ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the local social conflicts in Polish communities as they were in the old days and as they are today in a country undergoing vast and rapid socio-economic and political change. The intervention of the Pope himself was necessary to force the defiant Polish nationalists defending an order located in a former Uniate church to agree to a compromise exchange of churches. With the end of the socialist state in 1989 and the implementation of democratic, market-based systems, the transformations in Polish political economy and society have been extraordinary. Conflicts suggest that since 1989 the government has been taken more seriously by Poles. Though Olesno is close to Praszka, in summer 1993 the two towns seemingly stood at opposite poles regarding the development of their social problems and conflicts. In the first place the two towns differed in the extent to which formal channels of conflict resolution were utilized.
