Post by pieter on Dec 6, 2005 14:34:12 GMT -7
forza said:
"I also liked the split of SDPL from the SLD, so that there is a real Social-democratic party"
I agree with you that Polska would benefit from having strong socialdemocrats but SDPL is not going to make it.
Coming out of SLD makes them discredited in eyes of too many. SDPL leaders are in fact considered traitors by SLD and what the leftist electorate though about it we saw in last elections (SLD got about 10%)
Kwasniewski is out of his office in the end of December so we would see what he is up to next (that is unless he really gets himself somewhere into UN or something similar)
It is said to hear that the SDLP is not goin to make it because in my opinion
Polish socialism or Social-democracy is not rooted in the Communist decades
between 1945 and 1989, but in the Polish 19th century, where it was a progressive Patriotic force for Polish liberation and workersright.
The 19th century ocuppied Poland was a rebellious area where and early Democratic movement, Towarzystwo Demokratyczne Polskie (Polish Democratic Society) was active, next to Prince Adam J. Czartoryski who formed the secret Zwiazek Jednosci Narodowej (Association for National Unity). There was an Undergroud state within the Tsarist, Prusian and Austrian territories, because both Polish emigrants and Poles in Poland knew that they had to organise Polish resistance and self rule structures to maintian the Polish language and culture, and so Polishness.
The November Rising (1830 - 1831) and the January Rising (1863-1864)
where important historical events for the Polish liberation and independance
in 1918 and 1989. The social roots of most post-November emigres were in the nobility which subsequently transformed into "intelligentsia". An important part among the non-noble minority was played by people originating from urban proletariat. With time, many of them learned new trades. Polish socialists played an important role in that resistance next to the Polish Democrats, Conservative liberals, Monarchists and religious groups. I mentione the early-socialist Gromady Ludu Polskiego (Assemblies of Polish People) (1835 - 1846). Adherents of socialism formed Gromada Rewolucyjna Londyn Ludu Polskiego (Polish People's London Revolutionary Assembly). Its activity, however, was undermined (1859/1860) by a provocation of the Prussian police, carried out from the region of Poznan.
It was only in Great Britain that an utopian-socialist party was reborn for the third time, this time named Zwiazek Ludu Polskiego (Polish People's Union) (1872 - 1877); earlier the Polish Section of the First Workers' International was active in Britain as well.
The 19th century was the time of industrial development and massive migrations. The Polish provinces under Prussian government were slowly germanized as more and more Germans settled there. Several attempts to regain independence were made by Poles, but all the uprisings against Russia, Prussia and Austria were bloodily suppressed. That was one of the reasons why in the last three decades of the 19th century more than a million people emmigrated from Poland, mostly to North America.
Two Socialist or Social-democratic parties emerged on the scene at the end of the 19th century PPS (1892) and SDKPiL (1893).
Early Polish social democrats were Ignacy Daszynski, Boleslaw Limonovski,
Tadeusz Rachnievski, Jozef Pilsudski and Rosa Luxemburg.
Later the Polish Socialist Party PPS would play an important role after Polish independance in 1918. The newly established central government in the Warsaw of 1918 was headed by the Socialist Jedrzej Moraczewski, and the new head of state ws Pilsudski. Both the PPS and SDKPiL played a role in the Polish politcs of the twenties and thirties, together with the jewish Socialist BUND, before they were forced to merge in the Communist party in 1948.
In my view the Polish Communist party of the Peoples republic had moderate and Patriotic "Socialist" Communists, also called National Communists, who followed a Polish route instaid of a Moscow route.
Some of them were killed or imprisoned by the Sovjets or Polish Stalinists in the thirties and fourtees. But Poland was lucky with the Patriotic Communists, because the East-German (after 1953), Hungarian (after 1956) and Czechoslowakia (after !968 - Alexander Dubcek-) had real Moscow puppet regimes of hardliners.
In my opinion SDPL descents from the traditions of the PPS and SDKPiL
of the Interbellum and Polish progressive workers, intelligentsia and progressive peasants movements of the 19th and 20th century.
See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_Socialist_Party
and
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Democracy_of_the_Kingdom_of_Poland_and_Lithuania
and: www.zionism-israel.com/his/The_Jewish_Bund.htm