Politics of the past: the use and abuse of history - Socialists ...

continued to play a dominant role during the first stage of the transition
to democracy. This had a number of consequences. The section
of the opposition movement with ties to the values of the
democratic left decided not to form a separate organisation as it occupied
a particularly strong position in the all-Poland movement
striving to establish a democratic and independent state within the
European Union. The only way the democratic left could hold such
a strong position was within the wider opposition movement and as
a result it had to dramatically scale-back references to specifically
left-wing values. People also felt that a successful transition from
the bankrupt communist economic system to capitalism meant putting
left-wing economic ideas to one side. The democratic left in
Poland thus abandoned its left-wing tendencies and emphasised its
general democratic stance, both anti-nationalistic and pro-
European.
Consequently the space left for the left-wing of the Polish political
spectrum was occupied by former Polish United Workers’ Party activists
and people linked to the communist regime. Efforts to create
a left-wing founded on the ideas of Solidarność failed. The result
was a confusion of concepts and discourse. The average citizen
continued to associate the left with communism and post-communism.
The traditions of the former patriotic left faded into oblivion.
The contemporary right-wing began to develop in the 1990s. It attacked
the core of the pre-August 1989 opposition and the leadership
of Solidarność for being insufficiently nationalistic and
patriotic and therefore labelled it left-wing. Reference was made to
the fact that certain leaders of the former opposition had belonged
to the Polish United Workers’ Party in their youth. Their family members’
links with communism were also cited. Essentially, the leaders
of the pre-1980s opposition and the advisers of Solidarność
were stripped of their patriotic credentials on the grounds that they
had held inappropriate positions in their youth or had been associated
with the Polish United Workers’ Party in the 1950s. Hailing
allegedly from an inappropriate – communist – family background
was also held against them. These attacks were facilitated by a version
of Poland’s post-war history in which the communist dictatorship
is equated with a betrayal of the nation, support for the
communist regime therefore amounting to treason.
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