4 - The Democratic Promise of Western Poland

Summary

The next two chapters deal with contemporary Poland. The present one begins with a brief introduction to local politics in Wrocław and Łódź—two emblematic cities whose contrasting patterns of culture are analyzed in chapter 5. Section 2 outlines a broader east-west faultline that has defined Polish public life since 1989. Western Poland has proved much more adept at absorbing the institutions and spirit of liberal democracy, both in politics (the modes of governance on local level and the norms of civic interaction) and in the economy (a proliferation of market competition and of individual entrepreneurship), than the country's east. After considering alternative explanations of this disparity (section 3), I go on to argue that one of the main causes is cultural. The better fortunes of the West have been, to a significant degree, the result of a newly formed culture of individualism, whereas the political and economic underdevelopment of the east relates to the persistence of corporatism (section 4). The remainder of the chapter goes into more detail various aspects of this essential difference, notably in the areas of religion, national consciousness, and family life, and explains their impact (sections 5 and 6).

Wrocław vs. Łódź, or Two Polands in Miniature

The histories of Wrocław in southwestern Poland and Łódź in east-central Poland have much in common. Both cities experienced rapid industrialization and explosive population growth in the last third of the nineteenth century to become the leading urban-industrial centers in their respective countries: Wrocław, in Imperial Germany; Łódź, in Tsarist Russia. Between 1871 and 1914, Wrocław's and Łódź's populations jumped from 205,000 to 525,000 and from 100,000 to 505,000, respectively. By the 1880s the former had become the sixth largest city in Germany with an impressive mix of industries high-lighted by rolling stock, machinery, textiles, and food products. The latter had turned into the largest center of textile production in the Russian Empire and was sometimes referred to as the “Manchester of the East.” On the eve of their incorporation into Poland (Łódź in 1918, Wrocław in 1945), both were multiethnic and multidenominational cities.