bout de papier, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1995) — Summer 1995 // Été 1995, pp. 29–31
My first visit to Poland in September 1991, after my departure as an infant fifty-two years earlier, brought me indelible memories. Though everything I saw there was new to me, much appeared oddly comforting, even familiar. During this and subsequent visits I discovered a country and a people emerging, gradually and cautiously, from a half century of oppression, isolation and sterility.
The central point of my visit was Bydgoscsz, where I was born. There stands the house where my parents spent ten happy years, the factory and offices where three generations of my family had built a flourishing enterprise, and my grandfather’s estate, now split up into a city park, a municipal zoo, hundreds of tiny vegetable plots, a riding club and a farm. Only a third of the city’s pre-war population survived the Nazi and Stalinist periods. While its physical character survived largely intact, several buildings were destroyed, notably the magnificent municipal theatre and the imposing synagogue.
My favourite host in Poland, my father’s look-alike, is the son of a long-deceased great-uncle. A student at an agricultural academy at the time of the Nazi invasion and now seventy-five years old, he incarnates the sturdy characteristics of the pre-war land-owner and managerial class of northwestern Poland. In accordance with Polish custom, I call him vuyek, or uncle. Down to earth, courteous and disciplined, he remains wary of the authorities, a reflex from the years of persecution and harassment meted out by national and local governments to those discreet heroes of the Polish Resistance who survived the Nazi occupation, while answering to the Government-in-Exile in London.
Among Polish institutions, the family remains the cornerstone of daily life. During the preceding era, when physical or economic survival, in a climate of deprivation and terror, had hung on a thread, the support of one’s family was a clear necessity. the collective level, the Church played the leading role in the struggle for national cultural survival and dignity, and the preservation of the Faith.
Living in a cheerless present and facing a similarly dispiriting future, Poles turned to their past for comfort. War-bombed old towns were lovingly rebuilt, a poignant example of the role of architecture in the preservation of a people’s collective memory and cultural patrimony. A martyred nation paid silent homage to its legendary warrior kings and Hetmen, or field mars-halls, who had led their men to victory in some of history’s most fateful battles. These included the rout of the Teutonic Order at Grunwald in 1410, the relief of Vienna from the Ottoman siege of 1683, the destruction of Lenin’s surging Red Army at the outskirts of Warsaw in August 1920 and the overrunning of Wehrmacht positions, supposedly impregnable, atop Monte Cassino, in May 1944. The heroes of the Warsaw Uprising and the Solidarity movement also occupied their rightful place in Polish hearts.
An enduring aspect of Polish life is the place accorded, or perhaps not accorded, to women. The gender difference is prominently underlined in the Polish language itself and reverberates through the people’s conscious and subconscious mindset in a way rarely, if ever, encountered in other Western cultures. The hand-kiss is a standard politesse that illustrates a formality in manners more pronounced in Poland than elsewhere in the region. Fashion is taken seriously by the young and not only by the most prosperous.
More and more Polish women, however, reject their traditional, male-designated place as house-bound mothers and objects of decoration and adoration. They are beginning to perceive themselves as a group that must, for the country’s sake, intervene more assertively at the political level in order to invest the current reform process with greater purpose and integrity.
Polish men, for their part, seem less concerned with their outward appearance. Expensive leather jackets and coats appear to be their only sartorial weakness. Frequently lacking the pragmatism of their budget-conscious mothers, sisters and wives, Polish men enjoy with a passion the newest mechanical and electronic gadgets of Western consumerism. They seem more vulnerable than the women to the attractions of privilege and perquisites afforded by public office and the manipulation of political power. Petty crime has risen, as had activity at the lottery which is the Warsaw stock exchange. Lacking funds for travel, it is through the programming, banned until 1991, of American television series and Hollywood films that many Poles vicariously indulge their craving for luxuries and life styles undreamt of during the years of deprivation.
The scramble for power and economic advantage has slowed a reform process that should advance more quickly if urgent social needs are to be met within an acceptable time frame. Part of the problem, a legacy of the previous era, seems to be an inward-looking or ideologically premised suspicion of Western ways that contradicts the established habits of pre-reform days. As Poles prefer their protein-laden national cuisine to all others, they also often resist any but homegrown solutions to problems that surpass their current capabilities. Too many much-needed projects, carefully negotiated with Western development banks represented in Warsaw, have been suddenly rejected by the authorities in favour of domestic alternatives ultimately much more costly in terms of financing, completion time and expected performance. There is, nevertheless, sound reason for hope that the collective economic energy pulsating from the millions of Poles currently engaged in some kind of personal business venture will eventually propel the country toward national prosperity.
The implementation of the democratisation process, while mostly successful, has encountered certain difficulties. Old habits die hard and the two governing parties, a coalition of former communists and small farmers who prospered under communism, have not always been prepared to apply the spirit as well as the letter of reform. Privatisation of state-owned firms continues while the re-privatisation of land and bout de papier Vol. property confiscated under Stalinist rule remains stalled in the Parliament. This latter question is one of several that serve as a gauge of the central government’s commitment to reform, its direction and the pace of its implementation. It is this which concentrates the minds of many Poles, not least those of my vuyek and other dispossessed property owners, as they tensely watch the nightly television news broadcasts.
