to actually remember using them in the first place. In the case of Wilk’s book, the word “ostalgie” is very fitting, however, seeing as her mania for collecting memorabilia has nothing to do with design or visual language, but with the memory of things those products were a silent witness to… the supposed equality and brotherhood of socialist states.

EQUALITY AS A NYLON SCHOOL SHIRT

And here is where we begin encountering problems. As much as Wilk has managed to produce her list of objects with some style, her summary of the aspirations, successes and disappointments experienced by the generation born in 1980, and of course contrasting it against other generations and overall changes of the 1990s, comes across as unoriginal and unconvincing.

Overall, the whole book is defined by an idealised description of growing up at the tail end of the 1980’s. On the one hand, this is unsurprising. If the family which raised us wasn’t all that pathological, it is easy to develop a “golden age” scenario with which to gild this formative period.

This is all the more true of those who at the time of this golden period of development were no more than nine-years-old and hence can only recall – and even then in faint scraps – little more than home-school-playground life.

This doesn’t necessarily mean that, from a factual perspective, Wilk’s book doesn’t contain accurately realised snapshots of generational experience, as in the case of her recollections of school days. “In our first class photo, we all look very much alike… backs proudly erect, donning our brand new school shirts and trainers.” I remember those nylon fabric uniforms, which we roundly hated. Even the more affluent of our friends had to wear the very same design, with its button down white collar.

This is a good example of the relative material and financial equality experienced by citizens trying to get by under a dying communist regime. The book begins to flounder when trying to draw universal truths out of such details. This imposed equality of poverty had nothing to do with some egalitarian idyll, in which empathy stopped us from competing against our environment, as proposed by the author. This was an equality of means imposed on everyone by impoverished realities of the times, which did not stop kids in kindergarten or school from competing who had the best toys (Matchbox and Lego versus homegrown products which failed to work properly), along with food (Haribo sweets versus inedible “chocolate flavoured chocolate”) or even simple toothpaste brought along by parents to collective dental hygiene sessions (imported fruit-flavoured brands versus Polish-made paste which failed to foam). And once again we weren’t all that together and we didn’t “play fairly”. Hierarchies formed among us, as did divisions, sub-groups. Some of us were weaker, some stronger. Some leaders and some excluded. We had the same instincts as children in other times and places, dating back to forgotten days of creche and playschool, and nothing to do with 1989 – “we always peeked into each other’s pencil cases, wondering what was in there worthy of envy”. The only thing which was different was the scale of choice and – this must be admitted – the scale of our gadget play-offs.

THE COMING OF THE INDIVIDUALISED ABYSS

The differentia specifica of the generation of the Transformation was of course the experience of the Transformation itself. It is worth asking, however, whether the fearsome symptoms of our getting carried away with freedom, as mentioned by Wilk in her book, the very freedom which created the basis for a free market and democratic changes, are a sound description of what happened to us and only us. According to the tale she weaves, the equality, brotherhood, stability and resilience of the child’s world were eroded by consumerism, technological advances and rampant individualism. And, once again, we can sort of partly agree. “We didn’t know that the time of things which lasted was passing, to be replaced by the idea of disposability, the easy exchange of one thing or model for another, and that a short shelf life of all new products would soon become the new norm.”

And indeed, soon enough we were flooded with disposable carrier bags, containing all sorts of equipment and gadgets designed to last three, maybe fiver years, tops. Before we become used to a single kind of mobile phone, the market presents us with a new design – ever smaller, ever more modern, packing more and more functionality. It’s true, we did want to be more independent, educated, enterprising and entrepreneurial, even if few of us had the inbuilt “free market gene”. I would also agree with the author that it was the parents who drove us into these new modes of thinking. We were their hope. They believed that their children would make the best of these new opportunities, even if they happened to fail. It is also true that old friendships have waned and in some way we are now living apart from each other, and when it comes to our parents, in a sense – as Wilk says – “we have left each other”.

