As Zamoyski demonstrates, this is easier to see now, in 2009, than it was in 1987, when the story of Poland still appeared to have ended badlyĪnd there are other changes. The fact is that despite the years of occupation, disastrous rebellions, the disenfranchisement of the Polish aristocracy and the deportation of Polish leaders to Siberia, a reservoir of expertise and pragmatism remained. By the 1870s, Polish merchants and industrialists successfully dominated the economy of the Prussian partition, having pushed the Germans to the sidelines, while in Galicia, the Austrian partition, they created self-governing institutions and ruled themselves.Īll of this turned out to matter, after 1918, since it helps to explain both why Poland was able to reconstitute itself after the first world war - and even why it is relatively successful now. Yet the achievements of the 19th century were impressive. Later nationalists sometimes looked askance at their efforts, since to do anything positive during a foreign occupation required some degree of collaboration with the occupiers, and some of the great achievers of the period were considered semi-traitors. And it is true that there were two major rebellions, in 18, as well as many minor ones, not to mention a whole series of anti-Russian and anti-German plots and conspiracies.īut the 19th century was also the birth of a political quasi-philosophy called ‘positivism,’ whose adherents in effect instructed Poles to make the most of a bad situation, to build what national institutions and enterprises they could, and to compete, economically, with the partitioning powers. Back when Poland was still in mourning for its independence, the years between Poland’s partition by Russia, Prussia and Austria in 1795 and its regaining of statehood in 1918 were invariably described as a series of rebellions against the occupying powers. In Poland: A History, Zamoyski has tried to provide them, rethinking assumptions that he and others made in the past, and along the way retelling the whole story of Poland, from the Slavic tribes of the early Middle Ages, up to the most recent elections in 2007. But the country is a functioning democracy, where power changes hands peacefully, and has a functioning capitalist economy, with some of the highest growth rates in Europe - even now.

Twenty years later, Poland is not only a sovereign country, but one which is growing, economically and politically, with astonishing speed - so much so that one Polish acquaintance describes the last decade as ‘the most successful in three centuries.’ Mistakes have been made since 1989, when Poland held its first democratic elections since the second world war.

The Polish Way by Adam Zamoyski