Poland / Valedictory

...However, I would mention one further cause of the decline in public confidence...

...Long before the dissident Adam Michnik defined the "new evolutionism"--expect nothing from party "reform," but organize real social forces to press the party to yield space--Church, farmers, workers, and intellectuals were doing this in their own ways...

...By will and defiance, Poles have secured a vital church, a private agriculture (socially important if economically troubled), a cultural style profoundly Western and openly contemptuous of their "partner" to the East...

...The pendulum had decisively swung...

...A nagging fear has persisted, especially in the last decade of the oil bonanza, that the social/economic developments of these Muslim nations remain only skin deep...

...One cannot ask too much...

...sure--but the interwar years of independence, barely touched, are history and memory to many living Poles...

...And Parisians, perhaps, should feel honored...

...Some financially are very wealthy...

...Hence, not only did the Muslims find little to learn from Europeans, but what did exist was "imperfect...

...When the French Revolution marked the dawn of Europe's political evolution, Muslims shook their heads at the travails of the infidels...

...In the future as the present, travelers Paris-Warsaw-Moscow may, arriving in Warsaw, think they're already in Moscow...

...In the first chapter and last, the agriculture minister Bukowski and the peasant union organizer Buk confront each other in the heady fall days of 1981, the days of Solidarity's ascendancy amidst political dissent and an unraveling economy...

...But if novels propose to depict history, one can ask that their selectivity convey relevance to the audience...

...Minority problems with Ukrainians over the centuries are recognized, but where, in heaven's name, are the Jews, so intertwined in the histories of Poland and the Poles...

...A t some point, all thoughtful observers of Muslim societies confront a common question: Why do Muslim societies in the Middle East exhibit such a contradictory mixture of disdain and veneration toward the West...

...It is not that the bomb has made us feel too threatened, as the nuclear peace groups would have it, but that it has made us feel too safe...

...But all in all, one will understand little from these books of the reasons to be optimistic about Poland...

...The overwhelming belief--which may be incorrect, but is nevertheless perceived--is that the next war will be fought by technicians in underground command centers...

...The Michener historical novel formula--geographical part for the whole, a few families for an entire civilization, traced through the centuries--continues here...

...If the feeling now widespread is that "America" as a community no longer matters, that sentiment may be a reflection of a nation-state no longer compelled to perform any ultimate political and social function...

...During the last century, as the gap between Europe and Islam increased, the initial responses remained intact, and, if anything, became further polarized...

...But they have not lost everything and it is quite unlikely that they will...

...Proud Varsovians may not all appreciate the implied patronization, but they will understand the travelers' confusion...

...Muslim nations had only to adopt the most visible aspects of European civilization--their military practices, industries, and know-how...

...Since fighting wars (or preparing for them) is the only social function the nation-state must ultimately perform, it is reasonable to suppose that confidence in the society and its institutions is in some way influenced by this essential point of existential contact between citizen and his country...

...Poles live within a set of concessions, true--but they are the best sort of concessions...

...Kuniczak's are novels of endings, of efforts fruitlessly but willingly spent, of desires denied...

...Sprung from the same roots in the fictitious village of Bukowo, they are the living descendants of families through whose lives Michener traces Poland's history...

...Poland's balance between regime and society, fakery and authenticity, has been, since at least the mid-1950s, as far from Soviet desiderata as a satellite has come...

...The Kuniczak novels are about the experience of Poles, as much as about Poland: appropriate for a people whose national anthem, dating from Napoleon's time, asserts Jeszce Polska nie zgineta, pdki my ~yjemy (Poland is not destroyed/while yet we live), and reflects a long denial of statehood to a nation...

...Rightly or wrongly, a common perception outside the Middle East is that Islam is reactionary and hence a hindrance to innovation and modernization...

...Satisfied with their own superiority, Muslim societies turned inward, and remained insulated in the following centuries thanks to the might of the Ottoman Empire...

...When the Ayatollah Khomeini returned to Iran after 14 years of exile Rustam is a writer living in Cambridge...

...Amen...

...Speech was freer in Warsaw before, during, and after martial law than in today's Prague, or in Moscow under Khrushchev at his most liberal...

