ISS
Marcin
Zaborowski
July 2008
Remembering Bronislaw Geremek
1989 was a good year for Europe. Communism collapsed peacefully and Central and East European nations moved to rejoin Europe. Nineteen years later,
Europe is united, ex-communist states are stable and
more prosperous than ever before, their democracies are thriving and they are at peace with their
neighbours. Without statesmen like Bronislaw Geremek, however, the outcome of the post-communist
transformation might have been very different.
In early 1989, Gorbachev made it clear that the Soviet Union would not intervene militarily should the
satellite nations in Central Europe choose to pursue
reforms. Perhaps he did not know it at the time, but
from this moment the fate of communism in Central
Europe was sealed. Communism was finished, but it
could have collapsed in all manner of ways. In Romania, the Ceausescu regime was collapsing amidst the
civil war waged by different factions of the party. In
Yugoslavia, communism was replaced by nationalism
with cynics like Milosevic and Tudjman donning the
mantle of national leaders and pushing their people
into wars that turned the former Yugoslavia into the
bloody backyard of Europe.
Poland was the biggest and, arguably, strategically
most important state within the Soviet satellite bloc
and the manner of its transformation was bound to
influence the rest of the region, not least because
Poland was also the instigator of the change. Communism had been on a downward spiral in the country
at least since the violent repression of the Solidarity movement in 1981. In the late 1980s, the economy
was in tatters, the communists were demoralised,
* Marcin Zaborowski is currently a Research Fellow
at the EUISS.
Copyright: A.S.M./SIPA
Geremek: A Polish statesman
Bronislaw Geremek
and Solidarity was regaining its strength. People
were angry and various populist options for replacing the fading regime were certainly possible. Instead, Poland experienced a peaceful transformation
without a single casualty and with communists giving
up their power voluntarily.
Geremek played a crucial role in ensuring that this
transformation would be accomplished through ne-
european Union
Union européenne
European Union Institute for Security Studies
*
Copyright: BLOCHER/KANSAS CITY STAR/
JAN KAVAN, MADELEINE ALBRIGHT, JANOS MARTONYI AND BRONISLAW GEREMEK AT HARRY TRUMAN LIBRARY IN INDEPENDENCE
gotiation rather than violence. As a moderate dissident and an advisor to Lech Walesa, he was the
brain behind the round-table agreement between the
communist government and Solidarity that paved the
way to semi-democratic elections in June 1989. Not
all seats were contested in these elections, but Solidarity won all that were. The will of the nation was
clear, the communists had to admit defeat and Solidarity formed the first non-communist government in
the history of the Eastern bloc. This set in motion
a domino effect throughout Eastern Europe. Poland’s
transformation became a proof to other states that
revolutions did not have to be bloody; they could be
velvet.
by Germany and the Soviet Union, and at conflict with
all its neighbours.
Although it was generally expected at the time that
Geremek would become the Prime Minister of this
first government, he did not. He continued, however,
to exert influence from his less prominent positions
within the Solidarity camp, not least as the architect
of Poland’s new foreign policy. The new government
was faced with an extremely precarious international
environment. The Soviet Union was crumbling but was
still there and maintaining a powerful military presence in Poland and in the neighbouring states. Germany was uniting and the Bonn government was refusing to confirm the post-World War II borders with
Poland. The rising national movements in Ukraine,
Belarus and Lithuania were often anti-Polish in character and Poland’s own nationalists were pushing for
a hard line vis-à-vis these neighbouring nations.
He was also a man of strong convictions and he often
chose to voice them even when it was politically unwise to do so. A committed Atlanticist, he was also
one of the very few and lonely voices in ex-communist
Europe who criticised the war in Iraq. More recently,
in 2007, he refused to comply with the draconian lustration law introduced by the conservative Kaczynski
government that required him to declare whether he
had or had not co-operated with the communist secret
services, even though he had made such a declaration
(confirming no co-operation) as foreign minister in
the past. As a result, he came close to losing his mandate as a member of the European Parliament.
A new Polish republic could have found itself in an
environment similar to that which existed between
the wars, when a weak Polish state was surrounded
Warsaw’s choice was to either pursue a nationalist
foreign policy with Polish sovereignty at its heart or
to take advantage of the existing context of European
integration. Although Poland had only just regained
its sovereignty and nationalism remained a potent
force, Warsaw chose the European route that Geremek consistently advocated. In the subsequent years,
Geremek was instrumental in forging a new foreign
policy that produced close partnerships with Lithuania and Ukraine, reconciliation with Germany, and
Poland’s integration into NATO and the EU.
Geremek was not always in tune with the popular
mood and he did not fit in well in the world of party
politics. But far more importantly, he was a superb
intellectual, a visionary and an effective statesman.
There are few politicians who can combine these
characteristics. Europe has just lost one of them.
European Union Institute for Security Studies
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