Transition to Democracy in Poland. by Richard F. StaarReview by: Janine P. HolcSlavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 2 (Summer, 1994), pp. 616-617Published by:Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2501360 .

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616 Slavic Review

international in nature, there is logic to treating these areas as a whole. Simply put, the areas suffered in common from policies of centralized governments geared to heavy and energy industries that were developed at the expense of local environments, and usually without consultation with regional or local governments.

The second point is rather more serious, namely the quality of writing and gram- mar throughout the book. One accepts that English is not the native language of either the editors or authors, but the introduction alone contains more than 25 spelling errors, not to mention sentence construction that at times appears nonsensical. Thus one sees "discribes," "environental," "exanded," "enivronment" (all on one page), establishing an unfortunate trend that is maintained with irritating consistency throughout the book.

Finally, the book's heavy reliance on statistics does not always permit the reader to comprehend the full extent of the problem. Admittedly, all the European nations have different norms for air, water and land degradation-a fact that became disturb- ingly evident in the aftermath of the Chernobyl accident-but one would like to know how levels in eastern Europe compared with those in western Europe and, indeed, whether the apportionment of blame-in this case, almost always on Soviet authori- ties-is significant. Environmental history is, after all, a relatively new subject. All industrialized nations have achieved their present status through blunders and the almost incidental and often unforeseen destruction of nature. And paradoxically, while scholars can point out the principal ecological problems, it is quite often the indus- trialists themselves who are in the best position to find solutions.

In short, the book is an important addition to a growing library on environmental affairs in eastern Europe and the former USSR, but it is not without some serious flaws.

DAVID R. MARPLES University of Alberta

Transition to Democracy in Poland. Ed. Richard F. Staar. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. 271 pp. Index. Tables. $45.00, hard bound.

This work belongs to the genre of "transition" studies that are coming to dominate the fields of political science and sociology in Slavic studies. This genre interprets the events, institutions and behaviors in post-communist countries as though they are transitional phenomena, at present fragmented and in flux, but indicative of a stable future. This future is one in which institutions and values will become fixed and agreed upon, and one in which this agreement will be stable, democratic and "western" in nature. The essays collected here document the changes characterizing the state and the economic system in Poland since 1989, and all either explicitly or implicitly seek sources of stability, democratic forms of governing or the influence of western models in these changes. To this end, the essays are topically organized, their generalizations tentative and presented with broad strokes, and their conclusions provocative rather than guided by methodology.

Some of the contributions are explorations of presumed goals of the "transition," such as a privatized economy; others are examinations of elite conflict over political issues; some clearly advocate a particular policy choice. Thus, the volume is appro- priate for area specialists and graduate students seeking an overview of events and power struggles regarding politics and economics in Poland from 1989 through 1992; the essays are "current histories," presenting a variety of reasons for the trends that they describe and raising questions rather than providing systematic explanation or theoretical breakthroughs.

One drawback of the "transition" framework for explaining the Polish experience since 1989 is illustrated by an observation in the introductory essay by Richard Staar. He notes that "[one] should not anticipate that indigenous communists will return to power in Poland. . ." but the Social Democrats did just that in the September 1993

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Book Reviews 617

elections to parliament. Of course, in the changing arena of central European politics, one cannot be criticized for making an erroneous prediction. However, the failure of any of these essays to give credence to the possibility of a victory of the left-indeed, to analyze the left at all-is not just a problem of swiftly moving events. It is indicative of the way that the assumptions embedded in the "transition" framework about out- comes limit scholarly interpretation. This volume illustrates the drawbacks of research driven by an answer rather than by a question.

Not all of the contributions fall prey to the imperatives imposed by this "answer" of democracy and stability. The essays by Sarah Meiklejohn Terry, Lucja Swiatkowski Cannon and A.E. Dick Howard acknowledge the contested and conflictual nature of the processes of regional integration, privatization and constitution-making, respec- tively. All the studies presented here, however, seem to dance around the obvious thread that ties them together, a theme that is unspoken but notable when the book is read as a whole: the social disorientation caused by the sudden and total collapse of the communist party-led state in 1989. As the book describes the manner in which, for example, industrial relations are evolving toward stability and acceptance of pri- vatization models (in the piece by Benjamin H. Slay and Michal Rutkowski), the reader is instead struck by growth of opposition to privatization that the authors describe in the course of their argument. What are the sources of this social discontent, given the popular consensus supporting a free-market economy in 1980 and in 1989? Indeed, throughout much of Transition to Democracy in Poland, Polish society, with its unem- ployed workers, distrust of political parties, wavering belief in the legitimacy of gov- erning institutions and general dissatisfaction with the direction of the "transition," is treated as an obstacle to democracy rather than the reasonfor democracy.

In one way, these scholars are correct in recognizing the dominance of democratic values and aspirations in Poland. However their work confuses the phenomenon that they are studying with the outcomes they wish to find. This approach leads to a glossing over of the problematic relationship between the governed and the governing, and of the processes by which the institutions and policies of the state interact with social demands, perceptions and actions.

JANINE P. HOLC Loyola College

The Polish Road from Socialism: The Economics, Sociology, and Politics of Transition. Eds. Walter D. Connor and Piotr Ploszajski. Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1992. 319 pp. Index. $49.95, hard bound.

This book deals less with the transition process than it does with the malaise of so- cialism in the 1980s. Based on two conferences held in Poland and the US in 1990, the project was designed to provide different disciplinary perspectives on the collapse of socialism. The economists were in the most vulnerable position: having to identify the failures of a centrally planned economy and the promises of free market reforms seemed very distinct matters. And although we do learn much about late 1980s' eco- nomic experimentation in Poland, the shock therapy that followed would indeed appear to be ajolt given the terms of discourse encountered in the volume. To indicate how far Poland has come, one issue of Business Central Europe (published monthly by The Economist) offers greater insight into the country's economic transformation than do the disconnected chapters found in part 1.

The centerpiece of the volume is sociological research. The book's last chapter reviews successive normative foundations and empirical orientations of leading Polish sociologists. Michael Kennedy's periodization and persuasive critique ought to have come much earlier in the volume. Further discussion of the social engineering aspect of sociology would have been welcome. Though Kennedy is guarded on this matter, we can suggest that most sociological research was neither servile nor insidious during the communist period. Setting aside normative considerations, the social mobility and

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