...Smugness and comfort of tradition were not a long term solution, for the economic and military power European societies possessed by the eighteenth century was overwhelming...

...Those who reverse this route, reaching Warsaw, can be excused for thinking they're already in Paris...

...In each novel, the central characters are different, but several make their way through the trilogy--notably the tragic General Janusz Prus, to suicide in a London bedsitter in rejection of the fate of a refugee with no future in a Poland war has placed in, and diplomacy cannot rescue from, Soviet domination...

...The Ottoman Sultan's private secretary noted in his diary: "May God cause the upheaval in France to spread like syphilis to the other enemies of the empire, hurl them into prolonged conflict with one another, and thus accomplish results beneficial to the Empire...

...How much is a novel "worth" as history...

...Nor would imitation or purchase of goods and services prove more than a temporary expedient, vulnerable to progress and development...

...Intervening chapters cover Tartar invasions, struggles with Teutonic knights, Swedes, and Turks, independence lost in the Prussian-Russian-Austrian partitions of the late 1700s and regained in 1918 for twenty years before Hitler and Stalin partition and occupy the unfortunately located nation...

...Though the same question may be posed about other regions, the Muslim states of the Middle East, for a variety of reasons, are particularly prone to such attention...

...His is a fascinating kaleidoscope of two great civilizations groping at each other, a first-rate study impressively steeped in the region's history and based on original material...

...Poles have not obtained the state they wanted--that, by and large, they collectively deserve...

...But none has reached a stage in economic development where a significant portion of the work force is either employed in modern industries or is capable of producing and exporting a significant share of manufactured goods and services...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1984 37 Physical and political tragedies hover over the trilogy and its many characters largely unrelieved by what could conventionally be called "hope"--but moderated somewhat by a recurring manifestation of will, of refusal to play history's game...

...Martial law, rather than divide et impera, was Jaruzelski's readiest option...

...And the faithful were told in proclamations: "The French nation (may God devastate their dwellings and abase their banners, for they are tyrannical infidels and dissident evildoers) do not believe in the oneness of the L o r d . . . and have enticed into their iniquity the common people who have become as raving madmen...

...But with the appearance of The Muslim Discovery o f Europe, there is a new angle...

...In short, coming to terms with the change in fortune which the modern era has ushered in 38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1984...

...here, Michener scores about B-minus...

...Valedictory's central character, squadron leader Ludwik Toporski, muses in darkening days on his fellow Poles, "their notion of themselves as replaceable components of their country's history . . . . Whether or not they failed in their tasks, their rejection of the penalty of failure would nullify every victory of their enemies...

...A few possess sizable manufacturing industries...

...to wage his campaign against the Great Satan--the United States--it was in an American-made jumbo jet...

...Even those nations with an oil bounty have not managed to become anything more than welfare states based upon a pain-free tax revenue base...

...Call them infidels, if you like, but it hardly affected their armies or production...

...Lewis argues that the first intercourse between the two civilizations occurred when Islam was expanding and receptive, but when Western Europe still had nothing to offer...

...Although some Muslims today argue for an even more rapid adoption of the Western ethos, a significant number hold to the idea that what is needed is even greater purity of culture and devotion to tradition...

...If inferior Christians were now suddenly stronger than Muslims, went one argument, then Muslims must have deviated from the righteous path, and so it was necessary to return to the good old ways...

...The March follows civilian Poles into the hell of Siberian deportation, soldiers into the Katyn forest massacre, and remnants of I~oth into the long trek out of the USSR, disgorged by Stalin after Hitler's attack on Russia to fight with the Allies in the West...

...Nevertheless, these reactions go a long way to explain the current oscillation by Muslims between disdain and veneration when it comes to Western civilization...

...The Thousand Hour Day ends in late 1939 among soldiers who have crossed into then-neutral Romania, refusing to surrender either to the Nazis or Soviets, and looking for a base, political and territorial, from which to renew the fight...

...Valedictory's angle of vision encompasses combat and diplomacy-the Polish squadrons flying with the RAF from English bases across the channel, the exile government in London striving to retain a weakening grip on the consciences and priorities of the Western allies against the brute fact of the Soviet march westward...

...At this stage, Bernard Lewis ends his volume, but it does not take much to proceed with the inherent argument...

