The Polish Century
The Poland of 1990
DREAMS
Amid buildings built centuries ago, the skyscrapers of today join their fore-runners of yesteryear in sharing domination of the city skyline of Warsaw and other cities - Poland today is not the same country she was a century ago; oppressed, ruined economically by years of mismanagement and repression. And yet, as the wheel of history turns, it goes, as all wheels do, in circles - Poland, once again a Mother of Nations, holding together a pan-nationalist confederation of her sister countries, as glorious and unstable a Commonwealth as ever was seen in the lands of the Masovians. If contemporary historians were to look at the recent history of Eastern Europe, then they may aptly refer to the 20th Century as the 'Polish Century' - after disappearing for more than a hundred years from the maps of Europe, the nation of Poland was reborn amidst the ruins of the Great War, and she returned in triumph. Beginning its modern history in 1917, under the leadership of the revolutionary leader Józef Piłsudski, Poland reasserted not only national sovreignty, but through both shrewd diplomacy and military force, regained and enforced her position as a regional power. Piłsudski, after having secured the country's sovreignty and preventing the return of Russian influence over the country in the form of Bolshevism, retired as the leader of the country, his political career ending permanently from 1925 - his leadership gave to Poland her sovreignty, allowed her to rebuild her strength, and left an indelible stamp of revolutionary and pan-nationalist sentiment on the leadership of the country; the ecstacy of liberation, and the first few sweet drops of international success as a young new Republic had the nation hooked, and every leader in the country since has been held to standards of personal drive, charisma, ambition and a disregard for the status quo - it was status quo that had kept their country partitioned by three empires, after all.
Succeeded by Rosa Luxemburg, a revolutionary leader of her own sort, Poland underwent yet another rapid transformation - Poland's agriculture saw widescale consolidation and collectivization, huge public industrial corporations were formed, and amidst the Great Depression, the country used rapid nationalisation as a tool to stabilize its free-fall economy; before Luxemburg, most of Poland's farming had been done by the horse, in rural areas, the mode of transporation was the horse-drawn carriage, and in cities, many lived in cramped, slum-housing - she left it with the tractor, the motor car and the tenement block. Despite now possessing what was now one of the most centralized, state-managed economies of the 'market economies', floating somewhere between Dirigisme and outright state-capitalist control of the economy, the period saw galloping strides in the liberalisation of Polish public life, with women achieving rights and public recognition unparalelled, even to neighbouring European countries, homosexuality was decriminalized under her in 1932, and later legalised entirely by her successors. The years beween 1920-1935 were very good years for Poland, but good times cannot last forever, and as night follows day, content gives way to discontent, and peace to war.
Madame Luxemburg died in office in 1935 of ovarian cancer - her death would mark a general depression in public life across the country. Her successor, a quick compromise candidate, utterly failed to live up to the larger-than-life legacies of his predecessors, and was soon driven from office and into suicide, having left the country economically uncertain, under-armed, and fragile in the face of what would be one of the most difficult and adverse periods of European history. War came first with Germany, and then later with the Soviets - for the second time, foreign armies crossed back and forth over their country, being fought all the time by the Poles and their allies, and as the wheel turned once more, what almost seemed like disaster was replaced by yet another triumph - the development and deployment of the atomic bomb ended the Second Polish-Soviet War, or as it is referred to outside of Poland, the Second Great War, and Poland secured for herself more territory, more international recognition, and new allies.
The immediate post-war period saw a programme of not only intense reconstruction, but massive expansion of Poland's administrative apparatus; Poland's prior experiment of incorporating Belarus had proven educational, and using the model of Belarus' autonomous legislature, new federative republics were born, even an entirely new nation in the form of the Jewish Autonomous F.R, founded in 1948 by the Polish Government as a homeland within its own borders for the Jewish peoples of Europe. The Polish Socialist Party, the party of Pilsudski and Luxemburg, remained, and remains, in-office - going into coalition varyingly with Poland's anti-Soviet Communists, the Polish Greens, and virtually every centre-left/left party in Polish politics. After reconstruction would follow massive expansions to Poland's welfare infrastructure, with the country offering universal complete coverage of public healthcare by the early 1960s - efforts to expand the welfare state went forward with a conscious and earnest effort to match, or at least keep pace, with both increases to civil liberties and living standards, and Poland became one of the first countries in Europe, and certainly the first in Eastern Europe, to outright legalize homosexuality (though they are still restricted the civil partnerships, with the issue of homosexual church marriages remaining a controversial one in Poland), to decriminalize a great many kinds of narcotics and to lower its voting age to enfranchise those aged 18y/o and over, regardless of gender, creed, faith or even prior criminal history. Poland has aspired to be, and indeed has become, a model of civic society.
