Demonstrations in Poland in defence of democracy.

You mean of course President Komorowski, someone far from hated and someone who might be expected to attend a war remembrance ceremony without tasteless heckling from PiS cult supporters.

The same bunch who also heckle funerals.

No he was not. I don't think even Polonius would make such an assertion.

Come on you know very well that this douche is hated and for a good reason too.

I still found that to be one of the most upsetting things in recent history. How *anyone* could whistle in the face of people that fought man to man for a free Poland - along with surviving what came after... no, I don't get it at all. Even if you hated Komorowski, it wasn't the time or the place to do such a thing.

I don't know Warsaw well, but wasn't it in front of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier as well? :/

Who don't you both just get familiar with the Polish people's opinins before you contribute to the topic, Komorowski was hated everywhere on the internet: Facebook, coments on: onet, interia, wp and other news webs, Youtube, Tweeter.... everywhere even if you went to play a game online you could see someone using "Komorowski_sux" nickname.

You mean he was hated by PiS supporters because the PiS controlled media told them to hate him. Nothing more, nothing less. If he was so hated, he wouldn't have lost by just over 500,000 votes, and even then, it was his own apathy to blame rather than any hatred towards him.

The real reason people 'hated' him was because PiS couldn't stand the way that he beat Kaczyński in 2010.

But this time Kaczyński's man beat Komorowski and PiS beat PO and consigned the ex-commies to political limbo or, more precisely, to the rubbish heap of history. So it's PiS, not the Kopaczes, Michniks and Delphs of this world, that are having had the last laugh!!!.

You needn't thank me for the nobilitation of including you among the top-shelf losers and their toadies, all way beyond your class. My pleasure!

What are you on about, Polonius? The ex-PZPR men found their home in PiS, as can be seen by Kaczynski's right hand man, Piotrowicz.


Polonius, you do realise that the opposition are in control of a large amount of local and provincial authorities?

PiS are by no means in complete control of this country, and they are not well represented in academia for instance.

Stop pretending to be dumber than it is in reality. Media was still controlled by PO not PiS during presidential election last year.

The one Piotrowicz is your deifntion of "endless ex-PZPR types" in the PiS govt, is it?
Did you watch "Towarzysz Generał" last night. The make-over of nomenklatura into regime-sponsored businessmen was most clearly explained. The collapsing PZPR schemed and scammed to not only save their behinds but to land softly and cushily in the new political set-up and the subservient Rakowski govt and Sejm turned those schemes into law. That included handing state banking assets to voivodship PZPR 1st secretaries who turned them into private local banks. Similar silver-platter gifts were provided under the guise of some hastily enacted ad hoc law to senior SB types. No wonder they became III RP's financial elite. Ex-PZPR types was given free rein of the economy (one became NBP governor), continued their cushy posts in the state administration and wormed their way into the highly lucrative and scam-opportunity-rich privatisation machinery. Former SB agent and intelligence spy Aleksander Gawronik, thanks to inside info from his mate communist dep. PM Sekuła, set up Poland's first chain of currency-exchange shops the minute Rakowski legalised them and in 1990 became Poland's richest person. These are not isolated examples, this was the effective "law of the land" in roundtable Poland at every level and in every corenr of the country. People saw how the local PZPR boss, who had been well off in PRL, suddenly found himself on Easy Street with none of the ascetic PRL-era restraints on conspicuous wealth and consumption, while they had been thrown out of work by ex-commie Balcerowicz. The RT was one grand photo op of smiles, signings and cordial handshakes, but the real deal was struck in backrooms. In one scene of "Towarzysz Generał" Michnik is shown assuring the regime's people they had nothing to fear. It's all there for anyone who wants to understand what really went on rather than churn out the same old boring propaganda alleging that the entire nation benefited from Magdalenka.


Voivodes are appointed by the govt so if they start acting up and being disloyal, out they go. When council elections roll round, the local political balance will also shift in favour of the pro-Polish party PiS.

Some people say that the loyalty of state officials should be to the people, but clearly for PIS all that matters is loyalty to the Party and the Dear Leader Chairman Kaczynski. How nice of you to confirm that.