The Polish constitution, whatever may be its imperfections, has helped to keep reform alive. Although the new government elected in September, 1993 may have been of a mind to remove from her post the brilliant and reform-minded Governor of the Central Bank, the constitution ensured that she should remain to serve out her mandate. The high degree of independence constitutionally invested in the Central Bank prevented the jettisoning of economic reform measures clearly at odds with the election platforms of the two victorious coalition parties. Unable to implement their costly election promises, these parties have lost some domestic credibility but have upgraded their image with Poland’s major economic partners and creditors.
Poles pay attention to the aesthetic as well as the spiritual needs of the soul. All artists, not merely the commercially successful, are given respect and encouragement. The visual arts are not considered a frivolous or superfluous feature of the educational system. Music, both classical and modern, enjoys a huge following. Choirs and chamber orchestras abound through Poland. The legacy of Chopin and Paderewski, the pianist Prime Minister, continues in the burgeoning activity of musical academies, musicians and composers, many of whom, such as Lutoslawski, Pederecki and Gorecki, are familiar to Western audiences. Polish film directors are highly acclaimed in the West as the careers of Wajda, Polanski, Kieslowski and others attest. In their films, as Krzysztof Kieslowski’s recent trilogy Bleu, Blanc, and Rouge has perhaps demonstrated most clearly, the subtlety of the characters and moods, all profoundly European in spirit, are reminiscent of Western Europe in the late 1940’s when, as Poland today, the great French and Italian film directors portrayed war-battered societies and people emerging from a period of intense suffering.
No one will deny Poles their quiet, deeply felt attachment to their country. It is an engaging, though occasionally self-absorptive trait of a proud and civilized people. Patriotism is taken completely for granted in Poland, meriting no special recognition or applause. More than that of most countries, perhaps more than any, Poland’s history has been etched in blood, the blood of the innocent and the blood of the battlefield. The names of the valorous who died in defense of home and hearth or of some far-flung noble cause, such as the American War of Independence, would fill the pages of a very thick book. The shockingly long list of historically important battles engaging Polish forces can be seen, carved in black granite, at Warsaw’s monument for the Unknown Soldier.
The Polish personality has been marked by history. An indomitable or stubborn trait, one that may on occasion find expression in a blustering or quixotic posture, is part of the spectrum of qualities one encounters among many Poles. Their survival as a nation, against more powerful neighbours bent on the annihilation of Polish culture and nationhood, was made possible by a patriotic sentiment and a combative spirit. These remained strong, even during the one hundred and twenty-one years following the Third Partition, after which Poland officially no longer existed until, in 1918, it was recreated at the Treaty of Versailles.
No discovery of Poland is complete without an acquaintance with its attractive countryside and its rich, diversified wildlife. It is a country fortunate, in particular, to be inhabited by magnificent birds. The gliding storks and their huge, rooftop nests are an arresting feature of the towns, villages and farm houses. The falcon, less visible until, out of nowhere, it swoops down — as happened to me — to snatch the partridge I thought I had just bagged for myself, is another ornithological marvel. It seems appropriate, however, that it should be the rare, all-white eagle, which is native to Poland, that serves as the national emblem, one invariably portrayed as gazing resolutely westward.
My own, rather close encounter with an eagle occurred when, at high speed, I drove my rented car towards a rapidly growing speck astride the median line of a motorway in central Poland. Within seconds I was bearing down on a large bird. There was no time to veer to one side as I passed within inches of what now appeared as a very large bird, pecking at the carcass of a small animal. In my rear window I recognized a golden eagle, one evidently oblivious to danger, refusing to flinch, and determined to carry on with its meal. How characteristic, I reflected, of the Polish temper and of this dynamic and fearless nation.
I am confident that their determination and courage will in the end bring the Polish people to see the reform process through, in all its ramifications. But the tangible benefits of reform will arrive too late, I fear, for my vuyek and his generation.
Postscript: The above impressions were written just over two years ago. After much additional exposure to Polish Society and politics during the intervening months, I would wish to add several further comments.
Notwithstanding the all but irresistible urge, especially for young Poles, to embrace the amenities and material luxuries of the West, the country remains today mired in its Communist past. Not only have Poles elected ex-Communists to power, they are expected to do so again at the next opportunity. Not only do many Poles continue, as a result of long conditioning, to act, react and reflect in the manner of the previous era, they tend to dismiss suggestions that their outlook, both in its practical and philosophical dimensions, has been everywhere discredited and now needs to be fundamentally altered if the country is to enjoy effective progress. Poles need national leadership willing to explain to the general population the justification for policy reform. Without the emergence of such leadership the road towards prosperity and renewal promises to be even longer and accompanied by more hardship than will in any event await this stoic and long-suffering nation.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 12, No. 2 (1995) — Summer 1995 // Été 1995, pp. 29–31. Read the rest of this issue →
