Revolving

One of the key tendencies of Revolutions as identified by Hannah Arendt is their tendency to ‘devour’ their predecessors. The Ancien Regime is vilified before its dust settles and the old leaders are tossed out with or without their heads.

In the US, however, as Arendt identifies, that didn’t happen. Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton—all were elites and ruled before, during, and after the Revolution; democracy, constitutions, private property—all were values well instilled in the common man as well in 1770 as 1790. It was a paradoxically conservative revolution, which had innovation thrust upon it and its ambitions enlarged by happenstance.

The Polish Revolution straddled the line between these two models. Solidarity came, and the communists went, but they didn’t go far, and Solidarity soon had gone as well. Everyone did their best to forget the PRL as soon as it left; as happened across all of Communist Europe, the statues came down, the holidays changed, the textbooks were updated (excluding anything that happened after 1945), and generally people tried to get on with their business forgetting what had happened. Now, however, the PRL is back, and with a vengeance, either glamourized as fuzzy nostalgia and repackaged as marketable kitsch for the sentimental and ironically hip, or demonized by populists, Catholics, and discontents. The last remnants of PRL collaborators and oppressors are being rooted out and harangued while every ounce of its popular culture is being rebroadcast and examined.

Whether you can call 1989 and its surroundings a revolution on the scale of 1776 or 1789 is an open question. Maybe only its ensuite will tell.

All I know, is I need to go watch some old newsreels.