I forgot to mention that the PRL-era military brass and police (secret and uniformed) adroitly transferred into III RP with little fall-out. And the chief of Polish Military Intelligence Gen. Marek Dukaczewski even after the fall of communism in 1989 attended GRU training in the USSR. He quashed a verification operation in secret services and well into the 21st century headed Miltary Intelligence. Kwaśniewski (another nomenklaturite) promoted him to brigadier general. There are hundreds of thousands of such stories which should be carefully studied by thsoe gushing enthusiasm over the benefits and privileges enjoyed by the Polish nation as a result of the roundtable conspiracy. There are many such PRL-rooted people wtih less clout and pull than Dukaczewski among the KOD marhcers, resentful of finally being pushed away from the feed trough.

This phrasing clearly implies that PiS is chomping down heartily at that trough.... Which is more or less what I expect.

The fact is essentially that trying to settle accounts to your satisfaction in the transition from communism to capitalism would have amounted to a blood bath.

There are essentially two ways such a transition can be made:

Soft landing - in the short term it means a lot of people who should be punished aren't, but it gives better longterm prospects for positive development

Hard landing - immediate attempts to bring the guilty to justice inevitably lead to lots of innocent people being hurt and does not help longterm prospects for positive development.

Of course there were mistakes made (esp with 20/20 hindsight) in the change in government structure from 1988-1990. Trying to fix all those now at the cost of the future is ..... not a good idea.

Poland came through the communist period about as well as could realistically be hoped for. I'm all in favor of punishing those guilty of actionable offenses in that time but I'm not in favor of a witch hunt (which is what JK effectively wants).

Care to give any examples? I'd be more than happy to give examples of people who back in the days when the Party was PZPR ranted about how terrible Solidarnosci was and who now that the Party is PIS rant about how terrible KOD are.

De-communisation would not necessarily involve incarceration of anyone just for being in the party unless tehny had committed a crime. But it could have placed a 10-year ban on holding public office for all senior PZPR activists, starting with the Basic Party Cell (Podstawowa Organizacja Partyjna) leader all the way up to Politburo member. That would have saved Poland from the Kwaśniewski presidency and Miller's SLD not to mention Balcerowicz's assault on the economy.

Very sernior PZPR people starting with municpal party committee heads up might be saddled with an indemnification payment to hekp offset the economic harm done to Poland under communism (eg garnishing earnings for a specific period of time).. Or conversely, some of their ill-gotten property could be confiscated. That would not be a bloodbath unless they resorted to violence to retain the trough.

Why is it that only Poland did not carry out a decent de-communisation or lustration campaign?

And Poland is doing much better economically than most of the countries that did that. Why is that?

No connection! Pure coincidence. Besides there is no other country Poland's size one could compare with.

Many others didn't as well. The only country to my knowledge that did was the Czech Republic, and they're on the verge of being overtaken by Slovakia. Slovakia started off much poorer in 1993, so it shows how lustration didn't work economically.


They're not even bothering to hide it now. The latest story with PiS opposing the privatisation of the ski lift company is very obviously because they see it as yet another source of well paid jobs for party activists that need to be rewarded for their support. It's becoming more and more obvious that the real failing of PO was that didn't privatise enough.


Refer back to the Czech Republic. It was far wealthier than Poland and Slovakia in 1993, yet both countries are now on the verge of overtaking the Czech Republic. The country is a basketcase - they might have had lustration, but politically, it's a complete mess. They've had something like 12 Ministers for Transport in 10 years, the Czech Road Administration is riddled with corruption and incompetence and it shows how lustration simply resulted in corruption under different hats.

Privatisation in BAlcerowicz's book meant selling things off to FOREIGN INTERESTS FOR A SONG. Polish corporation could have been built up under the Bsalcerowicz plan and given first crack at privatised assets. But he was so greedy for instant cash that he never even considered that.

If the ski lift is to sold to Slovakia or any foreign party, then better not to privatise it. If he had his way, Balcerowicz would gladly sell off PGNiG, KGHM, Cegielski. Police, Puławy, LOT, State Forests, etc. Why should Poland have anything? Isn't her proper role is to provide foreign capital with a pool of cheap labour, outside investors with cheap industrial sites and Ango-expats with cushy teaching jobs plus ample opportunities to badmouth the country that feeds them?

Perhaps we should organise some demonstrations to protest against that and to demand that foreigners who bought Polish property for a song due to their dodgy connections should have their money returned to them and the property they cheated Poland out of returned to Poland? You'd support demonstrations like that, wouldn't you.


In no small part because a lot of the same people who joined the Party because it was the economically correct thing to do back in the day were also smart enough to very quickly jump onto the good ship Free Market.