In this puzzle nothing is as clear, however, as the author of “Special characters” would like us to believe. Technology and the mechanisms of increased consumption of goods surprised everyone in equal measure. Both those born in 1980 and those who were born a decade, two or even three earlier, because few realised that “in these modern circumstances it is not the destruction, but the securing, the conservation of things, which brings ruin”, as proposed by Hannah Arendt in her “The Human Condition”. Digital and consumerist revolutions were not a generational experience, but a national one. Nor can one agree with the statement that the desire to achieve success and rampant individualism caused those born towards the end of the 90s to live ever more separate lives. “Adulthood” is a key word here. We simply grew up, the way all young people grow up – be it in 1995, or in the times described in Turgenev’s “Fathers and sons”. The idea that we underplayed the experience of our elders and “consumed by the past, we failed to see the value of knowledge about things which had passed and worn out” could be assigned to many, even Bazarov. And then we grew up, creating our own families, had our own children, migrating to study and work in other cities. In this lies the whole mystery of our alleged inbreeding.

Ours and not ours. Perhaps we are more mobile than our parents and travel abroad more often. And yet, does the whole educational journeying of the people during the times of the Transformation differ that much from the student exodus experienced by our mothers and fathers? They too had left their family environs en-masse, thereby loosening the inter-generational bonds, meanwhile gaining the first ever university and engineering diplomas of anyone in their bloodlines. They did well enough out of it and were not socially bankrupt either. In the end, we too managed to avoid grim fates. Like them, we have friends with whom we meet and go on holiday, we attend to their weddings, our children play together. Perhaps we should admit something that is different – more of our generation are addicted to the internet, stuck in front of a computer or a smartphone screen.

IS THIS THE FINISHING LINE?

We matured, but did not grow old, which – as might be divined from the pages of “Special characters” – is what seems to have happened to Paulina Wilk. The scale of the assault presented to the reader baffles, considering the author is merely 33 years of age. This appears to be one of the main weaknesses of her book. It seems a little early for all those memories, which force us to look at the adult lives of those born in 1980 as a closed chapter. “We raced ahead”, writes Wilk about the process of growing up at the tail end of communism, in order to then conclude: “Right before we hit thirty, many of us slowed down. Our muscles tightened by constant movement, our fitness levels peaking thanks to all the marathons we’d run up until then. We had become used to the breaking of new records, almost addicted to them. And suddenly this – the brakes slammed on. This was when our heads – finally free from the obligation to analyse and learn new skills – began to remember”.

This is a little bit too personal to be considered a generational experience, dressed with the pronoun “we”. First of all, many of us are still running in the relay race of generations, even if – so as to stick with the sporting metaphor – each of us started out in various disciplines and paced themselves differently, setting their own tempo. Not everyone followed Wilk into European studies, in order to become an administrator, and then work in a corporation, or in a national newspaper, which was then shut down by its owner in less than a year – much like a toy car might be discarded by a disgruntled kid. (It is worth nothing here that the news publishing crisis struck all journalists regardless of age, even those lucky ones who had started their careers just at the cusp of the golden 1990s).

It’s true that the early days of “I can speak a bit of English, so I’ll become a company director” were merely a memory, and yet many of us continue to carve out careers without the sense that the time invested in studying and developing experience was wasted on a “rat race”, which then finished in a collective disappointment. “We had huge dreams,” writes Wilk “and not too ridiculous either. Our problem was in that we arrived late. […] When we rushed the departures lounge with our diplomas and certificates, our fluent English and world class knowledge, it turned out that all rocket launches had been called off until further notice”.

Perhaps rockets are indeed gone, not that there were that many of them to start with, but many of my friends made it onboard a good number of regular flights. And they keep on flying, working in smaller or bigger firms, institutions and third sector organisations. In Poland, the routes up to career highs were not and are not as steep and narrow as in other European states, where it is still a case of grandes écoles and membership of haute bourgeois deciding who ends up having grand political and business careers. And yet Wilk keeps on writing about unattained aspirations and disappointments: be it in politics, business or personal lives. As if the generation of those born in 1980 first had to collapse in their 30’s under the weight of their own broken dreams, then spend a good while in depressed isolation, so as to now – in the face of a global economic crisis – reach the conclusion that it is not money which should determine who we are, but that it is now time to return to communal and ego-less values.

