Polishness with its anarchist and distrustful towards all sovereignty of the component and the Gdańsk spirit with its tradition of standing on the sidelines, distance, turning to the sea, and back to Warsaw. erstwhile a generation of Poles born in Gdańsk grew up, a revolt exploded in the city.
Gdansk is an highly crucial place on the liberal map of the world. Looking back on them only the last 100 years of his past brings a thrilling communicative about people's struggles for freedom, about disasters and about the shining moments of this fight. The port city, located above the navigable river, naturally predisposed to building an economical power with this spoken of by the early liberals as a tool that was free global trade. Open to the planet and implementing its tiny task of European integration already in times erstwhile fewer people thought of specified a thing; thus marked by many different cultural influences, not only by geographically apparent ones, specified as Polish, German, judaic or Russian, but besides by Dutch, Scandinavian, French and Scottish ones. Always looking for a separate road, somewhat independent, whether from the Polish king or from Prussian rulers. So twice called "a free city", due to the fact that not only as a consequence of the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, but already, briefly, in 1807, as a consequence of the Napoleonic Wars and the provisions of the Treaty of Tylżycki. But besides the city, which badly abolished the entry of Europe into the era of nationalism, strangled in its improvement by the native and alternatively the impoverished face of east Prussian nationalism of the second half of the 19th century, condemned itself to provincialism, without building long any of its own higher education colleges, without letting into its bloodstream the life impulses of academic life and developed intellectual life.
So erstwhile Gdańsk becomes a "free city" again in 1920, receiving a possible chance to build a free political order on a state-to-town basis, i.e. in a model of European past to strangers, this falls on a totally unfriendly ground. In his full history, Gdańsk was no more hostile to freedom than then. The city was German, but the problem was not so cultural as mental, since it was German chauvinist and rematchy. The old Gdańsk openness to the planet has long died. The Gdańsk Germans wanted the Reich, but did not sympathize with the Weimar Republic, its constitution, rights, freedoms and spirit. Provincialism took a terrible toll erstwhile the Nazis easy intercepted political control of the “free” already by the name of the city a decade later.
Thus, he became 1 of the primaries of planet War II. The day 1 September 1939 and the fire of Polish positions on Westerplatte opened the buckle of 1 of the most crucial (important?) freedom fighters that humanity fought for. And Gdańsk was besides to close this buckle a small over 40, and yet 50 years later, erstwhile the town's "Solidarity" movement of Lech Wałęsa led to the actual end of this war (the 1945 peace treaties were mainly on paper and constituted the transition of war from 1 to the another stage). What started with the darkest nightmare, the conflict that brought the ocean of crime with the Holocaust at the head, ended in Gdansk with the triumph of the thought of human freedom in a completely bloodless clash with the government of captivity and terror. The totalitarian regimes utilized an full arsenal of deadly weapons to strangle freedom, and their triumph was temporary. Freedom beat them in Gdańsk with a force of influence in purely moral clashes, and its triumph seems to be the eventual 1 today.
1945 brought only an apparent peace, which was rapidly called the “cold war”. For Gdańsk, however, it was a key cezura. The city had to leave its German residents, paying the price of losing their home for the crimes of their political leadership, most frequently justified, given the political past of the city before 1939. Thousands of Poles and Poles from different places moved into the city, most frequently from the erstwhile East of the Second Republic lost to the USSR. Many of them knew Gdansk for proceeding only. They were people deprived of their roots, alienated, in a sense pioneers settling the “wild west”, a place deserted, in a vast part destroyed. The dilemma, whether or not to rebuild the erstwhile – abroad to both Polish and all the more so “employable-boy” spirit – the center of the city, remained without a clear answer for respective years. Many have seen a fresh centre, of a purely socialist and working character, without bourgeois-burlying "air raids", close today's fresh Port. There were expected to be blocks and factories, not tenement houses and cafes.
However, fresh ties and social networks were formed under the authoritative layer, ubiquitous in the Polish People's Republic and the mandatory structure of the apparatus, involving these fresh ones, coming from the 4 sides of the world. A fresh generation was born, already local, unknown to the planet another than Polish Gdańsk. Years passed and the city became tamed, became Polish, port, labor, but besides with better intellectual infrastructure, polytechnique, medical academy, pedagogical school, which yet became a university. Now it has 2 elements. Polishness with its anarchist and distrustful towards all sovereignty of the component and the Gdańsk spirit with its tradition of standing on the sidelines, distance, turning to the sea, and back to Warsaw. erstwhile a generation of Poles born in Gdańsk grew up, a revolt exploded in the city.
In December 1970, it was inactive besides early for the revolt against communist power to lift axiological content in the form of a request for freedom. The impulse was to rise authoritative prices shortly before Christmas by central planners from the PZPR. But was not a decent table set, even erstwhile a year, for those surviving at the time even a tangible substitute of freedom? Prices were raised nationwide, but port cities rebelled. Their tolerance for the insolence of power proved to be the least.
A man torn from his surroundings loses his orientation in the sense of a place in an informal social hierarchy, gets free of authority, his willingness to perceive to dignitaries is drastically reduced. This, of course, has its negative effects erstwhile it leads to a social anomaly behind which the degeneration of full communities can follow. But in this peculiar case of Gdańsk's relation with communist power, the effect was different. Among the town's inhabitants, the community was formed, 1 of which was an antagonism against the “people’s” power, and the Polish “we and them”, known from erstwhile eras, returned. The synergy of large-town intelligence and the working environment of the shipyard, which – how different for this kind of large industrial plant – was in Gdańsk (still the momentum of Emperor Wilhelm's decision) located in the city centre. This closeness generated a circumstantial dynamic in which the rational foundation of the protest and its bare force easy bonded into 1 stream.
