‘Legacies and Prospects’: Poland 1989-2009

St. Antony’s College, Oxford, 8 June 2009

Summary and Interim Report

A one-day international conference was held at the University of Oxford in June 2009 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the ‘bloodless’ democratic revolutions that spread from Poland’s Gdańsk shipyards across East-Central Europe.

Speakers comprised leading academics from Poland and the UK across disciplines (history, politics, economics), and the MEP-elect, former EU Commissioner Danuta Hübner. Oxford-based Polish experts, Professors Norman Davies and Timothy Garton Ash, both of St. Antony’s College, provided stimulating and agenda-setting keynotes.

A mixed audience of up to 150 students, academics and others attended over the course of the day; the conclusions of this pertinently timed event merit wider dissemination. These pages extend some of the conference’s key findings in written and audio form, and address issues of strong contemporary relevance for the region: both the legacy of 1989, and the present-day prospects for the EU’s largest ex-Communist member state at a time of broader economic uncertainty.

The conference was held under the patronage of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, with sponsorship from CEELBAS, the M. B. Grabowski Foundation, and support from St. Antony’s College. It was co-ordinated Dr Robert Pyrah, the CEELBAS Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cultural Processes in East-Central Europe, with Filip Lachowski, President of the Oxford University Polish Society. The Society provided much logistical support on the day, and organised the closing concert by young Polish musicians in the chapel of Pembroke College: our thanks are registered.

Brief summaries of the sessions with audio links (where available) follow. For further details, please click on the links provided.

***

Section 1: History Lessons: The Legacy of 1989

Keynote by Prof. Norman Davies

Prof. Davies’s keynote speech also marked his 70^th birthday, and it was our honour to welcome him on this personally significant day. In his magisterial presentation, Prof. Davies reflected structurally on the reasons for Communism’s collapse in Poland; surveyed the scene in the 20 years after its collapse; and went on to pose (in both senses) critical questions for Poland’s current and future leadership, touching on contemporary debates about the ‘politics of history’ in the post-Communist present that generated a lively exchange of views in the subsequent discussion. Prof. Davies’s suggestion is that stirring up enmities in the wake of the post-1989 political compromises needed to overcome the Communist past has not been helpful in plotting a present and future course for the country.

Section 2: Themed Panels

1: Political Perspectives

2: Economic Dimensions

3 Social Aspects;

4 Poland and the EU

(Full reports / audio to follow shortly)

***

Section 3: Poland 1989/2009: Prospects

Keynote by Prof. Garton Ash

In an electrifying after-dinner address, Prof. Garton Ash drew on his many years of observing Poland’s development to reflect on the seeming mismatch between the country’s many singular achievements in recent world history (not surrendering to Hitler; setting in motion the fall of Communist regimes in East-Central Europe) and the apparently poor level of international awareness of these achievements. Mentioning the fact that the fall of the Berlin Wall offers a more readily graspable visual shorthand of Communism’s collapse than the shipyard strikes in Gdansk that preceded it, he pointed to the challenge that such phenomena embody: raising Poland’s profile. The challenge was posed, especially to the younger generation, to conceptualise phenomena that might finally generate positive international resonance: not least, he suggested Poland might seek an answer to the question that has helped other nations carve distinct identities: ‘what is Polish modernism / modernity’?

***

Closing Session: Cultural component

Following the conference dinner, the Oxford University Polish Society presented a concert of Polish and international music, using accomplished young Polish musicians in a mixed repertoire of song, ‘chanson’, and Polish poetry to a musical setting, held in the haunting surroundings of Pembroke College Chapel. The evening provided a cultural counterpart to the analytical sessions of the day-long presentations, and injected a celebratory component into the proceedings. This provided an important counterfoil to the conference’s agenda: to explore with critical astringency the legacy and prospects for Poland after 1989, but not to neglect the achievements.

---