520 POSTSCRIPT
the condition of most nations today and it would be idle to suppose that the
countries of the Soviet bloc were somehow uniquely unfortunate in this regard.
That is not the point. Poland's misfortune lay not in the fact of her patronage by
one of the superpowers but rather in the nature of the political system with
which she was obliged to consort. Poland's political destiny was tied to that of
an empire whose Communist ideology was bankrupt even in the eyes of many
of the world's Communists; whose unreformed internal structures reflected not
Marxism or Socialism, but Russian autocracy and Stalinist tyranny; and whose
external policies put their trust, as Kipling wrote, 'in reeking tube and iron
shard'. Such was the constellation of political forces in East Central Europe that
no improvement in Poland could be secure until fundamental improvements
were instituted in the USSR.
For the Polish historian, such a situation was depressingly familiar. It was a
situation which had reigned, with many variations but with very few interrup-
tions, since the Russians first established their baleful protectorate over Poland
in the early eighteenth century. Despite her social, technical, and cultural
progress, Poland's political development remained atrophied. Mutatis mutan-
dis, the uneasy relationship of the ruling Party leadership to its Soviet patrons
was highly reminiscent of the hapless plight of the last king of Poland in his deal-
ings with the Empress Catherine. The constitutional position of the People's
Republic since 1945 was closely akin to that of the Congress Kingdom after
- The tactical stance of the national Communist regime set up in 1956, was
nothing more than a modernized version of the old theme of 'Organic Work'.
So long as Poland's historic subjection to Russian power was perpetuated, it was
only to be expected that the historic mechanisms of self-preservation, and the
inbred habits of dissimulation and defiance, would continually reassert them-
selves.
Poland's uncomfortable position within the Soviet bloc was aggravated by
the strength of her traditional bonds with the West. After four decades of Soviet
supremacy, there were few overt signs that these bonds were weakening.
People's Poland earned a greater proportion of its GNP from trade with
Western countries than any other member of the Warsaw Pact. The Polish
Emigration in Europe and America surpassed that of all of its neighbours. The
flow of Polish visitors to the West, both private and official, outstripped com-
parable figures from anywhere else in the bloc. The percentage of practising
Catholics in the population exceeded that of anywhere else in Europe. In the arts
and the sciences, Poland kept in closer touch with developments in the West
than in the USSR. Soviet manufactures - from Socialist Realism, Russian folk-
music, to Soviet champagne, Soviet motor-cars, or Soviet Friendship - aroused
minimal enthusiasm among Polish consumers, in comparison to equivalent
Western products. In those fields such as music, graphics, cinema, mathematics,
dance, mime, and certain branches of the theatre and literature where the lan-
guage barrier could be surmounted, Polish contributors kept company with
Europe's avant-garde. In spite of many official pressures, most Poles remained