ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the disintegration of communism in Poland and the formation of a new socioeconomic and political system. Democracy was won in Poland in 1989 without the required new politicization and activation of the population. [Some] intellectuals thought that it would be possible to keep the united Solidarity political movement and the unified Solidarity Trade Union as two political pillars of the government and of the whole political structure of the country during the transitional period. The continuous debate in Poland over the role of elites in the transformation process has centered on a single issue: whether the elite of the Solidarity movement, was successful in preparing a sufficiently clear, comprehensive, and practical vision for the change of the system, and whether it was determined enough in translating that vision into workable programs.
