In divided Poland there's little solidarity in sight

This poster in Warsaw harks back to a similar one 20 years ago encouraging Poles to vote in semi-free elections that led to the downfall of communism. Photo / AP

The stage is being prepared outside the famous Gdansk shipyards. The temporary terraces are nearly ready in the centre of Krakow and Kylie Minogue is on her way.

Poland is getting ready to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the events that set the nation and much of eastern and central Europe on the road to freedom.

But Piotr Karwowoski, a retired trade union official and factory worker, will not be celebrating. When he travels the 160km to Warsaw from his home of Swidnik, he will instead be heading to a three-day administrative meeting of his union's industrial wing.

Karwowoski played a key role in the years of struggle, strikes and demonstrations that finally culminated in "semi-free" elections on June 4, 1989. But the 65-year-old is not in the mood for nostalgia. "Twenty years ago I was euphoric at the prospect of change, especially after all we had done. But the Poland that resulted was different than I expected. I don't really want to celebrate."

Two decades after the triumphant defeat of the communist regime which took its orders from Moscow, there is no doubting the Polish transformation that is visible in the streets.

The rows of inefficient, clunky local cars that once clogged Warsaw's Constitution Square have been replaced by Fiats, Toyotas and BMWs.

Under a flat, grey, rainy sky, the trams and the 1950s Stalinist architecture hinted at what once had been. But the Green Coffee cafe with its ciabatta bread sandwiches, fresh orange juice and black T-shirted waitresses symbolise the present and the future.

"What is the difference between Warsaw and England? The side of the road on which we drive?" asked veteran film-maker Marek Drazewski. "There are the same films, the same McDonald's. Warsaw is a standard European capital and when I go to the United States now I feel at home. The biggest difference is that I am allowed to smoke."

Satellite television and the internet are bringing change to far-flung rural areas, too, as is the new confidence and openness of those hundreds of thousands of Poles who travelled from small rural towns to work in the UK and Ireland and who are now returning home.

Yet all across Poland, people voiced the same disenchantment with the public festivities. Major newspapers are planning huge coverage and special supplements. Political personalities such as the former Czech President Vaclav Havel are being flown in. There is the free concert starring Minogue.

But very few Poles are so far joining in. One poll found only 41 per cent of the 38 million population knew what the celebrations were actually for. No one regrets the passing of the communists, of course.

"Even on the left many, many welcomed the end of the regime with joy and happiness," said Ryszard Kalisz, a former Interior Minister and senior leader of the leftwing SLD party. .

But when it comes to the present, many Poles believe Poland lacks moral and political order .

"The political class is exceptionally mediocre," said Jaroslaw Kurski, deputy editor of the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, which published its first issue just four days after the June 4, 1989 elections that saw the Solidarity union sweep into effective power. Maciej Stryjecki, a former ministerial private secretary and activist, agreed: "I have observed many governments close up. Each new one is worse than the last. Competent, honest, experienced people are very, very rare."

The disenchantment is especially strong among younger Poles. For Robert Kulik, a 28-year-old legal adviser in Lublin who recently returned from a year in the UK, "solidarity is not just a slogan or the name of an organisation. It can only be something that exists between people. There isn't any real solidarity in Poland any more".

Certainly the Solidarity that won so much admiration in the West is no more. From being founded as a trade union, Solidarity became a mass movement in the 1980s before becoming a political party in the 1990s. Now it has returned to being a union, with a membership a fraction of that of two decades ago.

The modern Solidarity is a close ally of the controversial hard-right Law and Justice party whose leaders, twin brothers Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, have shocked local and international audiences with their nationalist, borderline xenophobic rhetoric and alliances with extreme-right groups.

Cezary Kowanda, an analyst at Polityka magazine, says the alliance of Solidarity with the hard right is natural. "Trade unionism in Poland and Solidarity has always been very closely linked to the church and to a conservative set of social values. The real anniversary for a lot of Poles is not the June 4 elections of 1989 but June 2, 1979 when Pope John Paul II made his first pilgrimage to his homeland."

The June 4 festivities were initially planned for Gdansk, birthplace of Solidarity and scene of the showdowns at the famous docks where workers led by electrician Lech Walesa defied the communist regime.

