Reflections on Poland and America: a View from Warsaw
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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 .