Paper Doves in Flight: Poland & The World After Communism
- Thread starter Heat
- Start date
Leszek Miller
The local elections update will take a bit longer than planned, so here's something to tide you guys over.
-----
Leszek Miller was born in 1949 to a working-class family in Żyrardów, Skierniewice Voivodeship, Poland. Despite his religious upbringing, upon graduating from a vocational school he joined the Socialist Youth Union (the youth wing of the Polish United Workers' Party). After completing his military service in the Polish Navy, he joined the Polish United Workers' Party itself in 1969 and became the secretary of the Party committee at his workplace in 1973. He was recognised as a promising young talent and, at the recommendation of the Party, he studied political science in Warsaw and moved up the ranks quickly, becoming First Secretary of the Skierniewice branch of the Party in 1986, secretary of the Party's Central Committee and finally a member of the Politburo in 1988. Around this time, Miller attracted publicity by inviting a group of young opposition activists to a public meeting held in the Central Committee cafeteria. He subsequently took part in the Round Table talks as the co-leader of the subgroup on youth affairs. After the talks resulted in partially free elections in June 1989, he ran for a Senate seat in his native Skierniewice, but was unexpectedly defeated in the Solidarity sweep of the Senate (99 out of the 100 seats in the Senate went to Solidarity candidates, with the remaining one going to maverick Communist-backed entrepreneur Henryk Stokłosa). Nevertheless, he had established himself as a leading light of the United Workers' Party.
By 1990, it was obvious to all that the United Workers' Party had outstayed its welcome. At the 11th Congress in January 1990, the decision was made to dissolve the Party and transfer its assets to a new party, the Social Democratic Party of the Republic of Poland. The young, liberal former minister Aleksander Kwaśniewski became the Social Democrats' first leader, and Miller, as a representative of the Social Democrats' more 'conservative', economically left-wing faction, became their General Secretary. He continued to be a leading figure of the conservative wing, frequently speaking out against liberal reforms even over the desires of the Social Democratic leadership. In his role as General Secretary, Miller was embroiled in the controversy over the 'Moscow loan', a loan of 1.2 million dollars from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the Social Democrats, and after the 1991 election where he was elected as MP for Łódź Voivodeship, the party's 1990 presidential candidate, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz called on him to resign as an MP over the affair. Miller refused to do so, which lead Cimoszewicz to leave the Social Democrats and join the Labour Party formed by economist Ryszard Bugaj and several other figures of the post-Solidarity left. The conflict weakened the Social Democrats and has been cited as a factor in their narrow loss in the 1994 election, but it also weakened Miller's own position within the party - in 1993 he was forced to step down as General Secretary, becoming one of three deputy leaders alongside future Prime Minister Józef Oleksy and anti-clerical firebrand Izabella Sierakowska as a consolation.
Miller would nevertheless remain one of the Social Democrats' most popular politicians, and was mentioned as a possible leadership contender when Kwaśniewski resigned after being elected President. However, Oleksy, the frontrunner for the leadership, chose to prevent a potentially divisive contest by promising Miller a high-ranking position when the Democratic Left Alliance (the coalition around the Social Democrats) formed government. Miller agreed, and allowed Oleksy to be elected unopposed.
When the Democratic Left won the 1997 election, Miller was discussed as a potential future Minister of Internal Affairs or Minister of National Defence. However, he unexpectedly declined (or was not offered) a cabinet position, instead being elected Marshal (Speaker) of the Sejm to succeed the outgoing centre-left Freedom Union Marshal Olga Krzyżanowska, in a move that some believed was an attempt to soften his image, distance himself from any potential future unpopular policies and thus position himself for a higher office in the future.
-----
Leszek Miller was born in 1949 to a working-class family in Żyrardów, Skierniewice Voivodeship, Poland. Despite his religious upbringing, upon graduating from a vocational school he joined the Socialist Youth Union (the youth wing of the Polish United Workers' Party). After completing his military service in the Polish Navy, he joined the Polish United Workers' Party itself in 1969 and became the secretary of the Party committee at his workplace in 1973. He was recognised as a promising young talent and, at the recommendation of the Party, he studied political science in Warsaw and moved up the ranks quickly, becoming First Secretary of the Skierniewice branch of the Party in 1986, secretary of the Party's Central Committee and finally a member of the Politburo in 1988. Around this time, Miller attracted publicity by inviting a group of young opposition activists to a public meeting held in the Central Committee cafeteria. He subsequently took part in the Round Table talks as the co-leader of the subgroup on youth affairs. After the talks resulted in partially free elections in June 1989, he ran for a Senate seat in his native Skierniewice, but was unexpectedly defeated in the Solidarity sweep of the Senate (99 out of the 100 seats in the Senate went to Solidarity candidates, with the remaining one going to maverick Communist-backed entrepreneur Henryk Stokłosa). Nevertheless, he had established himself as a leading light of the United Workers' Party.
