In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Triggering Communism’s Collapse: Perceptions and Power in Poland’s Transition
  • Andrzej Korbonski
Marjorie Castle, Triggering Communism’s Collapse: Perceptions and Power in Poland’s Transition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. 245 pp.

In February 2004, Poles celebrated the fifteenth anniversary of the start of the so-called Round Table talks that came to symbolize the beginning of the end of Communist rule not only in Poland but in all of East Central Europe. The [End Page 136] anniversary attracted little attention even in Poland. The newspapers mentioned it briefly, but other than that it passed without an echo. The silence was deafening, and one might ask why so few people took any notice of such a momentous date—a date that marked the impending collapse of Communism in Poland and elsewhere in the region. Was it simply that over the previous fifteen years people had forgotten the revolutionary changes in Poland's economy, domestic polity, and foreign policy, or were there other reasons for the lack of attention paid to the anniversary?

In Triggering Communism's Collapse, Marjorie Castle tries to provide answers to these questions. The book is well written and thoroughly analyzes, investigates, and dissects the events that preceded, accompanied, and followed the Round Table. The bibliography lists works written either by direct participants in the negotiations or by modern historians in Poland and abroad. Especially valuable are Castle's personal interviews with the leaders of both the Communists and the opposition, such as Wojciech Jaruzelski, Mieczysław Rakowski, Janusz Reykowski, and Bronisław Geremek. Still, when all is said and done, the events described by Castle are well known, and she adds relatively little to what was known already.

In general, Castle appears critical of the outcome of the Round Table. She believes that one of the longer-term consequences was "the discrediting of political parties as a way of resolving conflict." Castle refers to the talks as a "comedy of errors of the Polish transition [that] delegitimized compromise," and she believes "that all players felt that they had been tricked or robbed." This is a harsh verdict, but is it accurate?

Castle states that the June 1989 parliamentary elections, which resulted in an overwhelming victory for Solidarity, undermined the recently concluded pact between the Communists and the opposition. Those who negotiated the pact simply did not anticipate that Solidarity would actually end up controlling the government and that the Communists (and Moscow) would grudgingly acquiesce in this transfer of power. With the benefit of hindsight, Polish politicians nowadays regard the Round Table accord as at best a costly compromise or at worst a conscious betrayal. Thus, as Castle notes, the crucial legacy is "the deep and unbridgeable cleavage" that persists between the former Communists and the anti-Communists.

Clearly, the negotiators of the accord—on both sides—made many mistakes, but what were these mistakes? One was to overestimate the Communists' strength. Both sides failed to appreciate the magnitude of the changes under way in Soviet policy toward East-Central Europe, and both therefore believed that the Communist systems in Poland and other Soviet-bloc countries could not be phased out, much less removed abruptly. Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, they found it inconceivable that Mikhail Gorbachev [End Page 137] would essentially let go of the former Soviet satellites. Castle herself points out that when the first non-Communist government in post-1948 East-Central Europe was formed in Poland in August 1989, Communist hardliners were still in control in the rest of East-Central Europe other than Hungary. Never before had a ruling Communist party agreed voluntarily to negotiate with an opposition movement—in this case Solidarity—that was still formally outlawed.

The Poles also felt abandoned by the West. During the early years of the Reagan administration, most Poles believed that they could count on Western moral support. But the beginning of a far-reaching East-West détente in the latter half of the 1980s suggested that the fate of East-Central Europe was no longer a major concern for the West. Some Poles even began to suspect that the region was becoming a nuisance for the West—an...

pdf

Share