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8 ||| Polish Democratic Thought and the Fight for Sovereignty, 1945–69 Andrzej Paczkowski “During the nineteenth century, and indeed throughout the course of Polish history, as the torch of freedom passed from one generation to another to light the way for the nation amid the raging storms, there was never an instance when it was extinguished for lack of hands to carry it forth. That is why, in spite of much effort and many sacrifices, we must rebuild the shattered steering mechanism of the ship of state.”1 Judging from the style of this anonymous letter “To a Friend,” written in 1945, it was meant to be an open letter. Its author was in Poland, and its addressee was the entire Polish community abroad. This typewritten document was confiscated from Jan Zarański, a reporter for the opposition Gazeta Ludowa (People’s Daily), in 1946. In fact, the letter’s author was Roman Knoll, a diplomat before the war and, during the war, a supporter of General Sikorski and the director of the Department of Foreign Affairs of the Polish Underground State in occupied Poland. Zarański’s words demonstrate the consciousness of Polish history characteristic of both the political elite and much of the general population. Yet the perception that the Poles have had a stormy history prompts different, sometimes contradictory conclusions. Even during the disastrous nineteenth century, Poles were divided on whether to fight or not to fight, or, rather, to fight or to adjust. What happened in Poland in 1944 and 1945 brought about emotional dilemmas similar to those of the 1794 Kościuszko insurrection, the November 1830 uprising, and the January 1863 insurrection. During the war, both in Poland and abroad, the crucial debate, accompanied by acute political struggle, concerned how to organize the new republic; after Yalta, the fundamental issue was whether an independent and sovereign Poland The Fight for Sovereignty, 1945–69 | 215 was still possible. Polish democratic thought had once again become simply a part of the national effort to regain independence. The external context was similar: the Polish irredentist movement of the nineteenth century was directed most often, almost exclusively, against absolutist Russia, then viewed as the greatest oppressor. In 1945, it was the Soviet Union that became a partitioning power, as well as the bloodiest dictatorship in modern history. For Polish democratic thought, it was quite obvious that without sovereignty there could be no talk of democracy. Although it was also realized that sovereignty did not automatically translate into democracy, for many the struggle for sovereignty, regardless of who conducted it, was a struggle for democracy. This is easy to grasp if we remember that enemy of Polish sovereignty was a totalitarian state that had imposed its system upon Poland. Generally speaking, to present the Polish political scene accurately, one ought to draw attention to its division into two major camps: the supporters of “dependence-dictatorship” and those of “sovereignty-democracy.” Like almost every black-and-white concept, this dichotomy, although quite obvious in perspective and even recognized by much of society at the time, can hardly serve as a scholarly analysis. The social and political reality was much more complex: attitudes toward each of the above concepts could be presented across a spectrum, although there seemed to be practically no chance for cooperation between the extreme factions. The extremes became dominant because the new system was introduced through the use of force and with the support, and initially even the direct involvement, of foreign armed forces. In this situation, many thought the only effective means of stopping the supporters of dependence-dictatorship was through armed resistance, concluding that democratic procedures, having been rejected by one of the sides, had totally lost their relevance. Extreme solutions that had already appeared during the final phase of the German occupation grew apace. Hence we observe growing support for the views referred to here as “dependence-dictatorship,” most fully expressed by the Communists, who in 1942 created—under order of the Comintern and Stalin—the Polish Workers ’ Party (Polska Partia Robotnicza, PPR), as well as those whose political credo could be summarized as “independence without democracy.” Radical nationalists like the Szaniec (Rampart) Group and the National Armed Forces (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, NSZ) linked to it were the best exponents of the latter idea. The challenge of these radical views, combined with war and 216 | Andrzej Paczkowski German occupation, led to an even stronger consolidation of the center of the Polish political scene, from...

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