VANISHING ELITES AND POLAND’S UNFINISHED TRANSFORMATION
VANISHING ELITES AND POLAND’S UNFINISHED TRANSFORMATION

Author(s): Jan Kieniewicz
Subject(s): Politics, Sociology, Security and defense
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: elites; Poland; transition; transformation; identity
Summary/Abstract: The premise of this article rests, firstly, with the failure to have completed Poland’s transformation following the breakthrough of 1989 and secondly, the failure to have formed new elites. This failure consists, in my view, in not having achieved the metamorphosis of Polishness (i.e., a real change in the identity of the social system). We have made a Transition in Poland, i.e., a change of the authorities and the state itself. However, we have neglected a matter fundamental to the Transformation, that is, a change of social consciousness. The “elites” played a special role in this fundamental omission for the condition of Poland today. Although, strictly speaking, they did not play such a role, because the old ones no longer existed and new ones had not yet emerged. For elites are not created, they are formed. As a result, there was no entity capable of creating a new pattern of existence for Poland.

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