I would like to congratulate the National Bank of Poland for its initiative to hold this international conference. May I say how grateful I am to the distinguished members of the Honorary Programme Council, and to all those who have contributed to making this undertaking happen. I took an honorary patronage over the Warsaw conference with satisfaction.
Major changes in history often have their climax in one spectacular episode. Sometimes they find expression in a sequence of a number of interconnected developments. The date of June 4, 1989, which is so important in the recent history of Poland and of the entire region, combines these two aspects.
On the one hand, it was an event that happened spontaneously, one of crucial significance. On that day Poland’s first partially free elections to the lower house and completely free elections to the Senate took place. The upper house of the Polish Parliament was reborn after more than forty years of absence. For the first time in the entire East bloc citizens were free to express their political will. There was no doubt as to what Polish people voted for. 99% of seats in the Senate were won by representatives of the democratic opposition. Poland became the first country behind the ‘iron curtain’ where society’s elected representatives gained control over real power. It was plain that the communist system had collapsed.
June 4 1989 was also part of a string of historical developments. It had its roots in the Polish August of 1980, when the Solidarity movement was born opening the floodgates of freedom. The martial law of 1981 did not stop history in its tracks. Solidarity had won a genuine public mandate, the confidence of millions of Poles, offering hope for change. In 1989 talks were started with the democratic opposition, which consequently led to the free elections. A bit later, in September 1989, a government was formed under the first non-communist Prime Minister. Polish transformations paved the way for change in other countries of Central and Eastern Europe. The victory of freedom and democracy opened up the road to a united Europe.
But this was just the beginning of a great challenge. It was essential to put the newly regained freedom to a good use. Social and economic transformations proved a particularly difficult task. No-one in the world had ever tried to move from a centrally planned command economy to a market economy. Poland was in a difficult spot. We started our social and economic transformation at a time when the Polish economy lay in tatters. It was the dramatic legacy of inept communist policies and of a completely inefficient economic system totally divorced from market realities. A number of economists had doubts whether Poland would be able to successfully overcome the crisis. But as a result of reforms launched at the time, and of the remarkable determination of Polish people, our country became one of the region’s economic leaders and an exporter of stability. Soon afterwards – after European Union accession – it also became a dynamic participant of the EU market. Poland is an excellent example of the success of transformation.
However, there was also a huge social cost that we paid for the first years of transformation. Delays in carrying out reforms, stifling of efforts to cleanse a number of spheres of public life from various pathologies, corruption and the emergence of oligarchies in the economy weighed heavily on the sense of social justice. This ripped through the cohesion of the social fabric; it violated the principles of fair competition and – in effect – limited development possibilities.
That is why the transformation needs to be treated as an exceptional experience, which is full of searching and which does not always follow a straight path. It is a very educational experience for all those who feel the need to stop to think about possible models of capitalism. The history of the transformation should be read first and foremost as a story of successes, but also as a story of dilemmas. Now when we can all feel the ripples of the world financial crisis, a moment of thought on transformations in Central and Eastern Europe can be useful to us all.
Lech Kaczyński, President of the Republic of Poland