Everyone evaluates reality according to their own measures. The question is who is more representative. Among my own acquaintances, the cult of money affects the insignificant few. In addition, nothing has brought us together more than joint student initiatives we engaged in: academic circles, seminars, discussions or the projects we created later on. And all that happened in the age of great economic sadness described by Wilk. No further decline and fall in values can be considered. Only now are we becoming more confident and certain of our own voices, which is in some way the natural order of things. We are opening new chapters in our lives, closing those which came earlier, meanwhile taking advantage of the experience gained in the process.

INDIVIDUALS AND COLLECTIVES, OR FALSE ALTERNATIVES

So what is the conclusion to all this? For the book “Special characters” this amounts to an unfavourable review, because even though its author should be commended for tackling an important subject, the overall effect is more than disappointing. Perhaps the book as a whole would have been far more engaging, and her observations a lot more relevant, had Wilk not tried to blend her recollections with a not-quite-essay, not-quite-sociological diagnosis form. In terms of the latter, “Special characters” is severely lacking. Wilk’s book is rather heavy on catchphrases and slogans, much of it sounding like spells or even more aptly – headlines: “Contemporary Poland is our collective disappointment”, “We are cursed by a missed moment”, “We are both old and new”.

There are many such examples. On the other hand, it is a little early for memories – as I mentioned before – especially as the whole, in spite of the author announcing in the final chapter that “matters would be taken in hand”, sounds a little like Chateaubriand’s “Memoirs from beyond the tomb”.

Wilk’s personal experiences would have made for wonderful fictional prose, had she allowed the rather one-dimensional description of her parents to come alive, while the narrative form of a novel would have let us discover that which was universal in the generational experience of the times of the Transformation.

“Special characters” gives something more however than the impression that someone has overdone things and extrapolated their own experience to that of a whole generation. For it forces us to ask the question: what do words such as “freedom”, “individualism” and “individual” actually mean? Today, they are more and more often lined up against a metaphorical wall, where they are contrasted with a different trinity: equality, solidarity and community. Are we not here however dealing with a false antinomy? Are those who present us with it in such clear-cut terms not making things too easy for themselves, stating that the only language we can apply to describe our experience of the Transformation is black and white?

And here I am reminded of a story told by Zbigniew Pełczyński, about his student years at Oxford University. One of the oldest European universities uses a teaching model based above all on an individual relationship between a student and their professor. In this way, the emphasis is very much placed on the individual, not the collective. Oxford, however, is not made up of a network of the academic equivalent of “free electrons”. We often forget about another pillar of learning, no less important, according to Pełczyński: countless student associations. Studying at Oxford, something which we can refer to as the quintessence of liberal education, turns out to be a grand school of collective action and individual responsibility for the collective.

Is this model, in a sense, not closer to that which happened to the Polish generation growing up in the shadow of the changes which followed 1989? It is difficult to come up with a singular answer to this question. One thing, however, is certain: even if we, today’s thirty-somethings, dreamed about a rapid attainment of individual freedom and success, we never wanted to work alone.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.

They aren’t just responsible for hail, earthquakes and whooping-cough –this is the impression one might have reading ongoing attacks unleashed a full 25 years after the Transformation against liberals and liberalism, and this from the Left as well as the Right of the political spectrum. The search for scapegoats in no way brings us closer to solving the problems facing Polish society today.

For a long time now, we’ve been hearing that it is liberals who are responsible for introducing a predatory form of capitalism to Poland, along with all other attendant forms of pathology. In reforming the ill-functioning communist economy, they threw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater. Instead of introducing gradual reforms into the economy, they kept paring right down to the bone, without paying attention to the social impact the reforms were having. As a result, they not only permanently pushed hundreds of thousands of people – for example, the workers of former collectivised farms – beyond the margins of sustainable society, they also inspired Poles to buy into a pathological form of individualism. These liberal reforms are responsible for the low levels of social trust in Poland, while people taking advantage from any sort of social benefits are now considered to be parasites eating away at the otherwise healthy fabric of society. If you aren’t making ends meet, it’s your fault – this is the reaction facing those Poles seeking any sort of social justice. Who is responsible? “This is the legacy of liberal pedagogy introduced in the early 1990s. And it is mostly your doing,” Adam Leszczyński wrote in March of 2014 in the pages of Gazeta Wyborcza, addressing representatives of the Polish liberal community.

