Reections on Poland and America A View from Warsaw

The Sarmatian Review

a publication of the Houston Circle of

the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America April

In Novemb er the Berlin Wall fell Twoyears later a p ostmo dernstyle

so cialist was elected President of the United States of America The twoevents

marked a giantsteptoward full implementation of the allto oeasilyforgotten

theory of convergence Op enly the theory pro claimed civilizing inuence of

Western demo cracies and market economy on the Soviet Union In fact West

and East were to meet halfway

The rst who tried to implant so cialism in the US was of course President

Franklin D Ro osevelt As b etted the most freedom loving p eople in the world

Americans resisted the trend for decades But the silentmajority of the nation

was b eing made more and more silent and alienated while the lib eral p olitical

and media elites were taking over the lead with the consent of corp orate America

and seeming passivity of the Republican establishment As a result the funda

mental values up on which America was built are now b eing questioned Atthe

same time however despite all the current confusion it is still hardly b elievable

that Clintonites can lure America into the so cialistic camp for go o d

Unlike in America in Western Europ e so cialism has b een advancing without

much hindrance for decades already Under the American nuclear umbrella more

public money could b e p oured into demoralizing p eople bywelfare whose essence

is a massive redistribution of resp onsibility from the individual to the institution

Of course Western Europ ean so cialism is of a mo dern brand with a strong

private sector some state owned big companies and high taxes thus allowing

state intervention on a large scale and in eect corrupting b oth big business and

so cieties at large One should note that the average government share of GDP

in the four largest economies of Europ e Britain France Germany and Italy

comes to slightly less than p er cent the US government share of GDP stands

at p er cent but b eware Clinonites may try to intro duce the value added tax

whichnowaverages p er cent in Europ e

The Soviets and their communist vassals well aware of imminent bankruptcy

of the communist states as well as of the demoralization and dechristianization

of the West did not risk much in gradually yielding p ower to the demo cratic op

p osition in CentralEast Europ e Indeed President Reagan was the last warrior

courageous enough to sp eak in plain terms and call the Soviet Union the evil

empire But he was crippled by the Irangate in and so on the media pun

dits campaign hailing Mr Gorbachev as the sole spiritus movens of demo cratic

reforms in the Soviet hemisphere was in full swing The role of Solidarity in

the pro cess of accelerating the Soviet demise let alone the role of PresidentRea

gan was forgotten Nob o dy in his or her right mind could exp ect that the West

would supp ort making the communists accountable for the evil decades inicted

on hundreds of millions of humans Fortyyears after CentralEast Europ e was

handed to the Soviets by an act of b etrayal in the case of Poland justice and

common sense were not highpriced

The preparations for p olitical changes in CentralEast Europ e started in the

mid eighties In Poland they amounted mostly to building ground for future

ie when the rst demo cratic government is established share in controlling the

banking system and privatization of the most promising companies At the last

stage the communist partywas refurbished and pro claimed so cialdemo cratic

In fact the enlightened leadership of the party consists of techno crats eager

and nowwell p ositioned to control an imp ortant part of Polish economy and

p olitics the former controlled not only by p olitical means but also byCommunists

turned entrepreneurs managers bankers etc all this thanks to b eing allowed

to appropriate a p ortion of the state wealth Putting aside dierent histories

of oppressors and victims of yesterday b oth the excommunist So jusz Lewicy

Demokratycznej and Unia Demokratyczna of Tadeusz Mazowiecki as well as

the now do omed to oblivion Kongres Lib eralno Demokratyczny havevested

interests in preserving the economic and so cial order as envisioned by UD and

KLD Bound how ever by the partys constituency and the partys rank and

le former communist aparatchiks the SLDs leadership has to sound and act

apparently inconsistently sometimes

To b e sure in after years of state so cialism manyinPolish so ciety

favored the welfare state and to ok for granted the states obligation to provide

employment for the citizenry Nevertheless the so ciety at large had staunchly

opp osed Communism Characteristically the last huge street demonstration of

Solidarity memb ers organized under the rathermo dernstyleso cialistic banner

in February turned to a ferventanticommunist and patriotic rally

After the semifree elections in June there was a chance to mobilize the

so ciety to sacrices unimaginable in the West But that would have required

making the communists accountable for what they had done to the country and

for the hardships whichwould necessarily follow All that was needed was hold

ing the new parliamentary elections in after the Polish Communist Party

had dissolved itself and banning the high ranking communists from running for

oce passing a bill on the criminal character of communist rule in Poland should

have followed But the victory in was played down by the centerleft in

tellectuals who had dominated the Solidarity movement and led the Round

able negotiations Communists were granted a pardon byTadeusz Mazowiecki T

who announced the rule of lawasifPoland had had another law than the one

passed by communist legislators In short p eople were led to confusion and alien

ated the more so as so on the centerleft most notably Adam Michniks Gazeta

Wyb orcza and the leftleft b egan dangling yet another red herring b efore the

public the alleged threat to demo cracy in the form of rising clericalism

Poles are a p eaceful p eople according to Norman Davies p erhaps to o p eaceful

They are fundamentally religious and loyal to Roman Catholicism They see

themselves as citizens of Christian Europ e To o bad for them since there is

no Christian Europ e while the real Europ e nds no reason to welcome them

Nob o dy denies Western help but taking needs into account this help is symb olic

and rather costly In the p erio d of prolonged Europ ean recession Poland was

greeted with protectionism and unfair trade practices of the Europ ean Common

Market Worse Poland is paying a huge debt incurred by Communists Still

worse Poland is not only unwelcome economically but also p olitically With its

gaze xed on the West Polish foreign p olitics has b een marked with indecision

ab out what to do with the Western humbug such as to take the most transparent

example the last initiative of President Clinton the socalled Partnership for

Peace Indeed denying Poland any sp ecic prosp ects for joining NATO b ecause

of Russian reservations came as a sho ck to the so ciety at large

AllinallPoles have to learn to rely on themselves only which is not bad

aware that unlike in the case of Russians o dds are against them in the West

whichistoobadAt the same time the West has no right to see an alibi in the

fact that the partly excommunist Left is nowinpower in P oland After all the

head of SLD Mr Kwasniewski is no more a leftist than President Clinton is

And curiously enough nob o dy from the Polish excommunist p olitical leadership

can match Mr Strob e Talbottasanow Russian and earlier Soviet ap ologist