THE NORMALISATION OF POLAND
Anne Applebaum witnesses the
post-totalitarian lust for pretty clothes, beer and mortgages
Warsaw A FEW YEARS ago, if asked what kind of country he wanted to live in, an average Pole replied: 'a normal one'. That word was thrown around a lot in those days, especially by people who spent their lives in the dissident world of smudgy newsprint and code words. A woman who had devot- ed her life to the underground press once surprised me by confessing that she want- ed her daughter to wear pretty clothes, to interest herself in boys and parties, to become a lawyer or a dentist: she wanted her daughter to be normal.
Then and now, normal meant western; normal meant making money, building a house, and, most importantly, living a life free of politics. For most people in Poland, that kind of normalisation is already advancing. Most of the workforce is now employed in the private sector, a huge Change from five years ago. The majority of the electorate believes in continuing the current free-market economic reforms. Polish police now beat up football fans (the way police do everywhere else in Europe) instead of beating up dissidents. Even Polish television is now showing a soap opera, a kind of Polish Dynasty, which traces the melodramatic fate of families through Stalinism, Solidarity, adultery, blackmail and unwanted pregnancies. The feeling that Polish politics are terribly seri- ous and that Poland's fate is hanging by a thread. Recent history is turning into myth.
Last week's vote of no confidence in the government of Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka and the subsequent dissolution of the parliament was also a step towards normality. True, the country did abolish one of its ruling institutions in an unusual- ly brisk manner: within 48 hours the deputies were thrown out of their offices, their staffs were fired, their meetings were unceremoniously cancelled. President Walesa spoke of crisis, and yet – there is no sense of crisis, no paratroopers on the streets, no martial music on the radio. The constitution was obeyed. Institutions, at last, are beginning to work. And, as institutions go, the recently deceased parliament was not very success- ful. Thanks to an extreme form of propor- tional representation, it contained 29 par- ties, including a large Beer Drinkers' Party, bitterly divided into two factions. Thanks to a best-selling Polish authoress of easy virtue, the public knows more about the sexual abilities of MPs than about their voting records (ex-communists, apparently, are better lovers than funda- mentalist Catholics). One deputy was caught by television cameras trying to vote twice; another smuggled a few cartons of cigarettes into Sweden. Arrests for drunk- en driving were so common that no news- papers bothered to report them. This parliament's only merit was that it did know how ridiculous it had become. With its dying breath it managed to pass a new electoral law, including a barrier (5 per cent of votes) which parties must cross before they can enter parliament. If all goes well, in the autumn Poland will have a parliament containing no more than six
or seven parties — a parliament, in short, capable of producing a reasonably stable government.
The change may also be bringing Poland's transition to stable democracy to an end. For if 'normal', to most people, means a life free of political institutions, 'normal' for politicians means a life led within them. Because Polish parliaments could not form majority coalitions, Polish goveinments have, until now, been pro- duced almost exclusively by the ex-dissident mafia who grew up together, went to uni- versity together, went into underground politics together, and are known to many Poles as Warszawka. The first post-commu- nist government was, in fact, composed almost entirely of old friends. A famous Warsaw intellectual became labour minis- ter, the popular publisher of a Warsaw house-construction magazine became hous- ing minister. I distinctly remember some- one telling me at the time that the minister of culture had been chosen because, at a dinner party given by an underground pub- lisher several weeks earlier, a group of dis- sident literati had lit on her name as the perfect candidate. She was not a politician, a public figure or an administrator, just somebody's old friend — and word of that conversation filtered via other friends up to the prime minister.
Equally typical was the formation of the government led by prime minister Jan Olszewski in 1991. Before they became ministers, most members of the Olszewski government frequented a political salon organised weekly by the wife of Olszewski's defence minister-to-be, a woman with the ambitions if not the finances of a Madame de Stadl. She served Bulgarian wine, laid '1 rarely like more than 10 per cent of any given person. her table full of cheese and biscuits, frenet- ically introduced people to one another, and a government was born. Once formed, the Olszewski government undertook to carry out an idea which had been much discussed at those salons — namely, an investigation into dissident politicians who had been secret police informers. This hit too close to the bone for Warszawka — which emerged from exactly the same social milieu as the communists, and was riddled with secret police informers. The attempt finished off Olszewski. But, with the exception of a few economic rules laid down by the IMF, that is how policy has been made in Poland: it arose out of drinks party chat, and achieved success or failure according to how many members of Warszawka it personally offended.
Elevating old-fashioned dissident poli- tics to the level of national politics also brought other ills. One was factionalism: parties with only the slimmest of ideologi- cal differences between them refused to form coalitions with one another, usually because their leaders quarrelled over tac- tics 15 years ago. Habits of secrecy were maintained too: as in the past, no one except a tiny inner circle was ever sure what was really going on. Worse, Polish politicians have been able to win or lose power without ever needing to gain popu- lar support for an idea or appeal to the public.
As in their dissident days, leaders have risen to prominence on the strength of their skill in negotiating alliances or mak- ing friends, and not because they were good at winning elections. Indeed, the need to do so often irritates them: after the last presidential elections, one famous former dissident disparaged the very voters whose rights he had been defending, denouncing them for making the 'wrong' decision. Rather than understanding poli- tics as a question of winning and losing elections, Warszawka believed that they were the natural ruling class, and become angry when others disagreed.
Of course, arrogance, factionalism, secrecy and mendacity are common to politicians the world over. In long-standing democracies, however, these qualities are mediated and restrained by parliaments, constitutions and libel laws. Governments are formed by elected politicians, not by groups of people who feel themselves morally superior. Factions join forces or perish. Most importantly, political change happens within the parliament. With the change in the electoral law, Poland's politi- cians have taken a step closer' to normality. Yet most other people already have nor- mal concerns. At a dinner party in Warsaw last week, my hosts – who would have spent the evening railing against Yalta five years ago – discussed instead the boom on the stock exchange and the pros and cons of an exciting, new kind of bank loan: a mortgage.
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