It is a story of a country that made a lot of the right decisions along the way. Managed to keep consistent high growth, not a pony trick or boom/bust mode.
Poland should be a role model for many other countries.
Recommend a book: https://www.amazon.com/Europes-Growth-Champion-Insights-Econ...
And Noah's blog post: https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/the-polandmalaysia-model
In what sense? Czechia is richer per capita. Almost all of the former Soviet satellite states in eastern Europe have had largely peaceful (since 1991) sustained economic growth. The exceptions are exactly those countries which continue to have Russian troops occupying portions, namely Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova.
The protests in Czechoslovakia came later, called the Velvet Revolution, from 17 to 28 November 1989. In June 1990, Czechoslovakia held its first democratic elections, a year after Poland.
Poland paved the way for the whole of central and eastern Europe. The Round Table produced the negotiated-exit template that Hungary built on in its own talks that summer, and that Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and the Baltics drew on as their regimes fell within months.
And it did so from the deepest macroeconomic crisis of any of the satellite states: hyperinflation running into the hundreds of percent by late 1989, an unresolved sovereign default from 1981, and chronic shortages.
Since then Poland has converged fastest of any of them. From a low base it has climbed to the upper-middle of central and eastern Europe by GDP per capita PPP, overtaken Hungary, and is now closing on Czechia and Slovenia.
GDP/capita is often a relatively useless metric in modern times. For instance Ireland has one of the highest GDP/capitas in the world -- around 50% higher than the US. But that's because of economic games with their working as a tax haven to enable corporations to avoid paying taxes to their home countries. It doesn't translate to anything for the average Irishman.
Poland had a mass solidarity movement rise up in 1980. The USSR didn't decide to send in the military then; they were lucky.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_reaction_to_the_Polish_...
There was a lot of unrest in Poland, and general strikes. Martial law was imposed.
If you were an immigrant from Czechslovakia in a refugee camp in Austria at around that time, you'd be learning to speak Polish.
Stephen Kotkin says this much better than I ever could. https://youtu.be/0tXvLJXkFFg?t=295&si=26yINqxrcSdOUxCv
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1989
Round Table agreement, which paved the way to the partially free elections in 1989 won by the opposition, preceded similar events in other countries by several months including Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia and the Fall of Berlin Wall.
Are you sure about that? I'm Czech but have lived in Poland for 8 years and visit regularly. Poland used to be way poorer than Czechia, but these days it looks the other way around. I think the stats are either lagging behind or computed wrong. Note I regularly visit both the cities and the countryside in both Czechia and Poland.
Btw, the article has a "GDP per capita growth in post-communist countries" table, with Poland at the top and Czechia at the bottom.
This is a very bad measure of anything, especially wealth.
Do you seriously believe Russians would leave Crimea if Ukrainians didn’t renew the lease?
Maybe all of those hardworking people could have done even better with a different macro strategy?
What made it a success was also the social capital in Poland, a lot of people worked extremely hard to pull it off, but still high unemployment was alleviated only by joining EU and people leaving to find employment elsewhere
I wonder how far Poland would be without the years of PiS corruption.
It is true of course that they were the most persistent and brave. I don't think it would have been possible in East Germany for example, which ran a tighter regime until Poland managed the peaceful revolution.
Today's politicians look like angry toddlers in a sandbox in comparison.
There ware other great people of course, but these two paid the price.
The story is told in much more detail in the OP. What do you feel is missing from it?
