The really scary thing is that the "evil twins" have a real chance of winning the nest elections and remaining in power. The collapse of civilization in most of the former soviet block is now producing its results also in Poland.
Those insane politicians (dozens of parliamentarians recently tried to have Jesus Christ appointed as king of Poland) mirror what has happened in Russia. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, the Baltic dwarfs, Serbia,... they all lacked a real democratic tradition (and many even a national identity) prior to their inclusion into the soviet block. Once the soviet-style regimes fell they went through a period of ideological vacuum (just as Russia did). Some of the members of the former ruling elite recycled themselves and took over both power and wealth. A few years later they had dismantled much of the economy and society without really creating anything to replace it with. The field was then open for those appealing to pre-communist ideas - which in central european states were forms of fascism or, more accurately, authoritarianism.
Both the Kaczynski and Putin appealed to the same ideas and, if they manage to remain in power, they will produce the same results locally. With one big difference: the russians know what they are doing: reinstating an Europe made up of nation-states where Russia will be the largest one - that is the russian strategy. Meanwhile the central europenas have been deluded by their own politicians into also believing the old ideas of nationalist - most of them still do not understand their countries lack the power to survive as independent nations in the modern world.
Caught up in the middle of this, trying to avoid disaster in central europe but unable to intervene openly lest that act supplies ammunition to the nationalists, are the EU bureaucrats and most western european politicians. The EU can only offer subsidies to keep central europeans interested in the EU - but as those subsidies will be managed by local politicians the end result may well be the opposite.
Some western politicians are no doubt happy to undermine the EU - and Central Europe has once again presented itself as a usefull token in a power game. Someday the others may decide tho cut the losses, drop part of Central Europe, and move forward with a reduced version of the EU. The future of Europe is very murky. A lot depends on how power straggles will resolve in those central europenn countries, and that depends on how prosperous, economically, the next few years will be. Not just in Central Europe, but in the world.
This is an incredibly arrogant post. Your only excuse is that you correctly excluded my country from it
Now seriously.
1) There could hardly be a collapse of civilization after the fall of Communism, because that would necessarily imply that there had been a civilization before. Communist dictatorships cannot be called a civilization. The only thing they did was that they kept order for some time. Otherwise, they completely ruined the countries.
2) Some of the countries lacked a democratic tradition, that's true. Except Czechoslovakia, none of them had a stable liberal democracy for any reasonable period of time before WW2. On the other hand, this doesn't in any way means that they can't evolve into a true, modern democracy. Finland, Spain, Portugal or Greece hadn't any real democratic experience either, but they easily transformed into a democracy after their authoritatian governments collapsed.
As you can see, the Baltic states are doing extremely well, Hungary, the Czech Rep. and now even Slovakia too, with Balkan countries stabilizing. Poland is nothing really exceptional (yes, they're annoying sometimes). You attribute everything bad to some sort of an inherent Central and Eastern European inability to live in a democracy (which itself is a borderline racist opinion), while you tacitly ignore, that Western European countries had such problems too (Haider in Austria, far-right parties in the Low Countries and Italy etc.). The difference is that CE and EE countries had to face a completely wrecked economies, social inbalances, poverty, rise of nationalism and so on, which have made these problems somewhat worse.
3) If Russians know what they're doing, then Poland knows that too. Of course you're wrong. Russia tries to do what it is used to do -
expand into Europe. Collapse of its empire in 1991 is seen as a tragedy in Russia, so they're trying to regain their influence.
But there is one peculiarity about the Russian nationalism - it has always been the bad form of nationalism - it is
chauvinism,
"Russia first, Russia über alles" type. Nothing close to the liberal form of nationalism which formed the European nation states (no, I am not trying to say that Europe didn't suffer of this "bad" nationalism too). Russians believe that for the sake of the Motherland, they were given a right to conquer and subjugate the weaker nations in their neighborhood. Just look at their history, perhaps then you'll understand why is it not acceptable for the Central and Eastern European nations.
Given the immensely (and for an average Western European probably incomprehensibly) negative experience with the Russian nationalism that almost every post-communist country has, it is no wonder they tend to react strongly on the signs that the beast is wakening again. And yes, they expect a support from the Western Europe, which has let them down many times. Maybe now is the right time to make things right and support those who know what they're talking about.
