ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the way in which habitual expectations, attitudes, and patterns of action shaped during the years of the communist regime affect current developments in Poland. The blueprint for such a society was to legitimize the communist regime, and the party, holding all power in its hands, became the main executor and guardian of that design. Moreover, in Polish society the popular understanding of justice is strongly connected with an orientation towards "consensus and interpersonal harmony", "law and order". The society-at-large, very often identified with the nation, became the basic reference group, and the state, or rather its leaders, the main enemy. Individuals unified in an effort to dismiss the threat, suspended their everyday goals and ways of behaviour. However, the same social habits that are now postponing the transition to a liberal democracy also make prospects for the introduction of an authoritarian model rather remote.