And so we have a clearly defined problem, as well as a guilty party, but are we therefore any closer to any sort of solution? Of course not, seeing as the above diagnosis doesn’t actually match the complexity of the problem, while at the same time it looks for guilty parties where they are unlikely to be found.

First of all, it’s worth remembering – to paraphrase Stefan Kisielewski – that capitalism was not introduced into Poland by “dragging people along by the hair”. Indeed, Western institutions set Poland targets to meet and set parameters, but at the outset of the 1990s a decisive majority of elites from various political factions were keen to play along. In addition, a large part of the nation associated capitalism with the West, and the West with prosperity, while all along having a rather vague idea about all three.

As for subtleties regarding the identification of various types of capitalism – Scandinavian, American, Chinese – there was little chance of these being considered. Rich bounty awaited anyone who, back then, was able to unite a deeply fragmented opposition with Social-Democratic slogans. Those seeking a return to pre-War or Western Leftist ideals or – much like Jan Józef Lipski or Józef Pinior – suffered spectacular defeats, or else – like Jacek Kuroń – accepted compromises which they then lived to regret. Today, present-day problems are more and more often blamed, by commentators from both the Left and the Right, on imaginary liberals. Imaginary, because we must remember that in those days only one serious party existed with the word “liberal” in its name.

This was the Liberal-Democrat Congress (Kongres Liberalno-Demokratyczny), which during the first free elections in 1991 gained almost 8% of the votes, while in subsequent elections completely failed to enter parliament!

Secondly, it is hard to grasp by what miracle this small group of liberals managed to completely plough through the whole of Poland’s population, introducing free market reforms against the wishes of the majority. If in fact they managed to secure such influence, the question remains why weren’t they able to introduce liberal changes in the sphere of attitudes and relations between the Church and the state, even though – as is now acknowledged by very few – so much was written on the topic in the 1980s by Gdansk liberals, with Donald Tusk at their helm? The answer is simple: market changes were supported by the majority of Polish intellectual and political elites, along with a large segment of the populace – while customs remained unchanged.

Even now, the average Pole thinks of the state as their enemy, and that they are best off worrying about themselves. This holds true until, say, a small trader must negotiate with a giant supermarket chain, when as a result of unusually generous harvests their sales income falls, or when, cheated by a tourist bureau, they find themselves without any money while on holiday abroad. These conflicting expectations – laissez-faire and interventionism – coexist perfectly well in the heads of many Poles, having been nurtured over many generations in response to the numerous pathologies inherent in the Polish political system, beginning long before the early days of the Transformation. And we are not trying here to lay all the blame at the feet of the populace, but to acknowledge a certain fact which we should set about slowly changing.

Thirdly, in critiquing the Polish transformation, let us not forget that its initial years were not those of mass advances from foreign corporations trying to work with our industry. Even in the early 1990s, during the “battle at the top”, Henry Kissinger, following a visit to Poland, advised American investors against putting money into it, concluding that its situation was too unstable. Back then, Polish streets were not lined with modern skyscrapers and luxury limos, but with hundreds of thousands of traders doing business out of hastily erected “tinjaw” stalls. Today, the youthful fever of those days seems ridiculous, and yet we must keep in mind that many political analysts and sociologists – Jerzy Szacki among them – saw these early entrepreneurs as the force which drove changes within Polish society forward.

In addition, the beginnings of free market economics were in a way a formative and even positive experience for many of these street traders. Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, a co-owner of a transportation firm in the 1980s, describes the change which took place in his colleague after they had set up a company together: “Once everything was his, rather than property of the state, he became a completely different human being” – ownership allowed people to recover their dignity, giving them the sense of capability and control over their own futures. Once again, we can snigger, but the experience of a whole raft of the Polish population cannot be ignored.

