Seminar Series 8

Title: Under the Cross: Polish Catholic Identity in post-Christian Europe

Speaker: Adam Szostkiewicz (Polityka weekly newsmagazine)

Discussant: Jonathan Luxmoore (freelance journalist and author)

The main points of the talk:

1. Why history made the Cross a powerful sign in Polish national history?

2. A unique anti authoritarian alliance of the Church and liberal democratic opposition in the 70s and the 80s of the 20th century.

3. The falling apart of the alliance after 1989, 4the beginning and growth of the antiliberal/antimodern agenda in the mainstream Polish Catholicism in the Third Rzeczpospolita.

4. Selective uses of Polish Pope's legacy.

5. What kind of religion for the Poland of tomorrow?


See the poster: Click here

See the photos: Click here

See the video podcast: Click here

Seminar Series 7

Title: Democracy in Poland: Representation, participation, competition and accountability since 1989

Speaker: Dr Anna Gwiazda (King’s College)

Discussant: Dr Radosław Zubek (University of Oxford)

Abstract:

Dr Anna Gwiazda will examine the quality of democracy in Poland from the collapse of communism in 1989 up to the 2011 parliamentary election. Drawing on democratic theory and comparative politics, she puts forward a framework for evaluating democracy based on four dimensions: representation, participation, competition and accountability, which she then applies to the case of Poland. The Polish case demonstrates that effective accountability, good representation and stable competition are vital for achieving a good quality democracy. Moreover, it shows useful lessons that can be learnt by democratic reformers in countries that are undergoing the transition to democracy or are aiming to consolidate their democratic systems.

Dr Anna Gwiazda has recently published the book in which she assesses the quality of democracy in Poland from the collapse of communism in 1989 up to the 2011 parliamentary election. Read more about it: Click here

1. See the poster:Click here

1. See the presentation:Click here (and go to the bottom of the page)

1. See the video podcast: Click here

1. See the photos:Click here

Seminar Series 6

Title: Marxism, Christianity, liberalism: Polish democratic opposition and the idea of civil society, 1956-1989

Speaker: Dariusz Gawin (Warsaw Uprising Museum)

Discussant: Jim Bjork (King's College London)

Abstract:

Professor Dariusz Gawin analyses the change in oppositional, political thinking in Poland from the Letter to Party members” by Jacek Kuroń and Karol Modzelewski, 1965 until the advent of the Solidarity movement in 1981. He shows that the political identity of opposition groups in Poland underwent a significant transformation between 1968 and 1976. While the myth of revolution was still constitutive for the 1965 “Letter”, after the events of 1968, when workers were instrumentalised for anti-Semitic and anti-intellectual state action against oppositional students, the faith in the revolutionary messianism of the working class was lost. A new intellectual coalition developed, which abandoned the dialectical conflict between the reactionary and progressive forces, uniting both the “lay left” and “liberal Catholics” in a middle way between left and right, from which a new division between totalitarianism and democracy emerged. In this anti-totalitarian vision, the identity of the leftist Polish opposition came to be based on the civil society and took real shape in the movement of independent social initiatives between 1976 and 1980, culminating in the ten-million-strong Solidarity movement which called for the introduction of the self-government, democracy and pluralism.

1. See the poster: Click here
2. See the video podcast: Click here
3. See the photos: Click here