By 1990, it was obvious to all that the United Workers' Party had outstayed its welcome. At the 11th Congress in January 1990, the decision was made to dissolve the Party and transfer its assets to a new party, the Social Democratic Party of the Republic of Poland. The young, liberal former minister Aleksander Kwaśniewski became the Social Democrats' first leader, and Miller, as a representative of the Social Democrats' more 'conservative', economically left-wing faction, became their General Secretary. He continued to be a leading figure of the conservative wing, frequently speaking out against liberal reforms even over the desires of the Social Democratic leadership. In his role as General Secretary, Miller was embroiled in the controversy over the 'Moscow loan', a loan of 1.2 million dollars from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the Social Democrats, and after the 1991 election where he was elected as MP for Łódź Voivodeship, the party's 1990 presidential candidate, Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz called on him to resign as an MP over the affair. Miller refused to do so, which lead Cimoszewicz to leave the Social Democrats and join the Labour Party formed by economist Ryszard Bugaj and several other figures of the post-Solidarity left. The conflict weakened the Social Democrats and has been cited as a factor in their narrow loss in the 1994 election, but it also weakened Miller's own position within the party - in 1993 he was forced to step down as General Secretary, becoming one of three deputy leaders alongside future Prime Minister Józef Oleksy and anti-clerical firebrand Izabella Sierakowska as a consolation.
Miller would nevertheless remain one of the Social Democrats' most popular politicians, and was mentioned as a possible leadership contender when Kwaśniewski resigned after being elected President. However, Oleksy, the frontrunner for the leadership, chose to prevent a potentially divisive contest by promising Miller a high-ranking position when the Democratic Left Alliance (the coalition around the Social Democrats) formed government. Miller agreed, and allowed Oleksy to be elected unopposed.
When the Democratic Left won the 1997 election, Miller was discussed as a potential future Minister of Internal Affairs or Minister of National Defence. However, he unexpectedly declined (or was not offered) a cabinet position, instead being elected Marshal (Speaker) of the Sejm to succeed the outgoing centre-left Freedom Union Marshal Olga Krzyżanowska, in a move that some believed was an attempt to soften his image, distance himself from any potential future unpopular policies and thus position himself for a higher office in the future.
Last edited:
Story of my life.
Good update. Also, is the incumbent in the box meant to signify as of "now" (2017), or as of 1997?
Now when Yugoslavia?
It's a wee bit off-putting but I could hardly do it from a present-day POV and spoil the rather interesting turn Miller's career will take in the next few years, eh.
I tend not to use this either, but maybe spoiler it by putting black bars over it?
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
Nah, that would look ugly and take the reader out of the narrative. I think it's easier just to imagine that Wikipedia existed 20 years earlier, tbh. Or that a suspiciously similar graphic design format came to be used by an annual paper encyclopedia shut up I'm not doing page breaks.
Leszek looks so young in this picture. I had no idea he was awarded Order of the Smile and so early in his career.
I don't mind censoring the info-boxes.
I don't mind censoring the info-boxes.
Warsaw and Gdańsk mayoral elections, 1998
Right, part 1 of the local elections...
-----
One of the Oleksy government's priorities after 1997 was a comprehensive reform of local government. This reform involved two main thrusts: first of all, voivodeship assemblies, known as sejmiki would no longer be elected by municipal councils, but directly by the people. Second of all, mayors, which had hitherto been elected by city councils, would henceforth be directly elected in a two-round system. While the government defended this reform by claiming that it would improve the democratic accountability of local government, the opposition criticised the cost of maintaining 49 sejmiki and insisted on merging and consolidating the voivodeships. something the Democratic Left agreed with in principle but was unwilling to do for fear of an electoral backlash, and claimed that the reform was a purely partisan one which was intended to allow the Democratic Left to amass even more power on all levels of government. Despite these criticisms, the reform was passed and went into effect just in time for the 1998 local elections.