Fourthly, critics of Poland’s liberals should also note the changes taking place in their opponents. We have often used the pages of Liberal Culture to publish discussions with various liberals and every such exchange confirms the need to build a strong and transparent state, seeing as this appears to be the only guarantee of freedom. “In my world view, I take up a very simple position, which holds that liberalism works in places where the state itself holds firm”, Paweł Śpiewak stated in one of our interviews (issue 124). “To say that reduced government control means more liberalism is not actually true – the construction of an alternative between these two concepts is to be false. We can go about reducing the role of the state only once its fundamental workings make it strong, stable and capable of maintaining universally held standards of co-existence”.

Even liberals such as Jan Krzysztof Bielecki, who still consider Margaret Thatcher to be the icon of liberalist thinking, in place of her famous quote about the non-existence of society prefer today to quote a different line, which refers to the need for a “respected judge”, without whom market exchange cannot work effectively. This judge is none other than an effectively functioning state in itself. Mr Bielecki, in an interview with Liberal Culture (issue 127), admitted that those radical liberals who proclaim that capital has no nationality – hence any attempts at protecting local interests are spurious – are very much in the wrong. The free market is doing very well, but only in theory – after the 2008 financial crisis, no one can be in any doubt about this. Economic life in the 21^st century is always happening in some kind of institutional and legal context, meanwhile both the institutions and the legal frameworks must be designed, approved and implemented by someone. The forms they eventually end up taking depend on never-ending political disputes, public opinion, as well as the efforts of lobbyists who, not without cause, retain representatives based in the most important capital cities around the globe.

And, eventually, we come to the fifth point – critics of Polish liberals accuse them of narrowing their whole way of thinking down to economics. And rightly so. We have often drawn attention to this problem, in our conversations with Andrzej Szahaj (issue 140), Andrzej Walicki (issue 254) and Marcin Król (issue 260). Liberalism is much more than unchecked economics. But criticising the practice of limiting liberalism to the economic dimension, Polish Left and Right wing thinkers are both making the same mistakes. Meanwhile, Poland needs a more developed framework of liberal thought, which concerns itself not with freedom understood as a total lack of restrictions, but the ability of the individual to achieve their full potential. Sometimes, state help is needed to achieve this – such as for those who, thanks to their place of birth or income levels, have a harder start than others. In other cases – for example, in choosing how we structure our family lives – the state should leave people to make their own free choices.

Tradition of this sort of complex liberalism has never been strong in Poland, while many of us still equate the idea of freedom with being allowed to do “whatever we like”. Hence, instead of beating each others’ breasts and arguing over who is more responsible for the mistakes made at the time of the Polish Transformation, it is vital that we go about building such a liberal state instead, together.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.

Many people believe the events which took place in Poland 25 years ago should today be reviewed with sobriety, leaving aside all unnecessary emotions or nostalgic tendencies. The problem with this apprach is that the heated arguments over the Transformation which took place in 1989 are an inevitable consequence of its political success.

In order for any community to define itself it is necessary to identify the moment at which the conventional dating of political “present” starts. In the case of democracies older than Poland’s this is not too complicated a matter. Americans have their 1776. The French their perennial 1789. For Germany, “year zero” is now 1945. And Poland? Here, things are trickier. 1918 perhaps (independence regained) or 1945 (the end of WWII) or maybe 1980 (the August accords) or even 1989 (the Round Table talks, the June elections), or even… 2004 (entry into the EU)?

None of the above dates can be considered a singular, defining turning point. They do however represent events which are more and less singular in context. When thinking about a founding moment, which could be seen as setting Poland on a social, civic platform, then it could be 1980, with its Solidarity symbolism, its collective action and hope. However, if we are to select a moment which represents the Polish political scene – the one which is still with us today – then without a doubt the reference point remains the Round Table talks. Even now, they are the cause of such extreme agitation, both on the Left as well as the Right sides of the political divide, precisely because they tuned out to be a political success. Meanwhile, it was also a moment when the various powers which were fighting over Poland achieved a form of compromise, rather than absolute justice or perfect freedom. It was a moment which gave birth to all the divisions which to this very day exist in the Polish political landscape, so very deeply rooted in the events of a quarter of a century ago.