But in the Baltic port city the mood is one of anger rather than nostalgia. The docks are being shut on the orders of the European Union, which Poland officially joined in 2004, and the Government feared rioting would mar the anniversary. So while opposition groups including Solidarity and the Law and Justice Party celebrate there, the main official festivities have been moved to Krakow. A third set of events will take place in Warsaw.

Even the presence of Walesa at the forefront of celebrations is controversial. The former President has been forced to repeatedly deny accusations from right-wingers that he was a communist spy. This month he threatened to boycott all celebrations for the anniversary of the events that eventually saw him made President in 1990.

In Swidnik, where the first serious demonstrations against the communist regime in Poland broke out in July 1980 before spreading to Gdansk a month later, they are not celebrating.

Swidnik is poor, religious, conservative and has one of the highest unemployment rates in Poland.

Law and Justice won power in 2005, ruling for two years in coalition before being defeated two years later by the Civic Platform, who mix neo-liberal economics with moderate conservatism to appeal to the newly wealthy and Europeanised classes.

According to Professor Lena Kolarska-Bobinska, a sociologist, "there are many Polands".

Jackson, the Swidnik Mayor, jokes that where you find two Poles you will find four opinions.

Sitting in a Lublin cafe, Kulik too talks of how historically, once there is no common enemy, Poles fight among themselves. Amid the anniversary rows and the rivalries between countryside and city, the sense of division can be overdone. Drazewski, who documented the early protests in Gdansk, says that Poland is now "stable and rich".

Though the wealth is unequally shared and relative - GDP per capita is around a third of that in the UK - Poles are considerably wealthier than 20 years ago. The Civic Platform Government is strong and relatively secure and few contest the basics of the political system.

Poland is resisting the recession relatively well, recording a steady 6 per cent year-on-year growth rate until last year. In fact, the importance of rows, often stirred up artificially, over values, identity or the historical record may owe much to the broad ideological consensus. "There is no real left and the entire political spectrum and debate is situated on the right," said Kowanda. The predominant mood is pragmatic and, after the epoch-changing dramas of the late 1980s, most Poles are happy to live in low-key times. In the new offices of the Gazeta Wyborcza, journalists were proudly reviewing the commemorative reprint of its first issue. The Gazeta has long been independent of the union. Times have changed, said deputy editor-in-chief Kurski. "We are becoming a middle-class society, with bourgeois values and bourgeois tastes. We are turning into a normal modern European state with all the advantages and disadvantages that that entails. And if that is boring, well, all the better."

THE FALL OF POLISH COMMUNISM

1. A POLISH POPE
On October 16, 1978, the Polish cardinal Karol Wojtyla is elevated to the papacy. The Catholic Church had become important in the resistance to communist rule and Pope John Paul II's homecoming tour galvanised the population; 500,000 heard him speak in Warsaw in June 1979. A quarter of the population attended one of his outdoor Masses. His visit was the beginning of the end for the communist regime.

2. THE GDANSK STRIKES
In Gdansk, at the Lenin Shipyards, the sacking of outspoken workers, including electrician Lech Walesa, results in a strike led by Walesa which begins on August 14, 1980.

The Gdansk Agreement is eventually signed, giving the legal right to organised trade unions and more freedom for the Catholic Church.

On September 17, Solidarnosc (Solidarity), the first independent labour union in the Soviet Bloc, is born.

3. MARTIAL LAW
On December 13, 1981, General Wojciech Jaruzelski declares martial law: 5000 Solidarity members, including Walesa, are arrested in the night. Hundreds of strikes taking place throughout the country are put down by riot police.

In October 1982, Solidarity was declared an illegal organisation and duly banned.

4. THE COMING OF GORBACHEV
On October 5, 1983, Walesa is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize but prevented from leaving the country to accept it.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev assumes control of the Soviet Union.

Three years later, as dissent grows in Soviet satellite countries, he will tell a Communist Party conference: "The imposition of a social system, a way of life or policies from outside by any means, let alone military force, are dangerous trappings of the past."

5. SOLIDARITY TRIUMPHS
In 1988, a new wave of strikes sweeps the country after food costs are increased by 40 per cent. The Government announces it is ready to negotiate with Solidarity. The union is again legalised on April 17, 1989, and allowed to field candidates in the June election. It wins all democratically available seats and forms a government under Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. In December 1990 Walesa is elected President of Poland.

- OBSERVER