open Democracy News Analysis - Poland after PiS: handle with care, Neal Ascherson - Comments

m.jamil on "Poland after PiS: handle with care"

m.jamil — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 18:07:48 +0000

Europe, a god awful geographical nightmare compounded by 2500 years of mobilizing myths to legitimate empires, city states, colonies, and more recently nation-states and unions of nation-states. This all drives geographers mad. What legitimacy has this Eurasian peninsula of smaller peninsulas as a “continent” other than hubris? What historical -geographical significance do the Ural mountains have compared to the Alps and Pyrenees? French say that Africa begins on the Spanish side (west) of the Pyrenees. Germans say African begins south of the Alps (Italy). Mediterranean connotes many different representations to those who live around its shores, and those who live farther away. As Braudel and more recently Horden & Purcell describe are a unity and diversity that cannot be easily labelled throughout history as of “Europe, Africa or Asia ..” So, assuming Europe to have some validity as a geographical term, the Iberian peninsula divided from West-Central Europe, is easy to label as Southwest Europe, unless we see it as a historical and future bridge linking it to North west Africa. Italy, that most contested peninsula, is easily identified as a southern extension of west-central Europe almost touching Africa, with Sicily almost touching Tunis. The great Northern peninsula – Scandinavia is self evident, although the Danish thumb connects to mainland west-central northern Europe. Balkans? Impossible to think of that historically contentious ethnically mixed mountainous peninsula as anything other than what it is — a balkanized southeastern peninsula & insular fracture zone extending down the coast of Asia Minor / the Levant / or whatever you want to call the lands of modern Turkey, Syria and Lebanon. To be rational, Lebanon’s Francophone Maronite Christians aligned with the Roman Pope probably have as much historical-ideological right to European identity as an ethno-genetic mix of so-called Cypriot Greeks with Orthodox, Slavic / Cyrillic roots Then there is the heartland of Europe … somewhere between the Rhine and god knows which river to the east … Anyway, that is a sprinkling of geographic approaches to European regions, but obviously east v. west has more ideological & emotional baggage than north v. south … & god only knows why any place would not want to be considered as central Europe .. after all center is centre, and central to whatever geographically bizarre entity we define as Europe

m.jamil on "Poland after PiS: handle with care"

m.jamil — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 16:59:23 +0000

Neal Ascherson's brilliant explorations into black sea geography & history need parallels in Poland/ Ukraine, whatever these countries mean in history. Geography, as Ascherson points out really defines Poland into east & west, likewise Ukraine – with added dimensions of roman catholic west v. orthodox east … in fact, we need to go back to roman era split into eastern & western empires to understand issues of the near past, oder-wistla, curzon’s line, danzig corridor, etc, for a country that shares borders with 5-6 other countries, depending on kalingrad … historically Polish, Prussian, Lithuanian military elites alternated rule over Europe’s most backward agrarian peasantry, still under feudal serfdom and using Neolithic agricultural technologies well into the 20th century … Even under communist party rule, urban intellectual and artistic elites had vast privileges, Europe’s hottest jazz scene without Black American expats, along with innovative classical music, a dynamic film industry (polanski’s “knife in the water”), vibrant graphic & visual arts, advanced urban & transport planning at par with anywhere else in Europe, cutting edge economic theory … & a strong, skilled urban industrial proletariat – that was western & urban Poland under soviet domination … Polish-American immigrants were, and still are, split along class lines, with polish jokes at the expense of working class, while professional & academic elites are invisible & seldom mix with their blue collar brethren .. at the close of wwii we hosted a polish family who had escaped through Russia & on to North America, a former rector of Poland’s oldest school of philosophy & colleague of my father – he was my teacher and mentor … but also allowed me to understand the vast gulf that existed between their family and the majority of polish kids in my catholic school who came from early 20th century immigrants — miners, peasants, labourers, big strong kids who stoically played football as meat for the line, and had a generally deserved reputation as not the brightest lamps in the socket … I would love to find an extended article by Ascherson using his skills of readable narrative to bring to life historical representation, nuances, and differences that make a difference … what we would find … perhaps Poland is only a metaphor – the little trumpet boy of Krakow … “the Mongols are coming, arm yourselves” but that was for the mounted knights, the Polish elite whose strong military tradition was feared by Stalin who ordered their execution, but not the peasant soldiers .. who were no danger once Polish intellectual and cultural leadership was exterminated … Flat lands offer few natural geographic boundaries other than rivers … but when you reach the southern borders of the Pomerian plain, hills of Sudetenland & Carpathian mountains, the ethno-ecological demographics shift … in short all borders of Poland are historically ambiguous, and imposed by war and the winners .. but peoples in these transition zones have more ethno-national identity (however much they are small minorities) than loyalties to grand ideas of nation … after all rulers and states come and go, but life changes very little in these rural hinterlands …

