POLAND’S CENTENNIAL COMMEMOR ATIONS by Marek Jan Chodakiewicz No, Poland is not 100 years old. One can be excused for thinking so; even some official announcements tout “one hundred years of independence.” But that is historically inaccurate, a compromise for the sake of brevity. “One hundred years since regaining independence” is a mouthful and it also leaves out quite a bit of Polish history. As usual, the story is rather complicated. On November 11, 1918, Poland proclaimed its return as an independent state. It also affirmed the continuity of its history: almost 900 years of its statehood, nearly a millennium of Christianity, and several millenia of the presence of its people in the area around the Vistula River. (India likewise marks its independence in 1947 but there were thousands of years of Indian history before that.) The only thing that allows Westerners to relate to all this is that November 11 coincides with the Armistice Day, ending World War I, which the Americans celebrate yearly as Veterans Day. But the story of the Polish centennial of freedom requires several codicils. Polish sovereignty is not a linear phenomenon -- it is a tale of euphoria mixed with internal quarrels and foreign interruptions. The Poles enjoyed their independence in the interwar period, even though from 1926 they found themselves under a comparatively mild left-wing military dictatorship. The government rigged elections but it allowed opposition and free press. Yet Poland sovereignty remained for over twenty years. In September 1939, Hitler and Stalin destroyed the Polish state as World War II broke out, and Poland was driven underground where its re-
sistance units fought against both the Nazis and Communists. Abroad, the Polish army-in-exile never wavered in the service of the Allied cause on land, sea, and in the air. In 1944-1945, the Red Army pushed the Wehrmacht out of Poland. There was no liberation. Red totalitarianism replaced the brown one and Stalin was substituted for Hitler. The Kremlin appointed local Communist collaborators to rule over the Poles as Moscow’s puppets for the next 40 years or more. There were periodic anti-Communist rebellions (1956, 1968, 1970, and 1976), but the Communist crushed them ruthlessly each time. The greatest upheaval came with “Solidarity,” an independence movement masking as a trade union (1980-1989). Buoyed by the election of Karol Wojtyła as John Paul II to Papacy, and capitalizing on the anti-Communism of US President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, “Solidarity” challenged the Soviet-backed regime openly. Although it was driven underground during martial law in 1981-1983, it persevered underground. Then, taking advantage of ill-conceived and ill-executed ‘reforms’ of Soviet Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev, “Solidarity” re-emerged to challenge the Reds in a parliamentary contest. Unfortunately, the first elections of June 1989 were rigged because 65% of the seats were guaranteed to the Communists and their allies. The rest were up for contest, and “Solidarity” won all but one of the freely contended slots. Even if they returned a minority contingent freely elected, the unfree elections failed to
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