Keeping the spirit of Poland's Solidarity movement alive

Deutsche Welle, 6 June 2013

It´s nearly 25 years since the mass movement in Poland began a process which led to the fall of communism across Europe. But are the young Poles of today forgetting the role Lech Walesa's Solidarity movement played?

With eyes focused on Syria, protests in Turkey, and continued fears over Egypt's direction, some fear very recent Polish history is being forgotten by today's generation. So how are the country's historians trying to ensure young people understand the tumultuous events of the 1970s and 80s which led to the fall of communism?

Jan Daniluk, one such historian, was barely five years old when voters ousted the communist government in June 1989. Today he's the spokesman for the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw, which serves as custodian of the Polish historical record during the 60 years that spanned the Nazi and communist dictatorships. Daniluk has seen such rapid changes in his country that he wonders whether people his age can grasp how hard life was for their parents and grandparents. 

Solidarity led by electrician Lech
 Walesa crushed the communists in
a landmark election victory

"In our times, we have McDonald's, we have Internet, we can travel, we have passports; we can drink Coca-Cola without any stress that it's a taste of imperialism, right? And the problem is that we just cannot imagine that it was really different just 25 years ago?"

He worries that his generation's lack of interest in Poland's recent history could lead to civic apathy.

As Poles reflected on Tuesday on the 24th anniversary of the historic elections on June 4 1989, the days of dismally long lines for commodities as basic as toilet paper seem very long ago.

Roads to Freedom

It was a year which shaped the world: China's suppression of protest in Tiananmen Square, the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In Poland the Solidarity movement led by electrician Lech Walesa crushed the communists in a landmark election victory triggering the fall of communism as mass movements swept repressive leaders from power.

In Gdansk, the dockyard birthplace of Solidarity, deep in a bunker built by French prisoners during World War II is the remarkable Roads to Freedom exhibition. It's been converted to a space that reconstructs the country's post-war history so clearly that visitors could be forgiven for thinking they've descended into a time warp.

'They were really brave'

A few life-size, costumed mannequins look stunningly real. One of them, a weary woman, has half a dozen rolls of toilet paper strung over her shoulder like a satchel. She's standing outside a dismal storefront with an expression implying she's waited in line for hours just to get this simple commodity that probably wouldn't be available again for months. Welcome to Poland's not so distant past.

Poland saw waves of strikes and
 street demonstrations during 1988
and 1989

"There's something inside me, I look at these photos, these tired persons, their faces and I think God, they were really brave. Because it was really something, yes?" reflects Daniluk.

He's concerned that Polish youth might begin to take their democratic freedom for granted if they don't know anything about the communist past.

At the University in Gdansk, Natalia Bogdanovich is studying Latin, French and Spanish. Even as a non-history graduate, she feels it's crucial to have a basic knowledge of what Poland went through to get to where it is now.

"I think it's very important because when I listen even to the stories of my grandma, and how hard it was in daily life to get a washing machine, to get a wheelchair if you were sick... I see how much easier it is for me to live now...because of what Solidarity did in our country."

Fading interest?

But according to Professor Grzegorz Berendt, "the number of people really interested in the communist past is smaller and smaller."

In his view young people just want to live their lives in the present and can't be bothered with what happened before they were born.

"I am a little disappointed, but I understand their situation. It's the same all over the world. Maybe you know a country where teenagers are more interested in history than in rock 'n' roll or something like this. But I doubt it!"

The past is the future

 Solidarity was the first non–communist
party-controlled trade union in a
Warsaw Pact country

But his central argument is that it's not enough to get today's youth to care about history. He sees a great need for the rehabilitation of Polish national memory, which was suppressed under communism.

With the study of history discouraged in the old days, hundreds of thousands of Polish dissidents victimized by the regime were never acknowledged until now. Berendt regrets even their own descendants are not that interested in what happened.

"But we are lucky to give back the memory to society of the people who did a lot of good things in our past. On the other hand, we have, of course, very hard-core enemies: people who benefited from the communist system. And they started to destroy evidence of their crimes, burning documents, and they do not want to look back. They tell us, 'you have to look forward, to the future. Past is not important.' But past IS important for the consciousness of a society."

Professor Berendt and Jan Daniluk, historians from two different generations, know very well that a country's honest biography cannot be written in black and white. In Poland, there is much more truth to be told. And they hope those who inhabit the future will want to hear it.