klaus on "Poland after PiS: handle with care"

klaus — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:43:45 +0000

Dear Iannis, thank you for taking the time to elaborate on your previous comments. They now make perfect sense and I am no longer offended. I can even see your point and will take it to heart. Actually, I employed the term Central European wrongly. The Poles have always regarded themselves as Central Europeans and are now, after joining the EU, aspiring to become fully integrated into Western Europe (there I go again, but we cannot really do away with all such delineating, defining terms, can we?) Turning their backs on the first of the Kaczynskis is an important step in this process, though by far not the first. I wish them well in their endeaver and fervently hope that their inclusion will eventually soften their long-standing and fully justified distrust of the motives of Westerners. Now allow me to reflect on your comment: "We are not Balkan, we are Westerners. We belong to Western Europe." Does it not spring from that same "them vs. us mentality" that you warned me against in your posting "The lost centre..."? But I do not want to berate you for making it, because this mentality is deeply rooted in our genes. Afterall, we evolved as a species as members of small bands which increased the chance of survival. Altruism developed to include the members of the band, because it enhanced the survival of the individual. It never extended to outsiders. Thus, we are what we are. Had we evolved in large herds, such as wildebeests, we might not have any problems with parochialism. I do not wish to "Eulen nach Athen tragen." (Carrying owls to Athens, where there allegedly were many already - meaning: to do what is needless.) I.e. I do not need to tell you, the highly-educated Greek, that Greece is the birthplace of western culture and civilization. Would there even be such a thing without ancient Greece? While the neighborhood ("them") may have rubbed off somewhat on its people in the course of millennia, Greece will always be recognized for the impact it has had on a large part of mankind and will never have to worry about its special status; at least not among the knowledgeable which is really what counts. The ignorant and the envious may begrudge you this pedestal, but they can never take it from you. It will last as long as western civilization endures.

ianniscarras on "Poland after PiS: handle with care"

ianniscarras — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 09:36:40 +0000

Dear Klaus, My comment was not meant to be condescending, so if it was I apologise. Indeed I agree with the thrust of what you wrote. My point was not even one particular to Polish history, but rather to the history of Europe in general. There is a repeated tendency to blame ills on the east and to continually redefine geographical terminology along an axis West=good, East=bad. This is what Tudjman was up to on his visit to Clinton back then when when he insisted that Croatia was Central European (in other words definitely not Balkan). To cite just one other example of this type of name game, the main opposition newspaper in the Turkish controlled part of Cyprus was named Europa, until it was renamed Afrika (rather wittily I think). I am sensitive to this type of name game because it is played continually in my own country. Ask Greeks if they consider their country to be Balkan, and the answer will frequently be a dazed and puzzled look. We are not Balkan, we are Westerners. We belong to Western Europe. My point is not that this is right or wrong, simply that it is unhelpful. Rather than engage with the problems common to the region, it creates a denial mentality and engenders a false (in my opinion) sense of superiority visa vi those further east (or in the case of Greece further north and east) who share many of the same challenges. It is this us versus them mentality which worries me in any division of Europe between Western, Central and Eastern, or Western and Balkan, and so on and so forth. Hence my comment. As far as Poland is concerned I am happy for it to be termed Western European, or Eastern European, or even Central European, but probably not Balkan. Iannis Carras, Athens, Greece.

