Chojnicki czerwiec '89. Studium lokalne fali uderzeniowej procesu demokratyzacji

Wałdoch, Marcin

Chojnicki czerwiec '89. Studium lokalne fali uderzeniowej procesu demokratyzacji

Abstract

In his book author explains social and political phenomena that are connected with political change in local conditions in Poland in 1989. As yet there has been no empirical study that would consider first partly free election to the last parliament of People’s Republic of Poland in local conditions. In 1989 there were 108 electoral constituencies in Poland to the Sejm elections, and free election to the Senate were conducted in 49 provinces of Poland. Chojnice was a capital city of election constituency no. 14 to the Sejm and a part of election to the Senate conducted in Bydgoszcz Province. As over the time social issues are perceived through stereotypes and tend to be mythologized, it seems important to author to show such events and phenomena on firm basis. It is worth emphasizing that results from 1989 elections in local conditions are generally unknown. Poles do not know results in their local constituencies because nearly thirty years after the elections official results from local constituencies still have not been not published anywhere. Thus, this study is based on primary sources, newspapers from that time, literature of this particular issue. The analysis and synthesis is based on a number of theoretical perspectives: behaviorism to describe interaction between political actors – electoral system – party systems; political process and political change; Joseph Schumpeter’s assumption that political competition is of fundamental importance for the democracy; Samuel Huntington’s theory of third wave of democratization. All the data is analyzed in quantitative perspective. There is no hypothesis as the study is a descriptive and explanatory one. Its main goal is to highlight earlier unknown phenomena. This study is about local politics in a one-party state during the time of political change, so author refers to the politics on state level from that time. The most important questions refer to: continuity of activity of new social movement members from the time of the carnival of Chojnice “Solidarity” in the years 1980-1981 and their involvement in 1989; political negotiations and emergence of political leaders during that time; political will of citizens to take part in political change and their will to change the political system; attitudes of political actors from PUWP and “Solidarity”; individual nature of facts from that time taken under consideration from the perspective of local reality; attitudes of local regime members towards political change; results of elections in Chojnice constituency on 4th and 18th June 1989; differentiation of political behavior in Chojnice constituency; picture of society of that time; influence of cultural and ethnical identity as well as people’s ties (mainly with Catholic Church) and roots on their political choices. Political behavior is one of the main category of this study. Author highlights not only electoral system but also describes process of political leaders’ emergence on local scale. In this perspective election campaign is portrayed as a political fight between candidates of Citizen Committee of “Solidarity” and candidates of Polish United Worker’s Party (PUWP) and its political satellites. As a matter of fact, author stresses the importance of category of the legitimization and shows that members of PUWP (in Poland known as PZPR) were not totally delegitimized by citizens in 1989 election in Chojnice constituency. In fact, PUWP was mostly legitimized by Poles in the northern part of Bydgoszcz Province during that election. The study consists of the following parts: introduction, 8 chapters, summary, bibliography, index and appendix. The first chapter describes electoral system and law that was enforced in 1989. The second one analyzes political climate and political situation around elections to the Sejm and the Senate. The third chapter is also mostly analytical one. Author describes local communists apparatchiks’ attitude towards political change. The fourth chapter shows the process of political leaders emergence from both sides of the political conflict. The fifth chapter describes personal features of candidates to the Sejm and the Senate. The sixth chapter shows election campaign. The seventh one shows election results. The eighth chapter describes political attitudes and behavior of citizens in Chojnice constituency. In the appendix readers may find results from constituency districts of Chojnice town, and Chojnice country. As a result of this study some unexpected conclusions emerged after empirical study, for example: one of the most prominent one is that citizens of People’s Republic of Poland do not reject totally PUWP and its monopoly for power and authority; paradoxically candidates from “Solidarity” movement were not selected as democratically as candidates from PUWP ; deep differences in political attitudes in Chojnice constituency depended on the scale of people’s religiousness and the tradition of political opposition in town, as well as on ethnic groups; the highest support for political change was among Kashubians, whereas the lowest in the groups called Krajniacy and Borowiacy.