THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC 475ture of anticipation and apprehension. No Pole, Catholic or Communist, could
fail to take pride in the fact that one of their countrymen had mounted the
throne of St Peter. After decades of national humiliation, this sense of pride was
disarming beyond all belief. It prevented even the most hard-nosed ideologist
from refusing to admit the most subversive guest in the Party's history. At the
same time, the Party leadership must necessarily have worried lest the occasion
be used by hostile elements to provoke disorder and thereby to manoeuvre the
regime into a violent response.
In the event, the Pope's visit turned into one of the most remarkable manifes-
tations of popular exultation ever recorded. Millions of Poles, irrespective of
age or conviction, poured onto the streets of Warsaw and Cracow to greet their
true spiritual leader with unrestrained fervour. People who have never lived
under totalitarian captivity cannot begin to comprehend why such intense emo-
tions were released. But for a nation which had never watched an uncensored
television programme, which had never been allowed to participate in public in
a truly spontaneous demonstration of their feelings, which had seen every
expression of genuine opinion curbed or manipulated, the moment of blinding
realization had arrived. The Pope himself was discretion incarnate. He uttered
no single word of overt criticism or reproach. He spoke only of love, forgive-
ness, faith, and brotherhood. But his very presence was electrifying. In a stroke,
it taught his compatriots the difference between genuine authority, which they
could feel in their hearts, and the false claims of the ruling Party which had been
imposed from outside. Three things happened. First, for the duration of the
visit, over thirty million men, women and children watched in amazement as the
papal masses and progresses were beamed into their homes. Secondly, Church-
appointed stewards took control of the massive crowds, thereby sidelining
the police and the military whose role in the maintenance of law and order was
rendered superfluous. Thirdly, Edward Gierek and his comrades were made to
look like a gaggle of dwarves overnight. In the sudden inrush of reality, they
were all cut down to size. They had ceased to be the all-powerful Polish
Politburo. They were the pretentious puppets of a foreign power, trying to put
on as good a face as possible. And everyone knew it.
After the Pope had left, every effort was made by the regime to restore the sta-
tus quo ante. The huge cross, which had stood for a week in Warsaw's Victory
Square, was dismantled. The pavilions, which had hosted the papal masses,
were removed. Once again, the TV screens were religion-free. Presenters pre-
tended that all was back to normal, that is, to the abnormal. In reality, under the
surface, the climate of the country had changed radically. Nothing would ever
be the same again.Despite the Polish People's Republic being the object of much comment and
study, especially from political scientists, it largely escaped the incisive analysis
and principled condemnation which it deserved. Western observers who based
their observations on western models, proved peculiarly inept when asked to