FREEDOM REGAINED 513not involved in any sort of Communist revival and was seen in Moscow as a
detestable turncoat. At one point, he apologized, as no Russian leader has ever
done, for the excesses of the previous regime. His success coincided with wide-
spread doubts about the social consequences of reform. Walesa's place in his-
tory was secure. But his fall at the polls in 1995 showed that the new democracy
demanded new qualities.
Three parliamentary elections - October 1991; September 1993, and
September 1997 - were staged amidst a kaleidoscope of party mergers and
regroupings, which mesmerized the electors and which resulted in a series of
short-lived and relatively ineffectual coalition governments. Polish politics
rapidly attracted the degree of popular apathy that was familiar enough in the
West. Yet the procession of shifts and machinations, like those in Italy, covered
the greater fact that the administration was functioning and the country pros-
pering. In 1991-7, seven governments exchanged places in seven years. They
were headed by:
Jan Krzysztof Bielecki (KLD), January 1991-December 1991
Jan Olszewski (ZChN), December 1991-June 1992.
Waldemar Pawlak I (PSL), June-July 1992
Hanna Suchocka (UD), July 1992-October 1993
Waldemar Pawlak II (PSL), October 1993-March 1995
Jozef Oleksy (SLD), March 1995-February 1996
Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz (SLD), February 1996—October 1997
In the game of musical chairs, the unstable coalitions of the first free Sejm gave
way to the relatively stable coalition led by the SLD during the second Sejm. But
the parade of Premiers continued. The lacklustre peasant leader Pawlak replaced
the attractive academic Suchocka, only to be ousted by the old-style Communist
Oleksy. But then Oleksy was shown to be keeping company with former KGB
companions, and resigned in favour of a new-style technocrat, Cimoszewicz.
What really mattered was that no one questioned the march to full democracy
and a market economy and that two Presidents with very different connections
held the pullulating panoply of parties together. Both Presidents, Walesa and
Kwasniewski, were obliged to 'cohabit' with uncongenial governments.
One feature of the 1990s may be observed in the problem of bringing the
centre-right of the political spectrum to order. People who naively imagined that
the victory of SOLIDARITY and of its loyally Catholic leader, Walesa, would
automatically lead to a Republic dominated by 'Christian values' were in for a
shock. It took some time before the Church hierarchy realized that it could not
dictate political developments from the pulpit, as in old Ireland, and that direct
clerical interference could be counter-productive. Both the left wing of the spec-
trum, dominated by the SLD, and the centre dominated by the Unia, were
quicker in getting their act together although the Unia would gradually wilt.
And the right-wing groups lost much time in pointless in-fighting. They only
found a common cause as a result of President KwaSniewski's victories in the