-----
Poland's capital city, Warsaw, had never been natural territory for the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), which tended to favour parties connected to the liberal and left-wing factions of Solidarity, and the makeup of the city council reflected this, as the Democratic Left came third in the 1994 council elections, behind the Freedom Union (UW) and the United Right, a hastily cobbled together alliance of centre-right and right-wing parties. While the Freedom Union and the United Right were expected to work together due to their shared Solidarity heritage, it soon turned out that this was harder than it seemed, partly due to genuine policy disagreements but also due to the personalities involved. It therefore took three months for the council to elect a mayor. Mieczysław Bareja, a judge and head of the Warsaw Democratic Party (SD), was the compromise candidate, elected by an unlikely coalition of the United Right and the Democratic Left.
Rather unsurprisingly, this coalition did not last after the mayor was elected, and most of Bareja's time was spent trying to form ad hoc coalitions to get budgets through each year. Despite this deeply inadequate setup, he managed to serve a full term even as the popularity of the council tanked due to its perceived paralysis.
As 1998 approached, the Democratic Left was very much eager to win the Warsaw mayoralty as a show of force, and their choice was an unorthodox candidate - Warsaw MP, Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and activist Bogumił Borowski. Borowski could not be linked to the chaos of the council, but he was also able to distance himself somewhat from the post-communist image of the Democratic Left, as he was not a member of the Social Democrats, but rather one of the leaders of the small Polish Green Party (PPZ), which joined the Democratic Left Alliance in 1993 and won 2 MPs in 1994 and 4 in 1997 by running on its lists.
Borowski was initially not expected to make it into the second round but managed to pull off an upset by taking 26% of the vote to 32% for Bareja, who was running as the United Right's candidate, mainly because the various parties in the coalition couldn't seem to agree on anyone else (both candidates having taken many otherwise loyal Freedom Union voters). The extremely unscientific polls taken by the right-leaning Life of Warsaw newspaper predicted a Bareja victory, but Borowski again pulled off an upset, beating Bareja by 3 percentage points. At the same time, the Democratic Left made gains on the council, forming a coalition with the Freedom Union. It remained to be seen whether or not Borowski could put any of his Green ideas into action.
If Warsaw was tricky territory for the Democratic Left, Gdańsk was an honest-to-god desert for them. As the birthplace of Solidarity, Gdańsk tended to reject the post-communists. However, as the administration of incumbent Centre Alliance (PC)-aligned mayor Franciszek Jamroż was bogged down in corruption scandals related to alleged bribes taken by Jamroż and his deputy in exchange for contracts to provide municipal services, the Democratic Left saw an opening. It ran well-known MP and leader of the Gdańsk Social Democrats, Franciszek Potulski. Potulski sought to present himself as someone who could clean up the city after the Jamroż scandals.
Initially, it was thought that Potulski would win the first round and face Jamroż in the run-off, where he would win easily against the scandal-ridden incumbent. However, his hopes of an easy victory were dashed by the appearance of an unexpected challenger - Freedom Union Senator Donald Tusk.
Donald Tusk, as the leader of the Liberal Democratic Congress which subsequently merged into the Freedom Union, was quite popular in Gdańsk, but the strength of the Freedom Union bench in Gdańsk forced him to run for the Senate rather than the more important Sejm. However, as Tusk felt that his career had stalled, he chose to retire from the Senate and run for mayor of Gdańsk instead.
With a rather vague platform emphasising his youth, energy and national connections, Tusk won the first round convincingly, taking 39% to Potulski's 25% while Jamroż was left with just 9%, coming fourth behind a Real Politics Union candidate. While his campaign seemed to get rather complacent in the last two weeks of the campaign and Potulski made skillful use of the Liberal Democrats' alleged corruption issues in the 1990-93 years, preventing a bone-crushing landslide, Tusk still carried the run-off by almost eighteen points.
-----
One of the Oleksy government's priorities after 1997 was a comprehensive reform of local government. This reform involved two main thrusts: first of all, voivodeship assemblies, known as sejmiki would no longer be elected by municipal councils, but directly by the people. Second of all, mayors, which had hitherto been elected by city councils, would henceforth be directly elected in a two-round system. While the government defended this reform by claiming that it would improve the democratic accountability of local government, the opposition criticised the cost of maintaining 49 sejmiki and insisted on merging and consolidating the voivodeships. something the Democratic Left agreed with in principle but was unwilling to do for fear of an electoral backlash, and claimed that the reform was a purely partisan one which was intended to allow the Democratic Left to amass even more power on all levels of government. Despite these criticisms, the reform was passed and went into effect just in time for the 1998 local elections.