This was also a time of immense complication and lack of clarity, of uncertainty regarding all moral judgements – and hence a moment of real politics. This period continues to be evaluated in several radically simplifying ways: as treason, conspiracy, as national reconciliation, as the effect of the elites agreeing to things without the people’s say so, as the achievement of the goal of eliminating those same people from the decision-making processes.

In reality, the Round Table talks were none of these. It was neither treason nor conspiracy – the compromise achieved then was temporary, and the reality which followed more fluid than usual, and, as we have since learnt from testimonies given by historians, one which surprised even those involved directly. Interpreting the Round Table as a betrayal is also the reverse side of the myth of “national unification”, which has just as little sense to it. Even though in politics declarations of unity do in unique cases happen, politics as such does not depend on unity. Its players do not last long as each other’s allies, nor is it important for all of the players to “like one another”. Politics is a show, a clash of force, a dialogue, a contest, though never starting from zero and always playing for stakes much higher than simply the defeat of one’s opponent.

Nor were the Round Table talks an “outcome” nor “objective”, but – only and more than – a means to achieve a change of system. Let us add that this change was peaceful, which, in contrast with places such as Romania, was not all that obvious at the time. Peaceful – this is important also in the sense that it might be better at the outset of a new system to have the tricky concept of the Round Table talks, rather than the 1920 Battle of Warsaw, which reinforced the authority of a man who then went on to dismantle Polish democracy in 1926, on his way to staging a coup.

From this perspective, the debate around whether the Round Table talks, or the reforms which both preceded and followed them, or the beginnings of an independent Poland, were “proper” is senseless. They were a time of the founding of modern Polish politics, which apart from the round table model, had at its disposal (and has still) a whole range of other modes of working: civic protests and its institutionalisation, parliamentary democracy, party politics and non-governmental organisations. In a letter he wrote to a friend from Warsaw in 1990, Ralf Dahrendorf drew his attention to the fact that the Round Table should in no way be seen as an example of normal politics. That was when the “rules of the game” were being agreed, along with the essential conditions for freedom’s further development.

All this is a game of democracy. It’s important we play along, but not for the sake of fun alone. We play to make democracy better, though without a utopian belief that politics can be engaged in apolitically, that it is possible to return to some kind of abstract moment before the Round Table happened, and recreate politics from scratch, to call up a social revolution which will “cleanse” everything and only then will it be possible to once more sit down to a negotiating table. Or that it is possible to base politics on a truly Platonic distinction between “good” and “evil”.

These are fantasies dreamt up by desk-bound intellectuals, their heads buried in books, (luckily) without any conception of what real politics and real violence is about. Or else they are the cynical promises made by politicians. In this game, it is worth thinking about what sort of aspects determine the contemporary state of Poland. Simplifying somewhat, it can be defined as: just after the Transformation – the building of a capitalist economy, at what seemed like any price, and this down to the horrific state of national finances at that time; before 1999, and then prior to 2004 – including Poland in the West, through membership of NATO and EU; after 2004 – trying to match standards of living in the West through the effective distribution of EU funds.

Today, from the perspective of the last 25 years, we need to evaluate and define our aims, which will combine to define the Polish political drive in the next decade. What will this affect? First of all: the character of the Polish state. What kind of a state will it be – what needs to be defined, moving beyond the completely worn-out, and in the Polish context never all that clear, phrases such as “welfare” or “neoliberal”? Or maybe it is simply a state without any ideas, which desperately needs character and strategy? What should Polish education look like – not only in terms of middle and higher education, but also early years, pre-school and high school? How to manage the ageing population, since we know that even the most generous welfare organisations in Austria or Germany are failing to increase childbirth rates?