In 1970 Gdańsk and Gdynia were harmed by communists, revolt was suppressed brutally, people were killed, many were beaten, tortured, intimidated, interrogated. But in doing all this, the PZPR already signed on itself a death sentence, which she executed on her own, bringing the red flag out of the hall 20 years later. The “employed” organization then instilled rage, self-loathing, and determination to fight to victory. A rebellious city was created, ready to fight no longer only for lower prices and better conditions in peer labour establishments, but for human freedom and national sovereignty. In the long run, the PRL could no longer be with Gdańsk within its borders. She could only yet destruct the city, or she could cease to exist.
In 1980 the end of the Polish People's Republic of Gdańsk Shipyard began, the end of communism, the end of real socialism, the end of the USSR and the end of the “cold war”, the second phase of the Second planet War, in which the forces of enslavement challenged the thought of freedom and lost. “Solidarity” by Lech Wałęsa was 1 of her first demands to commemorate the victims of December ’70. The monument of the 3 crosses was located in the central square of the city almost a decade before the ceremony of the Polish People's Republic and was the most readable opinion of the inhabitants about power.
"Solidarity" was a pluralist movement, as Gdansk and all of Poland were to join this Gdańsk thought soon. It had a conservative dimension, based powerfully on the foundation of religion in God and the dream of national liberation of Poland. It had a social democratic dimension, yet being a movement of labour protest against (arguably) "working power", compromising communist ideas throughout the planet and demanding better treatment of real workers, not just organization ducks. But it besides had a powerful liberal dimension, the hardest 1 to articulate in 1980, due to the fact that it meant demanding the restoration of civilian liberties, human rights, democratic elections, freedom of speech and assembly, free media, approximation with the West and the free marketplace economy. In a word: removing the PZPR forever from power, burying communism and leaving the east bloc.
Finally, and most of all, “Solidarity” was a purely peaceful conflict without bloodshed. By taking this way she may and may have risked defeat, but her triumph became a stronger moral foundation. Liberal democracy in Poland triumphed not due to the fact that individual shot Kiszczak and hanged Jaruzelski, and due to the fact that both of them saw that they had suffered a full defeat in the field of ideas in clash with the thought of freedom and threw a towel in the ringing close the ringing starting the first round, giving you the another side.
In 1989-91, the russian block fell apart like a home of cards. Fukuyama then wrote that the communicative was over. It was not so good, it was alternatively the beginning of the most beautiful decade in history, the 1990s. After them, we learned, in 1 crisis after another, that freedom must be fought not only erstwhile it is not there, but besides erstwhile it is there. We must cultivate and fight to keep it, as shortly as fresh risks are at stake on the horizon.
In 2015-23 Gdańsk returned to the position of a rebellious city. Maintaining all proportions and not falling into the backdrop of historical analogies, in Poland, with freedom, the regulation of law and democracy, there were again question marks. The Pomeranian region has proved to be the least susceptible nationwide to the propaganda of the fresh organization of power, PiS, which has traditionally achieved the lowest electoral results here. Desperate autocrats decided to harm Gdańsk. Lotos, 1 of the largest taxation payers in the region, was liquidated. PiS has already preferred the Saudi Arabs to command this refinery alternatively than the gnomes. The government besides wanted to starve the European Solidarity Centre, a peculiarly crucial point on the political and cultural map of Gdańsk, which – like salt in the eye – told the real past of 1980 and 1989 and during the years of the existence of the Pisan power became the “Mecca” of opposition oriented Poles. They, coming to Gdańsk, said that there is simply a different atmosphere here, that there is someway little feeling here, that Polish rules the Law and Justice. The ECS failed to starve – supported by Poles from all over the country, the Gdańsk people took an amount higher than the blocked ministerial grant through an online collection.
All this Gdańsk could forgive PiS. Politics is simply a harsh “business” in which for perfect opponents fewer people know pity. Besides, in the scandals around Lotus and ECS backing was mainly about money. And the money of Gdańsk happens to have, due to the fact that – traditionally – it earns it with work and creativity of its inhabitants. That's how it was in the sales era that we sold here. The spring grain respective 100 years ago, so it is present erstwhile the IT, chemical, tourist, offshore and respective others are flourishing.
However, Gdańsk has been hurt differently, painfully and much more seriously in the past 8 years, erstwhile a madman murdered the president of this city, Paweł Adamowicz, filled with hateful propaganda of written television. President, elected to the highest city office for 2 decades, a man of light, wise, cordial and good. After that, erstwhile the president of the organization of power was ostentatiously late for a "minute of silence" in the Sejm in honor of president Adamowicz, nobody had any illusions in Gdańsk.
In the long run, Poland could not be with Gdańsk in its borders. She could only yet destruct the city, or she could cease to exist. You know the rest.
So let us end with a informing for all the enemies of freedom who plan to reconstruct slavery in 1 form or another in Poland or more, in Central-Eastern Europe: do not mess with Gdańsk. This is going to end very badly for you.
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The Liberté Foundation invites you to the 2024 Freedom Games "City, Europe, Advantages"! 18-20.10.2024, EC1 in Łódź. strategical partners of the event are: City of Łódź and Łódź Event Center.
