Liberalism and the Construction of the Democratic Subject in Postcommunism: The Case of Poland

Abstract

In the summer of 1994, political parties in Poland debated yet again the content and form of Poland’s first new constitution since the end of Communist Party rule. These arguments continued a process that had begun in 1989 and would continue until the ratification of a final document in May 1997. During the 1994 debate, each party offered its own version of a constitution, which was closely tied to its particular vision of the ideal new Polish republic. One of these groups was NSZZ Solidarity, the trade union successor to the social movement that had dominated opposition politics in the 1980s. In Solidarity’s version of the constitution, the state’s legitimacy was based on a community of Poles unified by a shared Catholic tradition. Political commentators who supported Solidarity’s constitution described it as follows: “Under the NSZZ Solidarity and presidential drafts [of the constitution] the Republic is the commonweal of the citizens.

The Battle for Symbolic Power: Kraków as a Stage of Renegotiation of the Social Position of the Catholic Church in Poland

“…Back in the 1990s, while "pro-choice" was the slogan of the movement in North America, in Poland, the debate evolved around the rights of medical doctors to exercise their professional judgement. Since the feminist voice was so weak at the time, a great deal of the opposition to the "compromise" of 1993 was expressed in terms of the freedom of doctors to determine on a case-by-case what was best (see Holc 1997). Therefore, in the 1990s, the misogynistic and paternalistic discourses were produced by those who fought for the restriction of abortion law and those who opposed it.…”

Post-communism, liberalism and solidarity in the countries of central and eastern Europe after 1989

“…It should be emphasized that nowadays countries like Russia, Moldova, Belarus, or Ukraine were at a different stage of parting with communism and postcommunism than countries like the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungry or Slovakia (Bunce and Gallo 2002;Holc 1997). An interesting intellectual event, analysing the processes of systemic transformation in ex-Eastern Bloc countries and reflecting its diversity, was, among others, the international conference on "Post-Communism and Identities: East-European Perspectives", held at the University of Padua, Italy, on June 4-5, 2015.…”