-----
Poland's capital city, Warsaw, had never been natural territory for the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), which tended to favour parties connected to the liberal and left-wing factions of Solidarity, and the makeup of the city council reflected this, as the Democratic Left came third in the 1994 council elections, behind the Freedom Union (UW) and the United Right, a hastily cobbled together alliance of centre-right and right-wing parties. While the Freedom Union and the United Right were expected to work together due to their shared Solidarity heritage, it soon turned out that this was harder than it seemed, partly due to genuine policy disagreements but also due to the personalities involved. It therefore took three months for the council to elect a mayor. Mieczysław Bareja, a judge and head of the Warsaw Democratic Party (SD), was the compromise candidate, elected by an unlikely coalition of the United Right and the Democratic Left.
Rather unsurprisingly, this coalition did not last after the mayor was elected, and most of Bareja's time was spent trying to form ad hoc coalitions to get budgets through each year. Despite this deeply inadequate setup, he managed to serve a full term even as the popularity of the council tanked due to its perceived paralysis.
As 1998 approached, the Democratic Left was very much eager to win the Warsaw mayoralty as a show of force, and their choice was an unorthodox candidate - Warsaw MP, Deputy Minister of Environmental Protection and activist Bogumił Borowski. Borowski could not be linked to the chaos of the council, but he was also able to distance himself somewhat from the post-communist image of the Democratic Left, as he was not a member of the Social Democrats, but rather one of the leaders of the small Polish Green Party (PPZ), which joined the Democratic Left Alliance in 1993 and won 2 MPs in 1994 and 4 in 1997 by running on its lists.
Borowski was initially not expected to make it into the second round but managed to pull off an upset by taking 26% of the vote to 32% for Bareja, who was running as the United Right's candidate, mainly because the various parties in the coalition couldn't seem to agree on anyone else (both candidates having taken many otherwise loyal Freedom Union voters). The extremely unscientific polls taken by the right-leaning Life of Warsaw newspaper predicted a Bareja victory, but Borowski again pulled off an upset, beating Bareja by 3 percentage points. At the same time, the Democratic Left made gains on the council, forming a coalition with the Freedom Union. It remained to be seen whether or not Borowski could put any of his Green ideas into action.
If Warsaw was tricky territory for the Democratic Left, Gdańsk was an honest-to-god desert for them. As the birthplace of Solidarity, Gdańsk tended to reject the post-communists. However, as the administration of incumbent Centre Alliance (PC)-aligned mayor Franciszek Jamroż was bogged down in corruption scandals related to alleged bribes taken by Jamroż and his deputy in exchange for contracts to provide municipal services, the Democratic Left saw an opening. It ran well-known MP and leader of the Gdańsk Social Democrats, Franciszek Potulski. Potulski sought to present himself as someone who could clean up the city after the Jamroż scandals.
Initially, it was thought that Potulski would win the first round and face Jamroż in the run-off, where he would win easily against the scandal-ridden incumbent. However, his hopes of an easy victory were dashed by the appearance of an unexpected challenger - Freedom Union Senator Donald Tusk.
Donald Tusk, as the leader of the Liberal Democratic Congress which subsequently merged into the Freedom Union, was quite popular in Gdańsk, but the strength of the Freedom Union bench in Gdańsk forced him to run for the Senate rather than the more important Sejm. However, as Tusk felt that his career had stalled, he chose to retire from the Senate and run for mayor of Gdańsk instead.
With a rather vague platform emphasising his youth, energy and national connections, Tusk won the first round convincingly, taking 39% to Potulski's 25% while Jamroż was left with just 9%, coming fourth behind a Real Politics Union candidate. While his campaign seemed to get rather complacent in the last two weeks of the campaign and Potulski made skillful use of the Liberal Democrats' alleged corruption issues in the 1990-93 years, preventing a bone-crushing landslide, Tusk still carried the run-off by almost eighteen points.
Last edited:
One of my lasting impressions of Gdansk after this is going to be that everyone there is named Franciszek.
