Rewolucja porzucona przez własne dzieci, czyli o paradoksie niepolitycznej polityki widzianym z Polski

• Authors: Katarzyna Uczkiewicz

Title variants

EN

Revolution neglected by its own children, or the paradox of unpolitical politics as seen from Poland

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The events taking place during the Autumn of Nations 1989 transformed Central Europe so significantly that — though in the majority of Eastern Bloc countries it happened without bloodshed — the change may be called revolutionary. Later fate and life choices of the leaders and participants of the 1989 revolution in Poland and Czechoslovakia have been as different as their ways to democracy. Difference is a source of mutual fascination, which in Poland has centered mostly around the person of Václav Havel. Why did the citizens of Czechoslovakia — who at the end of 1989 had organized mass demonstrations and a general strike throughout the whole country, and who had been ready to take a great risk to express their disapproval of the government’s policy — having achieved instant victory, peacefully return home and leave the political scene to officials and technocrats? Why did the ethos and discourse of the Velvet Revolution remain alive only in a narrow circle of intellectuals — former dissidents? Why did the new elite reduce its significance to the role of an effective gadget for the purpose of the Western media? The article presents the fate of the “children of the Velvet Revolution” as seen from the Polish perspective.

Keywords

EN

Velvet Revolution; 1989; Václav Havel; dissidents; political system reconstruction; Solidarity; unpolitical politics; Parallel Polis; Autumn of Nations

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Wroclawskiego
• Journal: Miscellanea Posttotalitariana Wratislaviensia
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 3: Elity w krajach Europy Środkowej i Wschodniej po roku 1989
• Pages: 43 - 56

Contributors

author

Katarzyna Uczkiewicz

• Uniwersytet Wrocławski