ABSTRACT
The Round Table talks in early 1989 between the Communist government and its opponents negotiated the path to freedom and independence. With the consent of all the players on the Polish political scene, the government led by Tadeusz Mazowiecki was formed—the first noncommunist government in the Soviet bloc. Catholics were frustrated, as they had expected that, after the fall of "Communist Poland," the time of a "Catholic Poland" would come. Those discriminated against under the dictatorship felt cheated for they had anticipated compensation but instead looked on as the Communist Party nomenklatura was enfranchised. In Poland, populism came in various forms: the success of the populist émigré Stan Tyminski in the 1990 presidential elections, the harsh anti-capitalist and anti-European pronouncements of many church authorities, the show of support for the postcommunist parties in the May 1993 parliamentary elections.