What you're failing to mention is that those 'interests' were pretty much unviable in the free market. They were often relying on COMECON structures to provide them with markets, and once it became obvious that other countries would no longer purchase things at an inflated rate (mainly the Soviet Union) or provide raw materials below cost, they became suddenly unviable. That's exactly what condemned the Gdansk Shipyard, as it was entirely relying on subsidised steel which in turn relied on subsidised iron ore imports from Ukraine.

If you actually read what happened in 1989-1990, a lot of these businesses needed huge capital injections to even have a hope of producing goods that could be sold internationally. Ursus in Warsaw was a great example, but there are countless others. Poland couldn't have provided the cash and neither could most Polish companies.


Where was the money coming from? Polish corporations would have needed loans and capital - but the West simply wasn't willing to lend any more, especially once it became obvious that East Germany was also deeply in trouble financially. Jeremy Sachs did a hell of a job with convincing Western lenders to forgive some of the debts, which is what allowed Poland to rise out of the mess in the mid 90's.


Poland needed hard currency and investment. There wasn't much room to move - to keep people employed and to keep factories open, they needed investment - not in 1995, but in 1990.


Which means that it will be deprived of needed investment and expertise. There's absolutely no reason for the state to own ski lifts - it's a relic of communism, and PiS only oppose it because it means less jobs for the boys.


Absolutely. I think it would be a good start to name and shame such people, so that they would be more...willing to return the property stolen.

Yes, they would have needed years of retrenchment and retooling and rethinking before they could begin to think about being solvent (and would have needed ginormous cash pillows to do that). If they had the cash then they would have been solvent already but the entire country was broke, broke, broke in 1990 (what being run by socialists does to a place, for other examples see Venezuela and ..... maybe Poland in a few years).

At the time, neither the time nor cash was available. Some of the negotiations could have been carried out better (I think everyone realizes that) but there was no way to keep a giant zoo full of white elephants afloat at the time.

Some of the companies were "privatized" for less than they owned in the liquid assets, no kidding. Besides many of the major privatizations were done in late 90's/early 00's. Hardly anything was sold in early 90's.

Yes, that's what happens when a company has both assets and liabilities: it is worth less than the value of its assets. Given the way that a more than a few state-owned companies in the early '90s adopted a fairly original strategy with regard to tax, i.e. simply not bothering to pay it, one can't be too surprised that they had quite large debts. In 1996 the Ursus tractor factory owed the taxman approximately three trillion zloty, plus another vast chunk of cash to ZUS. On top of which they had about 50% more staff than they needed and virtually no products to sell in the west (due to licence restrictions), so it's easy to see why nobody was interested in investing in the company.

I read an article about this very subject a while ago, and it seemed to have been absolutely widespread among those large local companies that tended to dominate the local town. There's two good examples near Poznań with the furniture factories in Swarzędz and Oborniki - both of them had a huge site in the middle of the town, they were the main employer and were seen as part of the social fabric of the town. Both of them went bankrupt shortly after Poland joined the EU, as years of total mismanagement and blatant nepotism saw them fail just as a huge new market opened up for them.

with all my heart i am with Poland. Whatever you do Poles, prevent foreign meddling in Poland`s affairs.

There seems to be mounting evidence that all the noisy KOD rabble-rousing and snitching to the EU by trough defenders was a total waste of time and waste of taxpayer money considering the extra polcie protection all the street commotion required. Its only result was to further polarise Polish society and blacken Poland's international reputation.

The Venice Commission have given the impression that nothing bad is happening in Poland and expressed surprise the Constitutional Tribunal row had evolved into such na imbroglio, since it could easily be resolved by compromise. The Commission is due to present its findings in writing in mid-March.

Nice spin, but the reality is that they've said nothing of the sort.

You've also failed to mention that 46% of Poles support KOD against the government, with only 42% in favour of the government.

That brainwashing was the result of the PO-Petru hate industry hoopla turning over at 5 million rpm day in, day out, 24/7.
Run to Google Translate and read:
wiadomosci.onet.pl/kraj/witold-waszczykowski-zadowolony-z-wizyty-komisji-weneckiej/x0ys8x

Making excuses again. The facts are clear : the majority think the government is in the wrong.


Who needs Google Translate here? Of course he is saying that the Venice Commission is on their side, it's the normal PiS thing to claim that people said something totally different to what they actually said, relying on the fact that most PiS supporters simply believe whatever the Party tells them.