Why Poland matters…East and West

Nearly a month after they were held, Poland’s local elections show that the rightwing nationalist Law and Justice party (known by its Polish initials as PiS) is still a force to be reckoned with. Here’s some crucial context from the April3 edition of This Week, Those Books. Read it here or sign up at https://thisweekthosebooks and get the post the day it drops

Image by Przemyslaw Wlodkowski, Pixabay

The Big Story:

Poland, one of eastern Europe’s largest countries and a frontline Nato member state, is heading to the polls to choose city mayors and the leaders of provincial and county administrations nationwide. These are no ordinary local elections.

• Six months ago, Poland arrested its near decade-long march towards becoming the largest illiberal democracy in Europe. Parliamentary elections ended eight years of rule by the rightwing nationalist Law and Justice party (known by its Polish initials as PiS).
• The new pro-European Union coalition government led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk has committed to restoring legal and democratic norms starting at the local level but it is a struggle to wield its so-called “iron broom” and sweep away the PiS legacy.
• The April 7 local elections will serve as a crucial test of the new government’s popular support.
• Today’s Poland is essentially a lab experiment in remaking a corroded democracy. This is something countries like Turkey might have to consider down the line after its main opposition party swept March 31 local elections in a blow to strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
• To paraphrase, US President Ronald Reagan, Poland is not East or West, it stands for every nation battling populist illiberalism.

The Backstory:

• Poland’s ouster of its populist PiS government in October was a shock because illiberal nationalists in eastern and central Europe have increasingly followed in the footsteps of Hungary’s Viktor Orban to gain and hold power.
• The PiS brand of ‘Catholic populism’ included assaults on abortion rights. Since 2020, Poland’s abortion laws have been the strictest in the EU along with Malta’s.
• It also created a politicised system of patronage, remade state-funded media outlets into government mouthpieces and crucially, reshaped the judiciary with loyalist judges and prosecutors.

This Week, Those Books:

• A sweeping history of Poland right up to its entry into the European Union.
• A haunting story about a girl growing up in Soviet-era Poland.

Poland: A History

By: Adam Zamoyski

Publisher: HarperCollins

Year: 2009

A magisterial view of a thousand years of Polish history by Anglo-Polish historian Adam Zamoyski, who himself fell victim to the high-handedness of the previous government. The book explores the political, social, and cultural development of a country whose territory has “expanded and contracted, shifted and vanished so dramatically” over the centuries. It takes us right up to Poland’s two most significant modern milestones — March 12, 1999, when it joined Nato, and May 1, 2004, when it was admitted into the European Union.

Though 15 years old, there are three good reasons to pay heed to this book. First, Zamoyski is an engaging writer, who deliberately eschews citations and references. “This is an essay,” he says, “rather than a textbook”. Second, it’s fascinating to consider that Poland, now an economic power, was once thought to be almost a failed state — cursed by its geography, aggressive neighbours and the monstrous attentions of two strongmen, Hitler and Stalin. Third, it is curiously uplifting to note that a country and its people can survive, despite everything — the enormous human and cultural losses of the Second World War and a long spell behind the Iron Curtain.

Choice quote:

“In the grotesque poem, Herrings in Tomato Sauce, written in 1936, Konstanty Ildefons Galczyński (1905–53) brings back to life Wladyslaw the Short, the king who had struggled to reunite the fragmented country in the thirteenth century: ‘Well, you wanted your Poland, now you’ve got it!’ he is told. The sentiment expressed spoke for many.”

Swallowing Mercury

By: Wioletta Greg (translated by Eliza Marciniak)

Publisher: Portobello Books

Year: 2014

This slim volume is written by a poet. Literally. Wioletta Greg’s poems have received much praise. This novella is like a prose poem about the sleepy rhythms of village life in southern Poland, albeit with the shadow of Big Brother. For instance, when little Wiola wins a province-wide school competition on the theme of ‘Moscow through your eyes’, the judges conclude that her drawing of a potato beetle climbing out of an empty Coca-Cola bottle portrays “the crusade of the imperialist beetle”.

The story, set in rural Poland before the fall of the Berlin Wall, is shot through with superstitious religiosity as well as the rituals necessary in the Soviet sphere of influence. Little Wiola lives through it all and grows up, navigating predatory men and political disquiet.

Greg’s writing, lyrical, understated and with a ring of truth about how it feels when mind and body start to change, reminds me a little of Annie Dillard’s An American Childhood.

Originally published at This Week, Those Books