Gazeta Wyborcza Research Articles

Polish-Turkish Relations: A Social-Political Analysis

Polish-Turkish Relations: A Social-Political Analysis

Błoński’s Essay Years Later

The author reflects upon Jan Błoński’s essay “Biedni Polacy patrzą na getto” (Poor Poles look at the ghetto) nearly twenty years of its publication by Tygodnik Powszechny. He points at the innovative character of the depiction of Polish-Jewish issues in the moral context, outside of all the political embroilments. Błoński’s voice is unique, because it acknowledges, in the spirit of the Gospels, that analysis of Polish- -Jewish relations is a fundamental issue for the Polish society, a “homework” that needs to be done. This essay, Głowiński claims, is free from the embroilment in the dualism of the negative and positive myths regarding these relations. The author writes about reactions to this text, the letters to the editor and notes one particular voice, which he reads as an internalised nationalist ideology and the dangerous continuation of the nationalist discourse. Głowiński’s sketch concludes the post scriptum, in which the author refers to another article, published in 2006 by Gazeta Wyborcza, regarding the current historical policy, whose proponents see Błoński’s essay as a negative referencepoint. The author notes that this essay constantly evokes strong emotions, and, as an expression of critical patriotism, still has its ardent opponents.

Grupa Agora – poszukiwanie drogi rozwoju

The transformation of Polish society and economy over the last two decades is also reflected in the process of the press market becoming mature. The segments of this market transform assuming a strong market economy character. New dominating players emerge representing both domestic and – increasingly often – foreign capital. The foundation and expansion of the Agora Group, the publisher of „Gazeta Wyborcza” inspires peculiar common interest (or even fascination). It is usually presented rather one-sidedly as a Polish version of an American „rags-to-riches” story. The organizational and financial aspect of the Group operations is usually neglected or oversimplified. This paper was written in the first quarter of 2004. It tries to show the publisher of „Gazeta Wyborcza” not with respect to its media mission but to its economic aspect. The management board of this business outlines and tries to implement a certain strategy. However, in doing so they apparently fail to avoid considerable errors and threats.

The discourses of war photography

Photography has a long history of (de-)legitimation of wars. In this paper we examine the visual rhetoric of two newspapers, the British Guardian and the Polish Gazeta Wyborcza in their representation of the Palestinian-Israeli war in October 2000. Although both newspapers have access to the same (agency) photographs, their images differ. Both papers show the Palestinians to be the main victims of the war. However, Gazeta Wyborcza depicts the Palestinians predominantly as “terrorists” and deflects any military responsibility from the Israelis by not including any photographs of the Israeli soldiers. The Guardian shows the Palestinians predominantly as romanticised, lone heroes against the Israeli military might, although the Israeli military force is vague and de-personalised. Furthermore, both newspapers differ in their representation of the war in political terms choosing different images of local and international politicians.