tonyleavy on "Poland after PiS: handle with care"

tonyleavy — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 20:37:18 +0000

anthony leavy Your article on the Polish election was an excellent resume of the Polish political situation that gave rise to a change of government. Since we had an election in Ireland in early summer in which we re-elected the same major party to government for the third time the recent change of government in Poland disturbs me. Four phrases in your article jumped out at me and described the Irish situation to a T. The 'domination of the media' by 'a pigsty of patronage' has led to 'the hopelessly compromised National Broadcasting Committee' which has ensured that we are now essentially 'a one party state'. Poland's independent stance in relation to its more dominant neighbours contrasts starkly with that of Ireland. During our recent election the prime minister of the United Kingdom, which misgoverned Ireland for nearly eight hundred years, made a blatant, partisan,and some would say, successful intervention in our election campaign on behalf of the ruling party. He treated this country as if it was still a colony. Yet not one member of our so-called free press objected.

klaus on "Poland after PiS: handle with care"

klaus — Sun, 28 Oct 2007 05:10:31 +0000

I.C., thank you very much for your condescending lecture on my use of the term 'Central European'. It marks another, maybe new, height in tortured political correctness. Are you scanning cyberspace for a chance to unload that heavy burden of sophistry that seems to weigh upon you? Yes, being part of central Europe has always been a mainspring of Polish identity. Witness her unwavering quest for the pearl of the Baltic, Danzig. Yes, young and even older Poles who have contact with western Europe want to join it. Ever since the Iron Curtain lifted, I have met them in Poland and I have met them in Canada where I have been living for more than 50 years, because the place of my birth was handed to Poland to atone for the Austrian Hitler's sins. You recommend to "Watch such terms as they represent a them versus us mentality..." Oh, dear, how rude of me and I do so hope that your and the Polish psyche will in time recover from this assault on your sensitivities! And you have even outed me as having my "own historical prejudices", yet. Professor, you think you've got it all figured out but let me assure you, you need to attend a whole lot of remedial classes in the school that is called life. What exactly is your point in making Tudzman part of your argument?

ianniscarras on "Poland after PiS: handle with care"

ianniscarras — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 10:32:13 +0000

I agree with you klaus that the article is a good one. There is nothing particularly praiseworthy however in being Central European. I will not run through the history of the various uses and misuses of the term other than to mention that most recently it was a certain President Tudjman on a visit to President Clinton in the USA that kept insisting on the "centrality" of his undoubtedly European country. Watch such terms, they represent a them versus us mentality which reveals more about ones own historical prejudices that about the actual progress of the countries involved. I.C.

klaus on "Poland after PiS: handle with care"

klaus — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 07:10:16 +0000

I am a German and I also find the article to be right on. It frankly and openly names the problems the PiS regime has posed for the EU and Germany , in particular. I visited the country last May and was astounded by the progress it has made since 1993 when I was there before. Even the author's reference to the "German/Russian" dichotomy I can only confirm. The former German territories are thriving! Let us hope that the EU membership will transform Poland into a truly central European country and all that entails.

Bartosz Wasilewski on "Poland after PiS: handle with care"

Bartosz Wasilewski — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 18:08:48 +0000

P.S I have got one objection. Comparision PiS's Poland to Vladimir Putin's Russia is really too hard ;) www.ego.wot.pl a new Internet newspaper

Bartosz Wasilewski on "Poland after PiS: handle with care"

Bartosz Wasilewski — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:35:05 +0000

Good afternoon :) I'm Pole and I totally agree with author. I would like to congratulate him for being objective, especially describing Poland's foreign politic. www.ego.wot.pl a new Internet newspaper

Poland after PiS: handle with care, Neal Ascherson

Fri, 26 Oct 2007 17:35:50 +0000

The result of the elections in Poland on 21 October 2007 has left Poland's friends in western Europe exultant. The two years of government by Jaroslaw Kaczynski's Law & Justice movement, supported by two of the nastiest and maddest coalition partners ever to share power in post-war Europe, are over. The young and urban voters overcame their distaste for politics and - in a massive turnout - inflicted a thumping defeat on the government. Law & Justice (PiS, in its Polish acronym) will be replaced by the centre-right Civic Platform (PO), led by Donald Tusk, probably in coalition with the Polish Peasants' Party (PSL).

