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 | MODEL OF TRANSITION
JULY 8, 1996TRANSCRIPT |
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In 1989 foreign investment in Poland was zero. Seven years later, it tops $10 billion. Poland's President Kwasniewski is in Washington to tout his country's success and push for NATO membership. Correspondent Charles Krause provides a backgrounder, before performing a live interview.
CHARLES KRAUSE: This victory party last November was for Aleksander Kwasniewski, a former Communist whose new party, the Democratic Left Alliance, includes former Communists as well as other opponents of Poland's rapid post-Communist economic reform.
The NewsHour looks at the aftermath of the November 1995 Polish elections that ousted Lech Walesa in favor of former Communist Kwasniewski
Kwasniewski came to power after defeating Poland's first post-Communist President, Lech Walesa in a startling twist on the country's road from Communism to democracy. Walesa, the hero of Solidarity, led the fight against Communism in Poland in the 1980's. In June 1989, he and his Solidarity allies won the first open election held here since the imposition of Communism in 1945. That election foreshadowed the beginning of the end of Communism in Central Europe, as well as in Russia, itself.
Poland's 39 million people share Western borders with Germany, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. To the East are two newly formed countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union, Ukraine and Belarus. A tiny piece of the Russian Republic, Kaliningrad, is to the North, on the border with Lithuania. The rest of Russia looms over the horizon.Today, as always, Poland's security and in many ways its destiny are largely determined by its geography.
Poland's economy under Walesa grew faster--5 1/2 percent a year--than any of Poland's European neighbors. And many economists cite Poland as a model for the successful transformation of the Communist state into a market economy. Foreign investment virtually nil before 1989 now tops $10 billion, and U.S. companies lead the way with about 1/5 of the total.
Still, not all Poles did well under Walesa's fast-paced economic reforms and mass privatization. For many workers in old factories and for pensioners, it was a time which brought declining wages, a falling standard of living, and high unemployment. During last year's campaign, Kwasniewski was able to capitalize on the economic discontent and succeeded in getting a clear majority among the unemployed. Kwasniewski is just 41, the first Polish leader without living memory of the brutal destruction of Poland by the Nazis in World War II, and the imposition of Communism by Stalin in the immediate post-war period. He's widely traveled, college-educated and speaks English, German, and Russian. He ran a well-financed western-style campaign complete with a slogan "Let's choose the future."
ALEKSANDER KWASNIEWSKI, President, Poland: Myself and my generation thought that we can change the system; we can make reforms in the system.
CHARLES KRAUSE: Despite some of his rhetoric during the campaign, in office Kwasniewski has embraced many of the economic reforms begun by Walesa. He also agrees with Walesa that Poland's top foreign policy priorities should be membership in the European Union and NATO, a goal President Clinton endorsed on a trip to Poland two years ago.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: Bringing new members into NATO, as I have said many times, is no longer a question of whether but when and how.
CHARLES KRAUSE: Last week, Mrs. Clinton visited Poland, emphasizing ties between the two nations. Some 10 million Americans of Polish descent live in the United States, many of them in Midwestern states critical to the President's prospects in the upcoming election. Mrs. Clinton was accompanied by Kwasniewski's photogenic wife, Jolanta. She, like Mrs. Clinton, is a lawyer who's involved and ready to speak out on public issues. At the White House this morning, the President said Mrs. Clinton had briefed him on her visit to Poland. He also reaffirmed his commitment to Poland's eventual membership in NATO but refused to be drawn into committing himself and the administration to a specific date.
PRESIDENT CLINTON: The important thing is that NATO is going to expand and we're going to do it in a deliberate fashion and an open fashion, as we have said all along.
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