MARCIN KROL
297
lowers in the West and in the East. They forget that the spirit comes before
matter; the Western observers, politicians, and economists who try to make
us concerned exclusively with our daily bread only impose upon us their own
(perhaps unconscious) views. We do not want to accept these views because,
as well as thinking they are untrue, we feel that in our situation it may be
quite dangerous for our societies to do so.
Four decades of communist rule have left a wasteland, pollution, horri–
ble apartment and office buildings, a collapsing public transportation system,
virtually no telephones; the same decades have left an incomparable strength
of spirit that, at least in Poland, has made changes possible. We must
remember that it was this spiritual power and not the power of economic
self-interest that brought down communism, and that a future without this
spiritual power might become a wasteland of free-market competition. I am
not an idealistic intellectual who sees nothing besides philosophy and poetry,
but I do remember my Tocqueville, and I try not to forget that there are
certain values that seem to me to be indispensable for a society in which I
would like to live.
Western concern for human rights and the fight for them
in
our coun–
tries, conducted with some success as it appears, has been an enormous help.
I do not exaggerate: knowing that we were not being left alone was invalu–
able. Yet now I detect a slightly patronizing attitude on the part of the West,
that it is supposed to teach us the elementary rules of economics and induce
an entrepreneurial spirit.
It
is true that practically every day I get a phone
call
from one of my friends who has left Poland and wants to do business
there now; they all complain about the obstacles that still exist, about those
fumous telephones that don't work and those people (including some govern–
ment officials) who still don't fully realize how to operate in the international
financial market. Even so, the situation does not justify the Western percep–
tion that the emerging East European democracies might be troublesome
newcomers to Western civilization, that we, once seen by the West as heroic
freedom fighters, all now should take classes in economics and management.
While this may be true, it would be a shame if Western observers ignored
the lesson to be taken from the East, a lesson of how to combine a market
economy with spiritual development. We in Poland have to learn the lesson
ourselves, but our experiences may be useful for everyone else.