Abroad, there is vast relief, shared by the overwhelming majority of the 2 million young Poles who have found work in western Europe since Poland's accession to the European Union in 2004. The PiS regime had become a continental embarrassment. Its domestic policies were bigoted and oppressive, from its anti-gay rhetoric to its ruthless, witch-hunting treatment of opponents as anti-Polish and potentially treacherous. Its style in foreign policy was often farcical in its crude nationalism, alienating both neighbouring states and the European Union. When Jaroslaw Kaczynski demanded that Poland's human losses under Nazi occupation should be added into the population count allotting voting strengths under the new European treaty, intelligent Poles hid their faces in their hands. When his twin brother Lech, who remains the nation's president, boycotted a vital meeting in Germany because a Berlin cartoonist had compared him to a potato, the same Poles didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

openDemocracy writers track Polish politics and governance:

Adam Szostkiewicz, "The Polish lifeboat" (22 September 2005)

Karolina Gniewowska, "The Polish minefield" (23 September 2005)

Marek Kohn, "Poland's beacon for Europe" (25 October 2005)

Krzysztof Bobinski "Poland's populist caravan" (14 July 2006)

Krzysztof Bobinski, "The Polish confusion" (22 June 2007)

Zygmunt Dzieciolowski, "The Polish dictionary" (22 August 2007)

Ivan Krastev, "Sleepless in Sczeczin: what's the matter with Poland?" (19 October 2007)

Now it's over. The new Platform government will be more "European" - i.e. less protectionist, more welcoming to free-market forces. At home, it will carry out what's described in a smart new word as depisacja. This could be riskily translated as "taking the PiS out of everything" - unpicking the web of political patronage with which the Kaczynski twins smothered all public appointments, and trying to repair the damage done to the rule of law. Abroad, Donald Tusk and his team will reassure Chancellor Angela Merkel that they do not regard the federal republic as Hitler's successors. They will cautiously retreat from the Kaczynskis' reckless enthusiasm for President George W Bush by reducing Polish troops in Iraq (it's too late to reverse entirely the offer of missile defence bases in Poland, while Tusk will prefer to forget the CIA's use of Polish territory for "extraordinary rendition" and interrogations). At Brussels, they will try to undo Poland's reputation for obstructive "national egoism", not least by resuming their approach to membership of the eurozone.

The centuries' traces

Yet this is not quite the cloudless, happy return to democracy which it may seem in Paris, Berlin or London. The Kaczynski twins stood for something. They stood for a number of big facts and themes which will not go away. Their fatal style, often primitive and sometimes grotesque, does not mean that Tusk and the Platform - or any future Polish government - will not have to face these facts and themes too.

Many - maybe most - of those who voted for Tusk did so because they could no longer stand the PiS regime, not because they loved the neo-liberal policies of the Platform. And those who voted for PiS on 21 October, still a third of the poll, remain a formidable, highly identifiable social block. They are the small farmers and peasants, the old, the people in pious remote areas, the great mass of unemployed workers and ordinary people who are the losers in the grand transition to capitalism. They live mostly in eastern Poland. The map of election results splits the country into two almost equal halves, pink for PiS and blue for the Platform. But - eerily - it is also a map of the 18th century partitions. The old Russian lands are solid pink, with two blue islands for the cities of Warsaw and Lodz. The "German" west and north is even more solidly blue. History in Poland is indelible.

