Heres the English version of the piece I wrote for Gazeta Wyborcza wyborcza.pl/1,75968,16090024,Brytyjski_dziennikarz_o_25_latach_przemian_po_PRL_.html POLAND is a backward country whose people are beset by their prejudices and traumas. That decades-old stereotype has been disappearing, though not fast enough. The ‘Freedom Summit’ this week should give it another well-deserved kick. Like all stereotypes, this one has a grain of truth. 25 years ago Poland was a backward country. Nothing worked easily and a lot of things did not work at all. As a journalist covering the Round Table talks, talking to my newspaper on the phone was hard: I had to send a telex from the BBC office asking the newsdesk in London to call me (note for younger readers: a telex was a hard-wired, point-to-point low-bandwidth messaging system. You can find it in science museums next to carbon paper and slide rules). I used to have what I called the “Yalta index” which was the number of times per day that Poles would bring up the country’s wartime betrayal by Roosevelt and Churchill. After a bit, the metric changed from days to weeks. At a recent Monte Cassino commemoration in Cracow, a total stranger started to berate me about Yalta. I felt strangely nostalgic: it hadn’t happened for years. Poland now enjoys a combination of prosperity, freedom, security and tolerance unparalleled in its history. That is a terrific achievement over 25 years. The foreign guests will arrive at a world-class airport, stay in world-class hotels, benefit from a world-class communications infrastructure – and meet with world-class Polish politicians. That last bit is not so new. People such as (in alphabetical order) Wladyslaw Bartoszewski , Bronislaw Geremek, Jacek Kuron, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Adam Michnik, , and Leck Walesa, were world-class too in their day. Their leadership in thought and deed inspired a generation: as a student in London in 1980, I helped organise Student Solidarity with Solidarity. You were in the front line of the struggle for freedom and your leaders were our leaders, we believed. But the great change is that Polish leadership is no longer about heroics. Donald Tusk’s idea of an energy union for the EU is imaginative and practical. Ex-Presidents Kwasniewski and Walesa have played an important role in Ukraine. My friend Radek Sikorski has launched a historic breakthrough in Polish-German relations; he may yet become the EU’s foreign-policy chief. Other Poles are leaders too in their fields – from economics to business. I very much like the new ‘Spring into Polska’ campaign. By chance, a huge poster is on the street corner near our house. I felt a lump come into my throat when I saw it. Poland has come so far, not only in overcoming the tortured, debilitating legacy of the past century, but also in dealing with its national neuroses, including the crippling national inferiority complex and ingrained prickliness. It is now a country that is ready, willing and able to tell its own success story. I was at a conference in Warsaw last week organised by Poland Today, specifically aimed at bringing Poland’s macro-economic stability, vibrant private-sector, and vital strategic location to an international audience. I don’t think that event, with its confident, unselfconscious spirit, would have been possible even five years ago, let alone ten. Of course I still meet Poles – albeit a diminishing number -- who believe that the past 25 years have been a disaster, or at least a disappointment. There is still talk of the Uklad – the belief that the collapse of Communism was a sham, and that old networks of WSI and ex-KGB retain a malign influence on the country. I am sure that is true – but only in part, and in increasingly small part. A great deal of what goes on in Poland now has little to do with the government, or the past. It is run by people who barely remember communism at all. They get frustrated about the country too. Too much Urzenictwo. Too much poverty. Patchy infrastructure. Shortcomings in education, health and the administration of justice. Poland has a lot to do to make sure that the next 25 years maintain the pace of change, and do not let it slacken. But the biggest challenge of all, as a friendly outsider, is emigration. I love the fact that I can practise my Polish in shops and restaurants. I like it even better when (which happens more and more) I meet a Pole who is doing a well-paid job, not an entry-level or menial one. I am delighted that they feel at home in Britain and that my country (a few idiotic politicians excepted) has made them so welcome. It helps put something on the positive side for what I will always regard as a historical debt. The joy is mixed though, but worry that these are some of the brightest and best people Poland has to offer, and they are not showing much sign of wanting to go home. The great task for the next 25 years is to make them as positive about Poland as I am. It is great that they have come to work and study in Britain (and the Netherlands, and Ireland and Germany). But it would be even better if a large chunk of them come home, along with the skills and savings they have accumulated. Making that happen will not be easy – there is not single big thing that needs to change, but rather, lots of small ones: all the elements that make up the quality of life, from wages to pensions to schools and hospitals and air pollution and congestion, and much more besides. The crowds at the airport I want to see are not foreign dignitaries such as President Obama – welcome though his visit is. But Poles coming home.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 09:33:55 +0000
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