ABSTRACT
The issue of ideology and ideological domination occupies a more central place in studies of Soviet-type or state-socialist societies than in the mainstream sociological and political analyses of Western capitalism. Political analyses of Soviet-type societies often emphasized the importance of Marxism-Leninism as the governing formula and the basis of political-ideological domination. The one aspect of ideology dealt with here is legitimacy, that is, the normative foundations of sociopolitical order. Ideology, understood as a system of doctrinally derived normative justifications of the system, played an important role as a political formula unifying the communist elites and the top layers of political-administrative apparata. The major mechanisms stabilizing the socio-political order in Poland were only partly ideological. A simple distinction between the rulers and people is in line with the popular, and largely accurate, image of conflict in Poland. The crucial political institutions of state socialism, the party, the government, the Sejm, were criticized mainly by those who most strongly affirmed socialist values.
