Why Did Communism Never Again Widspread Support in Poland
H ow come up I remember 1989 so well, when I don't remember what I was doing yesterday? Maybe it'due south because the 1980s in Poland were so unlike from what came after. The 1980s were like a gluey, slow reality where everything happened without haste and zilch worked, where often there was no h2o or electricity. Only the food was somewhat like to today'south. Now we have Coke Nil and decaf. Back then we had caffeine-free "java" (cereal-based) and chocolate-like products – we didn't have real chocolate or real coffee. In the 1980s, ham was just for holidays. Today, Warsaw is among the near vegan-friendly cities in Europe.
We spent a lot of time waiting in queues. For a kid, that was torturously deadening. But mothers knew how to remind children this was their only shot at getting annihilation. Children were key to the process. Yous had to get in line several hours before the appurtenances even arrived at the store, sometimes almost 4pm.
A child's other function was changing the channels on the TV, which would constantly break down. Just nix competed with the atavistic pleasure of banging on a malfunctioning tv set – information technology helped piece of work out your frustration at the fact that everything was so shoddy. Glue didn't stick. Pens didn't have ink.
However, this menses was, in its own fashion, uniquely peaceful. Information technology was very safe in our constabulary state. We didn't accept competition, or the accompanying stress. There was no rat race. And while that was a source of backwardness, it was also a major advantage that disappeared afterward 1989. Longing for that quondam country of things has caused long-lasting, not always irrational nostalgia for communism.
Of course, 1989 brought a unique atmosphere of excitement. I was living with my mother in a typically large and ugly block of flats. I was almost 10, but could feel the spirit of the time considering my female parent was and then caught up in it. She was glued to the tv, constantly sighing. There were discussions and interviews with people from the opposition who we'd never seen before. They were intelligent, had a groovy sense of humor, and said things that had previously been unutterable. My female parent would never have imagined something similar this could happen. But when I wrote the slogan "Downward with communism" on a paper airplane and launched information technology from the balcony, she told me off : in that location might exist trouble. No one knew how the round-tabular array discussions between the regime and the opposition would end.
The first costless elections, 30 years agone on four June 1989, marked a not bad victory for the Solidarity motion. Of a sudden everything accelerated. Everything became colourful and exotic. The omnipresent kitsch did non bother anyone. The beginning bazaars and the starting time entrepreneurial startups had already appeared. For the first time in my life I saw bananas: I so desperately wanted i that I burst into tears when my mother said it cost a fortune and she didn't take the money. She eventually gave in.
Suddenly there were colourful key rings, Turbo gum with pictures of cars on the wrappers, the German-language magazine Bravo. Before, nosotros had simply known the packaging of such western luxuries. Nether communism, apartments were all identical. There was but one kind of everything – furniture, kefir, yoghurt – and there were no brands. People used empty cans with the beautiful logos of Pepsi or 7up equally decorative objects, lined upwardly side by side to each other. After 1989, they appeared with their contents. Only they were damn expensive. Warsaw'south first McDonald's became the fanciest place in the city.
After 1989, reality swiftly became dramatic likewise. The life I experienced was fairly typical of transformation-era guild. My female parent worked as a center manager in a large lightbulb factory in Warsaw named after Rosa Luxemburg. We lived in a 38sq one thousand flat. This was non the social sphere of the opposition, which primarily belonged to the intelligentsia. She quickly came to fear that she would lose her job, that the mill would exist privatised and that viii,000 people would go unemployed.
Indeed, 3 one thousand thousand people in Poland lost their jobs in merely a few years. The finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz introduced a nationwide daze therapy that was aimed primarily at big enterprises. With the opening of the market and the arrival of western goods, the country's outdated factories collapsed. Today, there is no trace of the massive factory where my mother one time worked. Even the buildings have been demolished.
That constant fear characterised my teenage years. I knew I had to report to get into the correct loftier schoolhouse and go to university. Otherwise I wouldn't stand up a chance. My female parent warned me that otherwise I might accept to become a cowherd.
The instruction boom was one of the nearly of import features of the 1990s– but information technology was also some other source of stress. My generation is very different from those that came afterwards. We are much less relaxed. We are much more than concerned with security, because a sense of security is what everyone lost so suddenly in 1989. Many people never recovered from losing their jobs; inequality increased drastically.
Another shocking development was a new, bitter antagonism between politicians. Before, the Sejm (parliament) worked very harmoniously. There were no squabbles –everything was passed quickly and smoothly. Simply since 1989, the Polish parliament has been constantly embroiled in quarrels. By 1991, we had 29 parties in the Sejm.
As change washed over the state, abortion suddenly became the most of import issue for the Polish right. The Catholic church bestowed on itself the right to intervene in political life, as a reward for its previous support of the opposition. Everything that could possibly be baptised was baptised: streets, fire engines, the stock exchange.
This was so overdone that the electorate replaced the former opposition with former communists, who by 1993 returned to power as part of a coalition. In 1995, Lech Wałęsa, the hero of Solidarity, was defeated by Aleksander Kwaśniewski, a old minister for sport nether the communist regime. Wałęsa had turned out to exist such a bad president (egocentric, intemperate, conflictual) that my female parent, previously an ardent supporter of the opposition, would mute the television when he spoke. By and then we had a remote, and then I no longer had to stitch to the Television set.
Looking back, I believe the true success of 1989 was that old communists remained true to commonwealth. They did not violate the constitution. They had their faults, of course, but they proved loyal to the newly created autonomous organisation.
Recently, those very same erstwhile communists ran in the European union elections as defenders of republic, in opposition to the ruling populists of the Law and Justice party, who are supported by the Solidarity trade-union and the Catholic church. More than anything, this very paradox embodies the success of 1989 – the twelvemonth our lives became complicated only free. It was the all-time fourth dimension in three centuries of Smooth history.
Sławomir Sierakowski is a Polish writer and founder of the Krytyka Polityczna (Political Critique) movement
collinsandishishe.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/04/communism-poland-democracy-pepsi
Post a Comment for "Why Did Communism Never Again Widspread Support in Poland"