The Original Sin of Poland’s Third Republic: Discounting
“Solidarity” and its Consequences for Political Reconciliation
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Publication date: 2006-03-30
Polish Sociological Review 2006;153(1):9-38
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ABSTRACT
“Solidarity” was one of the major causes of state socialism’s downfall and yet it has neither
come to play an active and significant role in the Polish historical memory nor has it entered a canon of
routinely studied “great” social movements. This neglect is related to (1) the lack of a symbolic closure
of the communist period, (2) insufficient ceremonialization of “Solidarity’s” success, and the (3) the lack
of public, symbolic closure of the Round Table process. A review of the literature on the problem of
reconciliation after the fall of a non-democratic regime and the role of collective memory in this process
allows us to argue that these three “errors” may be related to the low level of trust and the pervasive sense
of corruption that are diagnosed in many empirical studies. In order to better understand these strategic
errors of cultural policy we examine Poland and—briefly—several other countries where similar dilemmas
were dealt with differently and, seemingly, with more success.