DISCORD
Economic slowdown and bureacratic decay are the principle calamities of the Polish Republic today - a tremendous welfare state has created the perfect conditions for a low-growth, high-tax, high emigration economy, where young people now more often move abroad to seek gainful employment, employing their expensive, world-class Polish educations for the betterment of other countries while their parents and older siblings work for far less at home. Though most intend to return one day, and send money back to their home country and families, there is a sense that the system, both national and international, that has been built in Poland, is somehow falling short, failing to work as it should. Financial woes are trouble enough, but in Central Ukraine, Soviet-sponsored seperatist terrorism is becoming a very real and very frightening problem - over the past fifteen years, the peaceful protest has become the riot has become the car-bombing has become the political assassination - the political standards of one of the Polish federation's youngest member-states is rapidly declining amidst a barrage of Soviet funds, equipment and propaganda intended to alienate neighbours to the point that they are prepared to kill one another, and to transform a dream made real into a living nightmare; night to day, and Heaven to Hell.
DANGER
Composed of a peace-time force of over 500,000, and prepared to mobilize at least a million more within 24-hours of a potential conflict, Poland's Armed Forces, so famous and adored at home for their role in Poland's modern history in protecting and carrying out national interests in recent history, it is, one might be shocked the learn, one of Poland's principle problems - its organisation is utterly politically compromised, with its generals and officers often possessing views that the military should take a larger role in state affairs, some particular fringes even believe in a reintroduction of quasi-military rule, as was seen earlier in the century under President (and also Marshall) Pilsudski - most Poles have completed national service, and the Army's influence in public life is huge, and its historic and very real contemporary role as the final protector of Poland's sovreignty and freedom puts them beyond any political reproach - its budget is bloated, its whims indulged, and it draws from all spheres of public life the best and brightest into its orbit - thousands of young professionals who could do unbelievably meritous work in the bureacracy elsewhere are instead swallowed up by the officer corps of Poland's huge military. The genie was out of its bottle though - the Soviets, taken off-guard twice now by their Polish cousins, has taken vengeance to heart; they have developed nuclear weapons of their own, they police their borders harshly and build up their forces, watching and evaluating, assessing when to strike. The War had ended, and it had brought land, influence and a greater sense of confidence to the Poles and their ally nations, but it had deprived them of lasting security; for fifty years now, the principle diplomatic aim of the Polish Prometheist Republics has been to prepare for or outright prevent a Soviet Invasion. Even in spite of rapid economic growth in the post-War era of rebuilding and consolidation, which saw huge investment by the Poles into the economies of her Eastern sister-republics, the ever-nagging pain of Poland's economists and Government Ministers has been the constant financial drain of maintaining the diplomatic and military defense networks that Poland needs to ensure continued peace and territorial integrity.
DECADENCE
''If the war starts it's all over anyway, so let's party!'' is the slogan of a generation of young Poles - a libertine culture and lax attitudes and legislation towards narcotics have seen Poland transform into a European capital of debauchery; while Police in England break up illegal raves, English youths join their European compatriots to make pilgramage to the night-clubs, raves and underground parties of Warsaw and Krakow, legendary in their reputation for excess. Many look on in worry though, and not necessarily because from a Conservative disdain for what is seen as a decay of public morals - deaths from excessive consumption of alcohol and narcotics are rising, and becoming a very real problem across major Polish metropoles, and while Polish narcotics are regarded highly by psychonauts for their affordability, quality and purity, perhaps, some say, there can indeed be too much of a good thing. Religious organisations, parents groups, and a plethora of other interest groups across Polish public life are fast making the 'Polish Pill Panic' its principle moral panic of the public and political sphere.But Poland is not yet lost - she may no longer be able to call herself one of Europe's 'young' Republics, but with time and time again, Poland's young politicians inherit from their predecessors that same legacy of youthful vigor, revolutionary ambition, belief in the brotherhood of nations, and no small measure of near ruthless pragmatism, and though the storm rocks the ship of state, and threats and enemies at home and abroad threaten discord, Poland will be Poland, and its answers to war will be peace, freedom to oppression, and solidarity to hatred.