Poland has come under criticism lately as retreating from democracy. But, let us try to understand their perspective. A homogeneous country that has its own language, its own culture, its own view on the world, and its own way of doing and celebrating life. Has Poland peeked out from under the curtain of Polishness and now decided to pull it back down? Yes, to European liberals it appears so.
Norman Davis a renown world historian and expert on Poland and or Polish history wrote a book called "Poland: God's Playground." This work by Davis has been long praised as the most comprehensive survey of Polish history. Critics declare that Davis in his research and insight reveals Poland´s importance in European history from medieval times to the present. Davis stresses the country´s rich multinational heritage and places the development of the Jewish German, Ukrainian, and Lithuanian communities in that all of which have been firmly held together in a Polish context which is a passion for life imbued with unrequited love and through heroic death so often revealed in detailed textural and layered political and religious nuisances appearing in poetical literary works.
What is meant in this illustration of Poland peeking under the curtain and then pulling it down is that Poland has its context... its stage for living and prefers that to any other which seeks to dilute the passion, the love and the heroic Polish death; a kind of sacrifice for being Polish and through death enabling Poland and Polishness to remain intact. Some like to make the assumption that Poland is retreating from what we call post modern reality, returning to tradition, and a return to old times having a lack for or no appreciation of new views/ways of/for Poland or the post modern world that Poland should/must embrace. Maybe... but what is the value in destroying what was rich, what had its own context if it can still be effective quality of life and one that can still be enjoyed as such. Isn't that what makes for diversity in the world?