Secondly, foreign policies. Can and should Poland become Ukraine’s ambassador? How should it position itself in the 21^st century in relation to its partners in Europe, as well as to USA, Russia and other countries? What is the actual condition – in terms of international relations – of Poland as a lawful state? How is this affected by the massive scandal caused by the building of a secret CIA prison within Polish borders and the way in which we deal with this scandal today? And finally, what sorts of conclusions do we, Poles, draw from the Edward Snowden affair?

Thirdly, civil society. How to encourage Poland’s political castes to value diversity and to truly value critical voices? How to fund civil society? How to convince Polish politicians and businesspeople that they are responsible for it too?

And last but not least, what about Polish modernity, what about women’s rights and the rights of minority groups, and what about state-church relations? This are but a few political trajectories which must be taken into consideration when trying to define the state of the Polish political environment in the next few years. It is worth giving it some thought, remembering at the same time that, a quarter of a century ago, we all won. It is up to us, and the hard work we put in, what that win will amount to.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.

Disputes over the Round Table are also disputes over our present-day democracy. Tomasz Sawczuk presents his commentary on the debate which took place in the Presidential Palace as part of the celebrations of the 25^th anniversary of the Round Table talks.

On the 6^th of February 2014, Poland’s Presidential Palace hosted a debate centred around the 25^th anniversary of the historical Round Table talks of 1989. Several influential young thinkers took part, including Maciej Gdula from Political Critique, Michał Łuczewski from 44 and Karolina Wigura from Liberal Culture. They presented very different opinions regarding the events of that time, many of which are worth commenting upon, and not only those relating to historical questions. It would seem that disputes over the Round Table are also ongoing disputes over today’s democratic processes.

TURNING THE TABLE OVER

The Round Table talks can be criticised from a number of often surprising perspectives. Hence, Maciej Gdula stated that perhaps we all overestimate the importance of discussion as a political method. Why should this be the privileged method? Perhaps it is better to sometimes get into a good fight, and only then debate? Gdula simultaneously considers the Round Table talks as an unhelpful political model, it being an example of elitist compromise, while democratic politics should take into consideration, as much as possible, the wishes of all. Besides, the agreements settled upon in 1989 chose a radically free market model of systematic transformation, which increased inequality and worsened the life chances of a large number of Polish citizens.

Gdula’s opinion is ahistorical. First of all, the majority of Poles wanted a changed system, which undermines his theory about elitist compromises being agreed without popular agreement. Besides, the representatives of the communist party would never have agreed to talk to the opposition, if said talks did not have the respect and support of at least some of the people. Secondly, during the times of the round Table talks, no one knew that Leszek Balcerowicz will become the minister of finance, or even that Tadeusz Mazowiecki will become prime minister! Even before the negotiations started, certain free market reforms had already been introduced, with the intention – according to some historians – of rescuing the communist party in the eyes of the nation. In this context, a more convincing thesis might be that put forward by Robert Krasowski in his book “In the afternoon. The fall of Solidarity elites after they came into power” (“Po południu. Upadek elit solidarnościowych po zdobyciu władzy”), that the form the Transformation ended up taking was forced upon Poland by Western and international institutions, and hence external influences.

Gdula, however, dismisses the importance of historical factors. He seems to forget that the transition between the 1980s and 90s was a time of fascination with free markets and the United States, with Ronald Reagan at the helm. The West was triumphant, and the US model of capitalism was widely seen as synonymous with freedom, prosperity and progress. There was not even a chance of considering a search for a “third way” or other, modern forms of social democracy. Leftist ideals were associated, by most in Poland, with their communist past, hence they were widely discredited. The marketisation of the economy was also a way to try and fix the problems ailing the Polish state back then. Today, we are more and more aware of the social ills caused by the transformation – twenty five years ago, this was difficult to forecast. And ignoring the state of affairs back then would be a mistake. A mistake all the more surprising that the Left seems to have no problems at all with historical understanding and justification of ideological fascinations with various types of Marxism – which could help explain the attitudes of at least part of the Polish intelligentsia community. At this time, the historical context plays a key role. In 1989, by a strange coincidence it stops having such a role. It is also very doubtful whether the model of transformation implemented in Poland was indeed radically “free market” in its thinking. Both the privatisation and the reduction in benefit handouts, along with other profound changes, are not that shocking when compared to similar forms of regulation in other Western states.

