After the fall of communism, the Church, which had been at the centre of the struggle for its overthrow and played a vital political role in it, struggled to redefine its mission and find a new place in Polish society. This would not have been easy even if many of its members had not developed a taste for political power and they had all been intellectually up to facing the challenges of a rapidly changing world. It got caught up in major political debates over everything from abortion to EU membership, which revealed internal divisions and damaged its authority.
The destruction of Poland’s intellectual, spiritual and social elites by the Nazis and the Soviets between 1939 and 1956, and their con—tinuing emasculation until 1989, had placed the Church in the position of being the only repository and trustee of the values they held dear. With the mission of upholding them and passing them on came great moral authority. Much of that was dissipated after 1989.
Throughout this period there was an evident longing on the part of younger generations for fresh role models and leadership, but no new elite recognised by wider sections of the population emerged. Given an educational system geared to little more than the achievement of grades, it is difficult to see how it could. Similarly, no sense of respect for public institutions was allowed to develop by the squabbles and scandals in the Sejm, the smell of corruption surrounding the media and the police, and, perhaps most important, the corporatism, inefficiency and ineffectuality of the legal system.
As a state, Poland faces geopolitical challenges very similar to those it faced over the past four or five centuries. As a society, it faces the same globalising influences and threats to identity and cohesion as any other, from the most developed and sophisticated to the most recently contacted peoples of Amazonia. Given its social and systemic problems, it would be rash to predict how Polish society will confront these, and whether it will be able to overcome them as successfully as it has survived the onslaughts of the past. Yet that past undoubtedly holds most of the answers.
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Act of Insurrection (1794) 214
Act of Union, Orthodox-Catholic church, Brześć (1596) 139, 140
Adalbertus, St (Wojciech) 5, 6, 9
Afghanistan 374, 375
Agricultural Society 240-1, 242-3
agriculture 1, 17, 31, 50, 95-6, 120-1, 153-5, 183, 201-2, 240-1, 242-3, 251-2, 262-3, 265, 269, 271-2, 307-8, 369
air force 314, 319
AK (Armia Krajowa) 321, 322-3, 325, 326-9, 331, 332, 333, 336, 342, 344, 363, 367, 390, 407
Alabiano, Garcias 127
Aldobrandini, Cardinal 125
Aleksander, King of Poland 46, 56
Alexander I, Tsar of Russia 221, 224, 225-6, 227, 228
Alexander II, Tsar of Russia 240, 241, 245, 283
Alexander III, Pope 20-1
Alexey, Tsar of Muscovy 147, 154, 155
Algeria 249
Algirdas (Olgierd), Grand Duke of Lithuania 34
Alliance of the Democratic Left (SLD) 389, 391, 392, 394, 398
American Civil War 248-9
American Food Mission 308
Anabaptists 64
Anders, General Władysław 324, 325, 326
Andrew II, King of Hungary 22
Andropov, Yurii 372, 379
Andruszowo, Treaty of (1667) 151
Andrzejewski, Jerzy 360
Anna Jagiellon, Queen of Poland 106, 108, 109, 125
Annibale di Capua, Papal Legate 113
Antall, Jozsef 401
anti-Semitism
Anti-Trinitarians 64;
architecture: Baroque 170, 171, 175; Bohemian 52; Burgundian 52; Flemish 52; Franconian 52; German 52; Kraków 52; nineteenth-century 230; Renaissance 94, 96-7, 98, 170; Romanesque 14; Royal Castle 96, 202, 203; seventeenth-century grand country residences 185-6; Stanislavian period 202; Warsaw 52, 202, 230; Zamos 96-8
Arciszewski, Krzysztof 135
Arians 64, 65, 73, 75, 76, 99, 125, 126, 127, 128
Armenians 32, 58, 78, 93, 97, 98
army: AK (Armia Krajowa) 321, 322-3, 325, 326-9, 331, 332, 333, 336, 342, 344, 363, 367, 390, 407; Commonwealth 90, 111-12, 117, 120; ’Current Defence Force’ 90; foreign legions of 220-2, 224-6, 236, 248-9; funding 90, 117, 163; Husaria 134-5; in exile, World War II 319;