Neal Ascherson is a journalist and writer. He was for many years a foreign correspondent for the (London) Observer. Among his books are The King Incorporated: Leopold the Second and the Congo (1963; Granta, 1999), The Struggles for Poland (Random House, 1988), Black Sea (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996; reprinted 2007), and Stone Voices: the Search for Scotland (Granta, 2003)

Among his articles on openDemocracy: "From multiculturalism to where?" (19 August 2004)

"Pope John Paul II and democracy" (1 April 2005)

"Tbilisi, Georgia: the rose revolution's rocky road" (15 July 2005)

"The victory and defeat of Solidarność" (6 September 2005)

"Poland's interregnum" (30 September 2005)

"Victory's lost sister - the wreck of the Implacable" (21 October 2005)

"A carnival of stupidity" (6 February 2006)

"Torture: from regress to redress" (1 March 2006)

"The case for pre-emption: Alan M Dershowitz reviewed" (18 May 2006)

"Scotophobia" (28 June 2006)

"Catholic Poland's anguish" (11 January 2007)

"Ryszard Kapuscinski: from Poland to the world" (25 January 2007)

"Scotland's democratic shame"( 9 May 2007)

"Who needs a constitution?" (22 May 2007) Those "eastern" PiS voters have good reason to fear globalisation and the dissolving of the Polish state as the EU imposes free competition. Old-fashioned nationalism, meaning a jealously independent Poland which guards its frontiers, which protects all its children against misfortune and foreign interference, seems to them the obvious champion against "cosmopolitan" economic liberalism. Here is the alliance, which seems so strange in the west but so natural in post-communist Europe, between nationalism and the "socialist" ideals of equality and the dignity of labour.

The Kaczynskis seemed, by the end, to be heading for a one-party state. The PiS domination of the media, achieved by outrageous purging and political appointments, was almost worthy of Vladimir Putin's Russia. The Tusk government must now try to create a genuinely independent ethic for public service - and not just by depisacja. The hopelessly compromised National Broadcasting Committee, which reduced the award of radio and TV franchises to a pigsty of patronage, will probably be dissolved.

And yet, in their distorted way, the twins were right to see that the post-communist Polish state has problems of weakness. As the political scientist Aleksander Smolar (no friend of PiS) said in an interview on the eve of the election: "it's the quality of the state - its efficiency, its cleanliness - and not so much the economy or foreign policy, which is the fundamental challenge facing Poland". The PiS regime was right to launch a campaign against corruption, ill-managed as it was. It was disastrously wrong to see the state's main problem as infiltration by cabals of ex-communists.

Poland's telescope

In a supposedly globalised world, it's salutary to remember that what matters most about Poland's foreign policy is geography - that the nation lies between Russia and Germany. The Kaczynskis tackled this the wrong way - by paranoid rudeness to both neighbours. Yet they had some justification. Germany's agreement with Russia on a new Baltic gas pipeline avoiding Poland, done without Polish agreement, was crass and awoke the worst historical memories, from the 18th-century partitions to the Nazi-Soviet pact which abolished Poland in 1939. The government outraged Brussels by its repeated veto on EU:Russian agreements as long as the Russians were boycotting Polish food imports (as they still are). In my view, this veto was totally justified. The alternative was to let Poland slither into the "near-abroad" zone of Russian economic blackmail, so brutally illustrated by the plight of Ukraine and Georgia. These are realities which Donald Tusk now has to inherit.

It may be that the European Union has still not grasped how momentous it was to receive Poland into the union in 2004. With Polish accession, the EU moved into a quite new proximity to Russia and its "near abroad" in Ukraine and Belarus. Poland, whose experience of Russia is heavier, longer and more intense than that of any other European nation, is utterly committed to the fate of this region. Once, long ago, this commitment was imperialist. Today, it is about self-preservation, aiming to bring Ukraine and eventually Belarus forwards to stable democracy and membership of both Nato and the European Union. British, French and German diplomats fret about Poland being "pushy" and "obstructive" by constantly shoving the Ukrainian interest into all Brussels discussions, and by blocking agreements with Russia which have a quality of appeasement. But Poland, under PiS or Platform, cannot do otherwise.

If western observers of Poland think such attitudes are mere national arrogance, they do not understand the union they have been living in since 2004. Poland in Europe, and in its position in Europe, is condemned to be an awkward, vigilant partner. If it is not awkward and does not shout rather than whisper deferentially, Poland will be overlooked and eventually trodden underfoot. True, the Kaczynski government did not just shout; it squalled and cursed until it made itself ridiculous. It was a terrible Polish government, and its fall is a brilliant day for democracy. But not all its enemies were ghosts.

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