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mid-90s. In 1997 the Roman Catholic Church was still opposing the constitu-
tional proposals for being too secular; and it never got its way over demands for
a referendum on abortion. But in the parliamentary elections of that year, a new
centre-right umbrella organization, the Solidarity Electoral Action (AWS),
finally managed to top the polls. The resultant government of Professor Jerzy
Buzek, a 'technocrat' and a Protestant with no Party past, was marked by com-
mon sense and by a lack of ideological zeal. The combination of President
Kwasniewski and Premier Buzek saw out the millennium.
The ineptitude of the Polish Church in exploiting the new conditions caused
considerable comment. The old, authoritarian stance was not significantly
modified, and the mutual confidence of clergy and laity was undoubtedly weak-
ened. Young people, in particular, were no longer prepared to follow clerical
guidance unthinkingly. The continuing financial demands on parishioners were
ill-judged in the years of crisis, whilst the eagerness of the hierarchy to regain
ecclesiastical property set an unedifying example. As one commentator put it,
the Church seemed to be lacking, in 'the spirit of St Francis'. Democracy encour-
aged an inrush of pluralism in religion as well as in politics, and too much atten-
tion was paid to a rash of insignificant sects and unfamiliar denominations. The
'Moonies' were not going to succeed where the Stalinists had failed. Even so, the
Polish Church showed little interest in Christian ecumenism. Catholic Jewish
dialogue, produced meagre results. And a series of cross purposes marred the
exchanges of conservative and liberal wings of Catholic opinion. The rapid rise
in the 1990s of Radio Maryja, an unofficial, countrywide broadcasting system,
which served up an unsavoury mix of traditional devotions and xenophobic
resentful politics, proved an unsettling influence. Two visits of an idolized
but visibly infirm Pope, to the Eucharistic Congress in Wroclaw in 1997 and to
several Polish cities in June 1999, seemed to exude the aura of a passing era.
In the 1990s, Polish literature threw off the restraints of the preceding
decades. The state censorship was abolished. As had been said in 1918, one
could at last write about the dawn without making a political statement. The
result was not so much an explosion of genius as an explosion of diversity.
Previously neglected topics sprang up on all sides. Some of these were historical,
notably the Soviet Gulag, the Jewish Holocaust, and Polish life abroad - none
of which could be properly discussed under the Communists. Others, such as
gender issues or regional identity, were politically neutral. With writers like
Olga Tokarczuk, Polish feminism made its debut. With Pawel Huelle and Stefan
Chwin, a distinct Gdansk School emerged, and with a distinct Jewish compon-
ent. Strong interest was aroused in the life and history of the German minority
in Silesia. Underground groups came out into the open. The effect on one of
them, bruLion, was to move from the extreme anarchist Left to the extreme,
nationalistic Right.
One book whose time had come was God's Playground A History of Poland,
which at the end of the decade would be voted one of the 'Books of the
Millennium'. This was an anti-nationalist and non-ideological survey, with a