...It is a perception that seemed to be confirmed by the Iranian Revolution...

...Another point of view considered European strength to consist only in the possession of certain materials, weapons, or, at best, techniques...

...Return to the past could, perhaps, make one feel better, Itut it would hardly bring forth the necessary social dynamism to compete with European power...

...Poles, indeed, have made bad victims...

...Hardly a week goes by without some Middle East leader denouncing the influences of the West...

...This is the best guarantee that Poland will remain exceptional, even in its long crawl out of economic travail, and that the struggle to expand the scope of its authentic life will continue...

...Unfortunately for Islam, Europe's rise was the result not of a lucky invention or discovery, but of scientific progress, expansion of education, growth of more representative government, trade, and, above all, social traits that allowed for the assimilation of innovations and new ideas...

...There is, first of all, the reality that not one of these states has successfully transformed into an industrialized society...

...This attitude continued unabated even when the Renaissance and Reformation came to change Europe radically...

...An understanding of the system against which workers revolted would benefit from a chapter on the low points (1949-54) of Stalinism, or one of the pre-1980 high points of popular resistance to the Soviet-type regime (1956, 1970, 1976...

...Given the Muslim belief in successive revelations, which culminated in the mission of Mohammed, Christianity was regarded as an unworthy predecessor...

...From this was born the disdainful attitude of Muslims towards Europe, so much so that a famous letter sent by the Caliph Harun al-Rashid to the Byzantine emperor Nikephoras begins thus, "From Harun, Commander of the Faithful, to Nikephoras, dog of the Romans, greeting...

...Egypt, with the longest introduction to industrialization, is among the poorest states of the group...

...From the Thousand Hour Day (1966) through the harrowing pages of The March (1979), the PolishAmerican Kuniczak has chronicled Poland's experience from the German invasion of September 1939 to the dispersal of its defenders at the end of the European war...

...Even from "Bukowo," 700 years is a lot of history...

...As it is, the years between 1945 and 1980 are empty, the meaning of 1980 diminished...

...The military conflicts of the early centuries were important, to be Walter D. Connor is professor o f political science at Boston University, and writes frequently on Communist affairs...

...The behavior, remarks, and actions of particular Islamic leaders have bolstered this perception...

...By depersonalizing war, the bomb has deprived the citizen of the existential sense that he may be required to make sacrifices to fight for his country...

...Kuniczak's endings, Michener's patternless ups and downs, leave one with a poor grip on some decisive Polish assets...

...The ruling Shiite clergy has time and again demonstrated overt hostility to the basic tenets of modern Western societies...

...Yet for all that, the Islamic mind-set remained unaltered, as a central contradiction remained in the ,Muslim understanding of the modern era...

...Kuniczak's trilogy, whose final volume, Valedictory, reached the bookstores almost simultaneously with Michener's...

...One will look in vain for the reasons in Poland...

...Having ignored European cttlture, history, and languages~ Muslim societies suddenly began to send students to Europe, adopt their manners, and employ foreign military advisers...

...The question of progress and Islam is thus complicated and not easily answerable...

...A second reason is the religious convictions of Muslims...

...Q u i t e different, and altogether more revealing, are the novels of W.S...

...They have extracted the concessions...

...But at the same time, Western goods of virtually all categories are being imported by these countries at an unprecedented rate...

...But it is selective, and one can at least quibble with times left out whose exploration through peasant Buks and petty noble Bukowskis might have better illuminated the Poland of the 1980s...

...His Poles are anarchic and heroic, admirable and incomprehensible, and seemingly fated to lose, partially regain, and lose again that for which they strive...

...Toughness and romanticism have served Poles better, in this sense, than have pacifism and compromise their no-less-Western Czech and Slovak brothers...

...Accurate, perhaps, to a point, yet a view tilted overmuch toward internal squabbling, and especially inappropriate in the 1981 chapters, which make more of the conflict between workers and farmers than Polish workers and farmers ever did in that time of national unity...

...In this scholarly and lucid study, Bernard Lewis traces the first encounters between Muslims and Europeans, beginning in the eighth century...

...Poland has stood for some time at the top of the best-seller lists...

...I have in mind the advent of the bomb...