Poles struggle to remember key events in fall of communism
PR dla Zagranicy
Peter Gentle
23.05.2014 12:16
A new survey finds that only three-in-five Poles are able to name Poland’s first prime minister after democratic transformation in the country after the June 1989 elections, which saw a landslide for Solidarity candidates.
1989 election poster: IPN
With only two weeks to go to the 25th anniversary of elections that marked the fall of communism in Poland, the TNS Polska polling agency found that only 63 percent of those polled over the age of 15 could name Tadeusz Mazowiecki as the first prime minister after partially-free elections in June 1989.
Just one in every four Poles remembers that the so-called Balcerowicz Plan, which introduced painful free-market mechanisms to the Polish economy in 1990.
One in every three Poles remembered that in the 1990 presidential elections Lech Wałęsa defeated Stan Tyminski, while 18 per cent of respondents did not know that the PZPR acronym stood for the Polish United Workers Party.
Meanwhile, 18 percent of those polled failed to give a correct answer to any of the six questions in the test on what Poles know about the radical transformations Poland went through during and after 1989.
President Barack Obama will be in Poland on 4 June as part of celebrations to mark the historic elections a quarter of a century ago. (mk/pg)