Paper Doves in Flight: Poland & The World After Communism

Really?

What.

You're writing a wikibox TL. About Poland, of all places. Nobody's going to read this, m8

We'll never know until we try, darling. And anyway, it's not just about Poland. Read the title.

I'm just saying, this taking off is about as likely as Poland ever going into space.

Okay, so now that we've gotten the inevitable ham-fisted Polandball reference out of the way, can you please let me get to the TL?

Is this really the way you want to spend your summer?

Have you seen the weather outside?

This is a bad idea.

Shhhhh. No more tears, only Mazowiecki.

You're an idiot.

no u
 
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Polish 1991 Parliamentary Election
The dissolution of the Communist Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) in 1990 marked the end of an era. Poland's opposition Solidarity movement had swept the partially free elections of 1989 and formed a government under Christian-democratic intellectual Tadeusz Mazowiecki, who democratised the country and, under the finance minister, the economist Leszek Balcerowicz, pursued radical economic reforms to turn the country's planned economy into a market economy. This led to much criticism of the government, but with Mazowiecki's popularity sky-high and Solidarity forgetting its role as a trade union in its unquestioning support of the government, this criticism initially remained beneath the government's notice. Mazowiecki was also criticised for not moving away from communism quickly enough for some Solidarity supporters' liking. These supporters accused him of failing to purge ex-communists from the administration and from state-owned enterprises, and of allowing them to maintain power over the market by taking over privatised companies. Lech Walesa of all people took it upon himself to become the leading critic of the government, surprising Mazowiecki by what he saw as demagogy on Walesa's part.

As the conflict between Mazowiecki and Walesa, known as the 'war at the top', deepened, Mazowiecki began to see Walesa as a danger to Poland's fledgling democracy. The two stood against each other in the first free presidential election in 1990, which Walesa won in a landslide, while Mazowiecki failed even to make it to the run-off, coming third behind the populist Polish-Canadian businessman Stanislaw Tyminski, who denounced the new Solidarity establishment and Mazowiecki's economic reforms. Solidarity itself splintered as a result of this election, with liberals who supported Mazowiecki, including Jacek Kuron, Bronislaw Geremek, and Adam Michnik, creating the Democratic Union, and conservatives who supported Walesa creating the Centre Alliance, lead by brothers Jaroslaw and Lech Kaczynski. Another liberal faction, led by Donald Tusk, formed the Liberal Democratic Congress, the Christian-nationalist faction of Solidarity formed the Christian National Union, and the branch of Solidarity that organised farmers split off to form the Peasants' Agreement. Solidarity's few social democrats formed their own parties too, Labour Solidarity and the Democratic-Social Movement. Attempts by the two to form an alliance including the radical Polish Socialist Party came to nothing. Tyminski himself tried to get in on the action by creating his own party, Party X. A rump Solidarity, by now reduced to nothing but its trade-unionist wing, continued under the leadership of Marian Krzaklewski.

Meanwhile, on the post-communist side of politics, the PZPR had transformed itself into the Social Democratic Party of the Republic of Poland, which contested elections as part of the Democratic Left Alliance coalition, and the United People's Party, the agrarian former satellite party of PZPR became simply the Polish People's Party, to remind voters of the opposition party of the same name that existed in the late 40s.

One can therefore imagine that Poland's first free parliamentary elections in 1991 did not exactly get off to an auspicious start. The Sejm had started work on a new electoral law to replace the first-past-the-post system used in the communist era as early as mid-1990, but Walesa deliberately delayed passage of the law to strengthen his own political position vis-a-vis the parliament which, unlike, Walesa himself, had not been elected in a truly free election and was increasingly open to accusations of illegitimacy. A back-and-forth between the President and the Sejm ensued, with Walesa vetoing the Sejm's proposed law and submitting his own amendments, which the Sejm in turn rejected. In the end, the Sejm was able to override Walesa's veto and push through its own version of the electoral law, which, being intended to favour the myriad micro-parties which had split off from the anti-communist Solidarity movement, ended up being a radical form of proportional representation with no threshold to exclude smaller parties and avoid fragmentation.

The result was a predictable mess, as over a hundred different parties ran in the election, deeply confusing most people and probably contributing to the low turnout of just 43.2% of eligible voters. The eventual 'winner', the Democratic Union, received just a little over 12% of the vote and 60 seats out of 460, just barely ahead of the Democratic Left Alliance. Observers, both in Poland and abroad, were shocked by the success of radicals, as the Christian National Union (running under the nom-de-guerre Catholic Election Action, and almost openly backed by the influential Catholic Church), Janusz Korwin-Mikke's radical libertarian Real Politics Union, the Polish Socialist Party (benefitting from its association with the historical party of the same name and its strong campaign against privatisation and ex-communist influence in government and business), and the anti-semitic National Party won much more support than the incredibly flawed opinion polls had predicted. Other parties profited from peculiarities of the electoral law to win more seats than the number of votes they had received would suggest, notably the ultra-nationalist Confederation for an Independent Poland which created multiple front parties to run in the election alongside the main party, which probably netted them more seats than they would have otherwise received and the Real Politics Union which formed an exotic alliance with the centrist Democratic Party which, according to post-election estimates, gained them an additional dozen or so seats as opposed to one or two for the Democrats. The only consolation was that Tyminski's Party X did not get very far, due to a scandal just before the election in which its campaigners were caught forging signatures for the party's lists leading to most of the party's candidates being disqualified. In the best possible summary of the Polish people's dissatisfaction with politics, the satirical Polish Beer-Lovers' Party, founded by comedian Janusz Rewinski, actually won 16 seats in the Sejm.

