Poland has chosen modernity
July 8th, 2010
That was the message of Sunday’s Polish presidential election. And the view of the politicians, journalists and academics I interviewed when I visited Poland as a guest of the Polish Press Agency.
Most notably, it was the view of Lech Walesa, the founder of Solidarity and former Polish president.
“There are two different visions of Poland,” Walesa told me. “One of them—which fortunately Poles have rejected—is the Poland of divisions, hostility and closure. Victory has been won by the vision of cooperation and opening to the world.”
That’s a sharper contrast than most outside observers would see between the two candidates for president. After all, both Bronislaw Komorowski and Jaroslaw Kaczynski were candidates of the right. Komorowski, who won the July 4 run-off 53 to 47%, was the candidate of what Europeans call the “liberal” party—pro-business, economically conservative and socially progressive. Kaczynski was the populist—nationalistic, culturally conservative, but also protective of the social welfare interests of the poor, in accordance with Church teachings. “Old fashioned,” was the most generous term I heard Poles used to describe Kaczynski.
The contrast between the two candidates was mostly style. But that doesn’t mean it was trivial. “Kaczynski is Putin!” Adam Michnik, a hero of the anti-communist resistance and now chief editor of a major Polish daily, told me. “He is not a democrat.” Jacek Zakowski, a magazine journalist, echoed those sentiments. “Kaczynski is a radical authoritarian,” Zakowski said. “Worse than Putin.”
To many progressive, enlightened Poles, Kaczynski represented the forces of darkness. That was partly because of his conservative cultural views (anti-gay, anti-abortion) and his deep suspicion of Europe and foreigners. But it was also because of his aggressiveness toward his political enemies. As former prime minister (2006–2007), Kaczynski pursued a vigorous purge of former communist collaborators, including many intellectuals and professionals. Another magazine journalist, Wawrzyniec Smoczynski, called Kaczynski “shrewd and tough — a spin doctor, like Karl Rove in the United States or [former Tony Blair aide] Alastair Campbell in Britain.”
What seemed to irritate the intellectual class was the nature of Kaczynski’s support. A lot of it came from older, poorer and more rural and religious voters. Including some two million listeners of Radio Maryja. My sources described Radio Maryja as filled with the “rantings” of Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, a priest obsessed with anti-Polish conspiracies engineered by Jews, liberals, Freemasons and foreigners. A medium of darkness.
Komorowski, the liberal candidate, is not exactly a heroic figure to the intellectual class. They see him largely as a front man. The real power is liberal Prime Minister Donald Tusk—“the most popular political figure in Poland,” according to Miroslawa Brabowska, director of the Polish Public Opinion Research Center.
In Poland, the president is not quite a figurehead. He has the power to veto laws passed by parliament. With Komorowski as president, Poland has a unified liberal government for the first time.
“The liberal party is associated with success,” Michnik told me. It is the party of mostly secular Poles who have begun to get ahead in the modern world. Zakowski called it “mental modernization.” Remember, he said, “Poland jumped into democracy and capitalism overnight.” Only a part of Poland succeeded at “mental modernization.” The part that voted for Komorowski.
Some observers expected a larger sympathy vote for Kaczynski. After all, former Polish president Lech Kaczynski, his identical twin brother, was killed along with 95 other prominent Polish leaders in a tragic plan crash on April 10 in Smolensk, Russia. Ironically, the plane was en route to a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when Stalin’s secret police murdered nearly 22,000 Polish military and intellectual leaders.
But Lech Kaczynski had just 22% approval before he died. He was unlikely to be re-elected.
The map of the July 4 election reveals a sharp east-west divide. The eastern provinces of Poland went for Kaczynski, the west for Komorowski. That map is familiar to historians. It’s a map of the partition of Poland. For nearly 125 years, from 1795 through World War I, Poland ceased to exist. Its territories were divided among Russia, Austria and Germany.
The former Russian and Austrian portions in the east voted for Kaczynski. Komorowski prevailed in the German territories in the west. Why the difference? The German areas were more economically developed and liberal. The Russian lands were more “backward.” Academics at Warsaw University told me that, even now, many western Poles call the eastern portion of the country “Asia.”
The presidential election also marks a shift in Poland’s view of its place in the world. Kaczynski was more pro-U.S., Komorowski more pro-Europe. As Piotr Gillert, deputy editor of Poland’s second largest daily, explained, “There is a big change in how Poles see themselves. We used to be insecure. We had to cling to the U.S. as ‘big brother.’ Now we see our future is Europe, where we have more and more influence. We don’t need the U.S. for our prosperity.”
“Poles were more comfortable with Bush than Obama,” Bartosz Wisniewski of the Polish Institute of International Affairs observed. They felt Obama was not quick enough to condemn Russian aggression in Georgia in 2008. They felt slighted when President Obama suspended plans to build a missile defense complex in Poland in 2009. And there is resentment over the fact that Poland is the only country in the European Union whose residents are required to obtain visas ($140, plus an interview) in order to visit the United States.
“Republicans gave central Europe higher priority,” Wisniewski said. “With Obama, there’s no sign that Poland is more than a spot on the globe. Younger Poles are more oriented to Europe. Gillert described “a new identity” in Poland—European, “meaning all of Europe, not just western Europe.”
Michnik acknowledged that “the last twenty years have been the best in four hundred years of Polish history.” The former dissident added, “We are happy. We waited a long time. Poland made it!”
Nevertheless, Walesa cautioned, “There is still a great deal of poverty, and many people have been unable to find their place in the new reality.” The Nobel Peace Prize laureate added, “They should not be forgotten. Otherwise, radical populist movements will take hold of them in the future.”
