Structural problems remained, and economic life was hidebound by overregulation and arcane practices left over from the past, which meshed with newly introduced EU regulation to create an expensive and time-consuming business environment. Although average income increased in real terms by 22 per cent between 1995 and 2000, large sections of the population, particularly the elderly and rural communities, did not benefit from the fruits of the changes, and continued to live in relative poverty. Yet the Polish economy was more broadly based than that in most post-communist countries, and a large middle class was beginning to emerge.
The whole process was beset by profound psychological and social problems. The overwhelming majority of those brought up before 1989 found it difficult to grasp that capitalism is not some kind of new doctrine but merely an extension of the rights to freedom and property. This had the effect of turning purely economic problems into political ones. That is why no government was willing or bold enough to return property confiscated by the communists or to compensate the owners. Aside from the dubious moral message this sent out, it meant that large tracts of central Warsaw were not developed and much investment was arrested. More importantly, this inability to grasp realities revealed the degree to which life under Soviet communism moulded the psyche and rendered people incapable of logical thought and action. This affected political and social discourse, which was regularly distorted by a tendency to direct it onto a supposedly moral plane which usually reverted to an ideological and fundamentally communist one.
At the same time, Polish society was being exposed through the media to Western consumerist culture and offered a bewildering variety of choice, which led to a splintering of the old solidarities based on shared deprivation, both moral and material. While some segments of society became caught up in a scramble for money and the attributes of a Western lifestyle, others retreated into angry nationalism or a Sunday-school Catholicism epitomised by the bigoted and xenophobic Radio Marya.
The cultural and educational scene which had been dominated by acknowledged masters and role models gave way to a free-forall, with new private schools and universities showing up venerable institutions such as the Jagiellon University, and minor television personalities garnering greater interest than established writers and artists. The Nobel laureate Wisława Szymborska and the Oscarwinning film director Andrzej Wajda still commanded notice as well as respect, but high culture was largely occluded by flashier imports.
It is therefore very difficult to expound with any authority on the state of Polish society and culture in the decades after 1989. In his order disbanding the AK in 1945, General Okulicki made it clear that the war was not over. ’You must not for one moment admit a doubt that this war can only end with the victory of the just cause, the triumph of good over evil, of freedom over slavery,’ he wrote. The war did end with the victory of that cause, in 1989. But the wounds inflicted on Polish society during those forty-four years were so deep, so varied and so complex that they would not heal easily.
Some of the most difficult to heal were inflicted in the 1970s and 1980s, when the communist regime forced hundreds of thousands of Poles to spy and report on each other. The Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), established in 1999 and entrusted with all the files of the communist secret services, failed to formulate any coherent policy on how this material was to be treated. Information was released to researchers on a largely
Pope John Paul II visited his country five times after 1989, and used these occasions to address some of the problems of Polish society. He was Poland’s greatest role model, not surprisingly, since the census of 2001 revealed that out of a total population of 38.6 million, 34.6 million were Catholics. But he was also revered and listened to by non-believers. His death on 2 April 2005 not only deprived the country of its greatest role model. It also robbed the Polish Church of its mentor.