With a horribly fragmented Sejm dominated by the right and far-right, forming a government would inevitably prove to be a nightmare.

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It turns out I, er, forgot a party in the infobox. Which I think says everything one needs to know about this election.
 
I'll be watching this. Maybe I'll even manage to do some commenting but seeing how much time I expect to have ...

under the finance minister, the economist Leszek Balcerowicz, pursued radical economic reforms to turn the country's planned economy into a market economy. This led to much criticism of the government, but with Mazowiecki's popularity sky-high and Solidarity forgetting its role as a trade union in its unquestioning support of the government, this criticism initially remained beneath the government's notice. Mazowiecki was also criticised for not moving away from communism quickly enough for some Solidarity supporters' liking. These supporters accused him of failing to purge ex-communists from the administration and from state-owned enterprises, and of allowing them to maintain power over the market by taking over privatised companies.

Ah, shit. Sounds rather like OTL.

On the plus side, you don't need to worry about accusations of wankery, at least at this stage of the timeline.
 
Ah, shit. Sounds like it goes roughly as it did in OTL.
Yeah, sadly. There are two PODs: one is that Korwin-Mikke isn't as stupid as he was IOTL and accepts the deal SD offered him (which would have benefited the UPR) and the other is that the Socialists don't go into an alliance with Bugaj's Labour Solidarity which rendered them irrelevant, and manage to win some seats through sheer attention-seeking (which they were very good at back in the 90s). Which means there are suddenly relevant radical left and right-wing parties in the Sejm...

Next update will include government formation.
 
Yeah, sadly. There are two PODs: one is that Korwin-Mikke isn't as stupid as he was IOTL and accepts the deal SD offered him (which would have benefited the UPR) and the other is that the Socialists don't go into an alliance with Bugaj's Labour Solidarity which rendered them irrelevant, and manage to win some seats through sheer attention-seeking (which they were very good at back in the 90s). Which means there are suddenly relevant radical left and right-wing parties in the Sejm...

Next update will include government formation.

At least it means I won't be retreading old ground if I ever get down to a short alternate history centered on the economic transformation. I suppose the Socialist/Bugaj PoD is legit, but even though young Korwin's ego shouldn't be quite as overgrown as it is today the second PoD will seem suspicious, or even ASB, to anyone looking from a modern perspective.
 
At least it means I won't be retreading old ground if I ever get down to a short alternate history centered on the economic transformation. I suppose the Socialist/Bugaj PoD is legit, but even though young Korwin's ego shouldn't be quite as overgrown as it is today the second PoD will seem suspicious, or even ASB, to anyone looking from a modern perspective.
I'm aware that this might come off as a far-left wank to some, but I think that with the right circumstances it could happen. The Socialists' big issues were opposition to the transformation and anti-communism (they were in fact one of the most radical opposition groups in the 80s, and rejected the Round Table), a message that could have been attractive enough if they hadn't been forced to run under a banner that was associated with the increasingly tarnished Solidarity.
 
I'm aware that this might come off as a far-left wank to some, but I think that with the right circumstances it could happen. The Socialists' big issues were opposition to the transformation and anti-communism (they were in fact one of the most radical opposition groups in the 80s, and rejected the Round Table), a message that could have been attractive enough if they hadn't been forced to run under a banner that was associated with the increasingly tarnished Solidarity.

Even the currently governing party, the first one since 1989 to have a majority in parliment on its own, defnitely has left-wing tendencies, so left-wing economic policies certainly aren't an instant death sentence for a party. And the turbulent early 90s can certainly provide a lot of PoDs for big changes.
 
The currently governing party, the first one since 1989 to have a majority in parliment on its own, defnitely has left-wing tendencies, so it's not like left-wing economic policies are an instant death sentence for a party.
It wouldn't be their policies that hurt them if anything, it'd be their name. Being called 'Socialist' just two years after 1989 wouldn't help them, which is why they're only getting 3% here.
 
To give a marginally more substantive comment, Donald Tusk has one of those names that make you feel like OTL was written by some Ameriteen who just made shit up half the time. Sort of like how at one point the two biggest parties in Estonia were led by men called Edgar and Slim.
 
To give a marginally more substantive comment, Donald Tusk has one of those names that make you feel like OTL was written by some Ameriteen who just made shit up half the time. Sort of like how at one point the two biggest parties in Estonia were led by men called Edgar and Slim.
Even I struggle to believe it's a real name sometimes.

The worst part is that the root of Kaczynski is kaczor. Which means duck. This country had Donald Duck as PM and leader of the opposition for almost ten years. (Sweden and the Donald Duck Party ain't got nothin' on us) I mean, that's the sort of contrived coincidence I'd expect from a shit TL.
 
Even I struggle to believe it's a real name sometimes.

The worst part is that the root of Kaczynski is kaczor. Which means duck. This country had Donald Duck as PM and leader of the opposition for almost ten years. (Sweden and the Donald Duck Party ain't got nothin' on us) I mean, that's the sort of contrived coincidence I'd expect from a shit TL.

Don't forget Mikke Mouse (the guy mentioned in post #6 for those who don't know)!
 
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