The Return of the Forester: On Reading Tymoteusz Karpowicz

THE RETURN OF THE FORESTER On Reading Tymoteusz Karpowicz* * The author would like to thank Karen Underhill and Frank Kujawinski for their help in adapting the revised version of this essay (originally published in Gazeta Wyborcza) for American audiences. even when time orchestrates our arms to sing up and down all along the sleeves in the music-stand set at moderato and in unison with the arms of others -Tymoteusz Karpowicz, Musical Evening Stroll' Czeslaw Milosz had this to say about him: has continued, in his solitude, to add splendor to Polish poetry. Another poet, Boguslaw Kierc, lamented that he was master not present-referring to the nearly thirty-year period during which the poet, playwright, and essayist Tmoteusz Karpowicz (b. 1921) refrained from publishing. His most influential books of verse, Kamienna muzyka (Stony music) and Trudny las (Difficult forest), and his philosophico-poetic treatise, Odwr6cone swiatlo (Reversed light), were published in 1958, 1964, and 1972, respectively. Following the publication of this last volume, he repeatedly rejected requests to contribute individual poems to periodicals, and refused to authorize a new edition of his works. Instead, for the last quarter-century, Karpowicz has been working on a single volume of poetry, Stoje zadrzewne (Rings beyond the tree). Composed of more than three hundred poems, spread over three hundred pages, the volume became a literary sensation immediately after its appearance in Poland earlier this year and is currently a key candidate for the Nike Prize 2000, the most prestigious literary award in Poland. But who is Karpowicz? What kind of wordsmith-so convinced of the power of silence, and completely indifferent to the possibility of losing several generations of readers-makes himself wait decades before publishing a new volume? During the years of communist rule in Poland, Karpowicz co-edited the literary journals Poezja and Odra, and used his influence to promote new writers-including Rafal Wojaczek and the New Wave poets of the rebellious 1968 generation, such as Stanislaw Baranczak and Adam Zagajewski. In 1973, as if choking on the flood of statesponsored political kitsch, Karpowicz elected not to return from a lecturing post in West Berlin. Stripped of his editorial positions in Poland, he made his way, via Paris and Iowa City, to the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he began teaching as a professor of Polish literature in 1974. As a writer, he withdrew into total privacy, insulating himself from the banality of American democracy and the menace of PolishAmerican anti-intellectualism. It was from this vantage point of solitude that the author began to peer back, through his own binoculars, into the forest of his earlier poetry-and to evaluate the degree to which his poetic forest had aged or grown diseased. Each of the earlier poems that did not meet his standard of innovation was to be pruned. The results of this work, supplemented by his most recent poems, have finally been published as Rings Beyond the Tree. Karpowicz is, for some, a geologist of literature who knows its complex historical strata and is therefore able to ruthlessly distinguish between what is new in contemporary poetry and what only pretends to be. And it is precisely the truly new that Karpowicz- an admirer of Rimbaud, Rilke, and Lesmian2-demands of himself as a poet. He is a nightmare for critics who would try to bushwhack their way into his Difficult Forest or Rings with the axe of structuralist or linguistic analysis. Possibly the most difficult of all Polish writers, in the words of the poet Krzysztof Karasek, Karpowicz remains the first forester of the Polish avant-garde. Much has been written about Poland's so-called linguistic school of poetry and its key representatives, among them Karpowicz and Miron Bialoszewski. From the 1960s on, Karpowicz in particular was given the (unfairly reductive) label of poet: he was understood as a specialist in the preservation of games of language and of the semantic tensions produced between words. …

