The Polish Round Table 1989: Negotiating the Revolution

The catastrophe and terror in the recent history of the Old Continent have precipitated unprecedented socio-political change witnessed, and experienced, by three generations of central-eastern Europeans. The collective political conscience of the continent was forged in the reconciliation of former belligerents, the dismantling of barriers assumed by newly broken alliances, and the construction of supranational structures of democracy. This required the work and sacrifice of a generation, living out shifting state ideologies; people who had to forego former prejudices and engage in a new, fluid dialogue, which had been formerly discouraged and repressed. Here, I reflect upon how the inauguration of a new, political dialogue at the executive level helped to establish today’s democratic, pluralist, and markedly stable, Polish state…