A New Poland?

Commenting on the left's crushing defeat in Sunday's Polish elections, TOL has some observations and tentative predictions about the likely future development of Polish politics and society. The magazine's editorialists express the opinion that the left-right division in post-communist Polish politics was never very clearly marked, as it seemed to depend less on a division of policies than on one of cultural preferences and outlook. Poland's future, they believe, will continue to be mapped not only by economic concerns but also by such cultural considerations:

...if a “Fourth Republic” or a post-post-communist era is to emerge and survive, it needs to go beyond history and style. For that to happen, these elections suggest it will need several things. One is a strong economy, competently and fairly run. Only a disbelief in the SLD’s economic ability (Poland’s unemployment rate currently runs at about 18 percent) and doubts about its real interests (following a string of corruption scandals) can probably explain why so many former left-wing voters voted for Civic Platform and Law and Justice or simply did not vote (turnout was a dismal 39 percent, down even on the lowly 46 percent recorded in 2001). Put bluntly, a Fourth Republic – if it emerges – means neither left nor right, but better.

But, to last, a Fourth Republic government also requires something else: it somehow needs to bridge Poland’s deep, albeit temporarily hidden cultural cleavage. Secular Poles will surely not mutely watch a social drift to the right and back a “moral revolution” if that revolution means a more intrusive Catholicism. To contain or coopt secular Poles, the liberalism that Civic Platform talks up and the solidarity that Law and Justice invokes will surely have to have a cultural dimension. A Fourth Republic, then, probably needs to be neither Catholic nor non-Catholic, and at least a little “liberal.”

On a day of such an overwhelming victory, Poland’s right can be excused for dreaming dreams. But perhaps only once a government has survived four years and only if it somehow spans the cultural divide can there really be any meaningful talk of a Fourth Republic. Something has ended, nothing wants to begin, perhaps it has already begun, the Polish poet Tadeusz Rozewicz wrote about the early transition days of Poland’s Third Republic. For the time being, it is perhaps enough to say that something has ended, something wants to begin – and perhaps it has already begun.