A Communist Comeback? The Dissolution of Solidarity

A Communist Comeback?The Dissolution of Solidarity Aleksander Smolar (bio) The Polish parliamentary elections of 19 September 1993 had two winners: the party known as the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (or SdRP, which led an electoral coalition called the Alliance of the Democratic Left, or SLD), and the Polish Peasants' Party (PSL). Although each had just finished comprehensively refurbishing its facade, the old colors still peeked forth from beneath the fresh paint. In the former case, they were those of the old communist party, formally known as the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP); in the latter, they belonged to the United Peasants' Party, a longtime satellite of the PUWP. The parties most directly descended from Solidarity suffered a bitter setback. The trade union itself lost all its seats in the national legislature. The Liberal Democratic Congress (KLD), which has played an important role in the making of economic policy over the last few years, met with the same fate. The post-Solidarity Right, broken up into a congeries of quarreling factions, was swept out of office: conservative and "national" parties (the ones most closely linked to the Catholic Church) all went down the tubes. The Democratic Union (UD)—the party of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, Bronistaw Geremek, Jacek Kuroñ, Prime Minister Hanna Suchocka, and most of the former dissidents—was relegated to a distant third place behind the two front-runners. Only one party descended from Solidarity scored a clear success: the Union of Labor, led by Ryszard Bugaj, Karol Modzelewski, and Zbigniew Bujak. But this resolutely leftist group had deliberately broken with the heritage [End Page 70] of Solidarity, and, letting bygones be bygones, so to speak, had opened its ranks to former communists. Not counting the German minority, which has a handful of guaranteed seats, the only other two parties to exceed the threshold (5 percent of the total nationwide vote for parties and 8 percent for coalitions) required to win seats in the Sejm, the lower house of Poland's bicameral parliament, were the rightist-populist Confederation for an Independent Poland (KPN), and the Non-Party Bloc in Support of Reforms (BBWR), endorsed by President Lech Watłęsa. (See Table 1 on the following page for fuller results of the 1993 elections.) The euphoria of 1989 was short-lived. Everybody quickly realized that creating basic democratic structures, building a modern economy, and reweaving the social fabric of Eastern and Central Europe would not be easy. Alarming forecasts filled the air. From whence was danger expected to come? Two answers dominated Polish politics, one typically given by the Right, and the other by the Left. In the eyes of the Right, the threat was embodied by the nomenklatura of the former PUWP. Despite the recent changes, it had retained its grip on the economy and the provincial power structures. The secret-police files it controlled would allow it to blackmail whomever it pleased, and its ties abroad—especially with Moscow—would be maintained. Russia might be in a bad way at the moment, to be sure, but one day it might well recover its capacity to threaten the independence of Poland. The labor-union weekly Tygodnik solidarność, a large group of Solidarity activists, plus politicians like Jaroslaw and Lech Kaczyński and Jan Olszewski were among those who stated this view most clearly. To the Left, on the other hand, democracy in Poland seemed to be menaced above all by an explosive mixture of nationalism wedded to populism, authoritarianism, clericalism, and nostalgia for the precommunist past. This vision was put forth most powerfully in the pages of the influential daily paper Gazeta wyborcza, whose editor-in-chief Adam Michnik has long guided the way in which certain sectors of public opinion in both Poland and the West perceive the problems of the postcommunist world. These competing evaluations of the problems and hazards facing Poland led to the policies that in turn brought about the current situation. The Right's insistence on seeing all problems as flowing unfailingly from a mythical plot hatched by the old nomenklatura has not helped rightists to understand the process by which a large part of the population has turned away from their brand...

Teresa Bogucka: The politicians sing along

Irena Maryniak meets the winner of the 1992 Polish PEN Club award for journalism. She writes for the Warsaw-based daily Gazeta Wyborcza and has a particular interest in social psychology, hence her preoccupation with social changes in Poland since the heady days of Solidarity in the early 1980s.