Furthermore, both viewpoints presented by Gdula – that sometimes a scuffle is better than a debate, and that politics should be more democratic (than it was around the Round Table) – conceal within them contradictory objectives. Gdula is the author of the introduction to the book “On the political” (“Polityczność”), in which the Belgian philosopher follows in the thinking of Carl Schmitt that politics in its most profound sense depends on conflict. In practice, politics depends on a battle between competing worldview projects motivated by collective passions.

How to reconcile such an approach with the idea of a radically democratic politics, in which all citizens must be engaged in the political process? After all, listening to all competing points of view demands above all openness and agreement, not only the fuelling of conflict. How then to promote ideas dependent on respect for discussions, and at the same time to enthusiastically encourage that such discussions be preceded by, in the words of Maciej Gdula, a “proper scuffle”?

Protests, strikes and demonstrations are legitimate political tools, fitting within democratic boundaries. However, any decision arrived at by force is nothing to do with democratic politics and separate from the idea of public will. Such a politic is more reminiscent of the tormenting of the temporarily defeated by the temporarily victorious, and its celebration is nothing more than a dangerous glorification of barbarianism.

THE TROUBLES WITH DEMOCRACY

The ideological Right has a similar problem with democracy. Michał Łuczewski stated in the Presidential Palace that the Round Table talks were the beginning of modernity in Poland. As a consequence of the talks being held, between the ruling party and the opposition, the bad stopped being the bad, meanwhile the good lost their nobility. Since then, the split between good and bad has not been so clear cut. Politics lost its moral dimension. The overall aim of history was replaced by endless political wrangling, leading to nothing of real substance.

Łuczewski is right. Looking back, it is clear the Round Table talks opened a new epoch in Polish politics, the era of a democratic culture, which replaced the authoritarian political model, and which imposes the acceptance of new political and moral standards. Hence, the terminology applied by Łuczewski seems rather inadequate. In a democracy, questions of absolute evil and absolute goodness appear to be of secondary importance. Democratic politics overtakes morality, attempting to achieve understanding between competing sides. Is this democratic culture then bereft of value? Not at all! In as much as authoritarian logic can result in the bad governing the good, or the good the bad – or at least those who claim to be good over those who are stigmatised in various ways – democratic culture brings to the life of the collective firm standards and values.

The term “democratic culture” is here representative of liberal democracy, a liberalism closely allied with democracy. Non-liberal democracy must still advance along the lines of authoritarian logic.

So what are these standards and values? During the Presidential Palace debate, this topic was take up by Karolina Wigura, who dealt with such fundamental issues as respect for individual rights, rule of law or the workings of institutions relating to procedural justice. These can partly be delivered in an authoritarian model of rule. Yet, the defining standard which separates democratic culture from authoritarian politics is the self-restraint of the sides involved in a dispute. The eventual triumph of either side, accompanied by a complete belittling of the opponent, is a disaster for any democratic system. A democratic culture always places discussion above violence, reforms over revolutions and humility over humiliation.

Such politics may appear to be dull and fail to capture popular imaginations, as they do not propose any great moral aims. This is a real problem, resulting in liberal democracy being threatened by populism. But it doesn’t have to be this way. It will not be so, if we notice that the everyday dismantling of conflicts and prejudices, and that cooperation for the good of a shared future, are not aims which are trivial or uninteresting. In fact, this is something far more profound! In rare moments, when such cooperation takes on symbolic forms – such as in the case of the Round Table talks – we are not dealing with opportunism, the machinations of the elites or with treason, but with ordinary poetry of justice in a dignified format. In spite of the points of view put forward by both the Polish Left and Right, current political practice does not need any further sanctification – not with blood, nor gallant gestures, nothing of the sort.

This article is a part of Kultura Liberalna’s book “To place Poland in the centre”. See the table of contents here.