History, Reality, and Central Europe's Security

HISTORY, REALITY, AND_______ CENTRAL EUROPE'S SECURITY Petr Lunak Pcoland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia have, throughout their histories, been mere "grains of dust" between two great millstones: Russia and Germany. These countries have been affected by both friction and harmony between their powerful neighbors, who repeatedly subjugated them by military means. Poland was first carved up by Russia, Prussia, and Austria in the 1790s; in 1939 it was divided between Germany and the Soviet Union; it then fell under Soviet domination. What is today Czechoslovakia was first divided between German-dominated Austria and Magyar-dominated Hungary; it was occupied by Germany during the Second World War and then became a satellite of the Soviet Union. For Hungary the twentieth century began in 1919 at Versailles, when it was deprived ofits empire. Budapest's World War II alliance with Hitler was motivated by the desire to renew its empire; it resulted first in German and then Soviet occupation, confirmed by the invasion of 1956. How does history affect the actions ofthe Central Europeans? Some see it as a key of interpretation for the present and the future. Poland, Hungary , and Czechoslovakia, they claim, should look into the past for a way to avoid a repetition of decades of traumatic non-history under alien domination . However, others claim that history can deceive rather than guide. They argue that the historical experience of the region is negative, a curse that should be forgotten, for it cannot explain and change current realities. Petr Lunak is a recent graduate of SAIS (M.A., 1992). 129 130 SAISREVIEW This article traces the efforts ofHungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia to find their foreign policy identities in an atmosphere in which reliance on history and its refusal awkwardly coexist. A Czechoslovak-Polish Confederation? The following historical parallel can be seductive: After the First World War Central European nations attained independence because Germany and Austria-Hungary had been defeated, and the Russians were distracted by their revolution. However, an attempt to stabilize the region through an alliance system with the French failed, and World War II put an end to the independence ofPoland and Czechoslovakia. In 1941 Czechoslovak President Benes and Polish Prime Minister Sikorski began negotiations on a possible postwar confederation of Czechoslovakia and Poland in order to prevent history from repeating itself. The talks were soon interrupted, however, by Stalin. The idea of a Czechoslovak-Polish confederation was revived by Andrzej Kozminski in late December 1989. Kozminski argued that the region's security would be augmented by such a move, and that the opportunity was not to be missed, as was done in 1943.1 This proposal was repeated by Zbigniew Brzezinski in January 1990 and gained considerable attention, particularly in the Polish parliament. Senator Jerzy Rusecki said: "I think that the concept is interesting and right. I back it also because the Czechs and Slovaks are closest to us among Slavic nations, they are our kinsmen."2 The idea of a Czechoslovak-Polish confederation had the full support of Polish Foreign Minister Skubiszewski,3 but Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki did not express any particular enthusiasm for the plan. Prague's reaction was not as favorable Warsaw's. Before his visit to Poland, Foreign Minister Jiri Dienstbier said: This is a proposal brought in by an American political scientist of Polish origin. I myself do not think, and hardly any Poles do, that we can resolve our situation by creating some kind of Polish-Czechoslovak confederation. Our problems are absolutely different.4 1.Gazeta Wyborcza, December 28, 1989, p. 3. 2.Some deputies and senators went even further. Senator Stanislaw Hoffmann proposed that "a union ofcountries ofBulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Hungary should counterbalance other economic and political forces in Europe." FBIS-EEU, January 11, 1990, p. 58. 3.See the Mazowiecki's interview in Zycie Warszawy, January 20, 1990, p. 2. 4.Lidova demokracie, January 8, 1990, p. 3. HISTORY, REALITY AND CENTRAL EUROPE'S SECURITY 131 After Prague's cold reaction, Polish attitudes toward the proposal began to change. Solidarity leader Lech Walesa called it "a proposal from another era."5 Bronislaw Geremek, who was personally in favor of the plan, acknowledged that the differences between Czechoslovakia and...

Problems of Postcommunism: From Solidarity to Fragmentation

Problems of PostcommunismFrom Solidarity to Fragmentation Krzysztof Jasiewicz (bio) "The complex political situation in Poland stems from a misguided and ill-designed electoral law." This diagnosis of Poland's political problems came from Zbigniew Brzezinski a few days before the parliamentary elections of 27 October 1991. According to Gazeta wyborcza, Brzezinski told President Lech Walesa that Poland's legislators had made a fundamental error by adopting a system based on proportional representation (PR) for elections to the Sejm (the lower house of Parliament). "This electoral law will disperse the will of the people and will not provide a basis for the emergence of a democratic majority [in the Sejm]," he added.1 Subsequent events seemed to reveal the accuracy of Brzezinski's warnings, as Polish voters elected candidates from some 30 different political parties or groupings to the Sejm; the strongest party controls a mere 62 out of the 460 total seats, and no majority coalition of fewer than five parties is possible. Given these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that it took two months to form a weak, three-party minority government. The crowning irony was that this happened just two years after Solidarity-seemingly a unified, if not homogeneous, political movement-swept the communists virtually out of power in the historic elections of June 1989. Of course, a bad electoral law alone could never explain such a striking turn of events, as Brzezinski well knew. As early as 1990, a deep split had begun to appear in Solidarity, which had never been perfectly united in the first place. From its sudden emergence in the summer of 1980, Solidarity was a multidimensional phenomenon: a trade [End Page 55] union struggling to protect the interests of all employees (not merely manual workers); a social movement striving to vindicate civil and human rights; and a political movement seeking democracy and national independence. As such, Solidarity attracted individuals of an enormously wide range of social, economic, and political persuasions. They had almost nothing in common except their belief that Poland's government should be made accountable to the Polish people and a commitment to pursuing this goal by nonviolent means only. As early as the fall of 1981, even this minimal consensus seemed as if it might fade away. Solidarity's first congress yielded no agreement on economic issues, while "fundamentalists" quarreled with "pragmatists" and the public began to show the first signs of disillusionment. Diverse political groupings were starting to develop their own distinct identities and agendas under Solidarity's protective umbrella when the regime struck back with its declaration of martial law on 13 December 1981. Paradoxically, martial law saved Solidarity. Most Poles, too hobbled by passivity or conformism to undertake clandestine activities, looked to Solidarity throughout the 1980s as the symbol of all those hopes that the regime was trying to crush. Meanwhile, the Solidarity underground managed to achieve a remarkable unity, sustained by the constant threat of being wiped away by the regime, by memories of the 1980-81 glory days, and by the leadership of Lech Walesa. Thus Solidarity was able to enter the Roundtable talks of 1989 as a cohesive group with nothing to lose and everything to win. At the Roundtable it secured the regime's agreement to a "contract" calling for semi-free parliamentary elections in June 1989 in which Solidarity candidates could run for 35 percent of the seats in the Sejm and all 100 seats in the newly reestablished Senate. Solidarity won all but one of the seats it contested. It ran an official "all-Solidarity team," with a small committee of Walesa's associates handpicking a candidate or slate of candidates for each contested constituency. This strategy alienated some prominent Solidarity leaders, who saw it as the sort of undemocratic maneuver best left to the communists. Some dissenters even decided to run against official Solidarity candidates, but none were successful. Although people voted in droves for the Solidarity candidates, it is important to remember that these were mainly protest votes, ballots cast less for Solidarity than against communist rule. Moreover, neither in this election nor in any subsequent election did Solidarity gain the support of a majority of the Polish...

They're killing human thoughts like animals

Journalist Anna Bikont recently conducted a series of interviews with Polish censors, who are still very much in existence. Subsequently, on 8 January 1990, she published in the Warsaw-based independent daily Gazeta Wyborcza excerpts from those interviews — without adding one single word of commentary. The resulting monologues of twenty worried and flabbergasted men and women read like a script for the theatre of the absurd. They were translated from the Polish by Jacek Laskowski

Obraz ubóstwa w dyskursie prasowym

The article shows discourse about poverty in Gazeta Wyborcza in 2018. The author stresss out two ways of presenting that issue by the symbolic elites in that famous Polish newspaper. First of them involves structural reasons contected with poverty and emphasies solidarity with poor people. Second approach is dominated by argumentation with individual causes of being poor, contains neoliberal ideology and blaiming poor people for their status. The author uses Critical Discourse Analisys to explain that differences. Antother aim of this paper was to show what topics brings poverty issues in “Gazeta Wyborcza”, according to that reasarch writing about poverty in 2018 was contected with global problems such as war (Yemen, Ukraine), imigration crissis (Germany, USA, Mexico, Salvador), global warming and econimic crissis. Articles about poverty in Poland concentrated on social programs (Family 500 plus), homeless people, old age people. Also article shows summary of Polish papers contains discourse analisys about poverty.

Obraz ubóstwa w dyskursie prasowym

The article shows discourse about poverty in Gazeta Wyborcza in 2018. The author stresss out two ways of presenting that issue by the symbolic elites in that famous Polish newspaper. First of them involves structural reasons contected with poverty and emphasies solidarity with poor people. Second approach is dominated by argumentation with individual causes of being poor, contains neoliberal ideology and blaiming poor people for their status. The author uses Critical Discourse Analisys to explain that differences. Antother aim of this paper was to show what topics brings poverty issues in “Gazeta Wyborcza”, according to that reasarch writing about poverty in 2018 was contected with global problems such as war (Yemen, Ukraine), imigration crissis (Germany, USA, Mexico, Salvador), global warming and econimic crissis. Articles about poverty in Poland concentrated on social programs (Family 500 plus), homeless people, old age people. Also article shows summary of Polish papers contains discourse analisys about poverty.