3. AN OPEN SOCIETY
The transformation that took place in Poland in 1989 was meant to build an open society. But finally it was not completely reached. It was extremely hard to achieve this goal after 50 years of communism. Technically, in the early 90s there were appropriate circumstances to build open society: freedom of speech, media, trade unions, legal strike and demonstration. Poland stopped its social development somewhere between open society and closed society. The “intermediate” society, as we can experience it in Poland today, is open for new ideas, cultures and has values which are “cementing” the society.
As we could have observed, after social refresh, a kind of relief occurred in society. Many people and institutions (investors, entrepreneurs, small businessmen even regular citizens) were hopeful and believed that they could run their business and do what they wanted. Such situation took place right after 1989. Later it was not the case, as there was not straight continuation. People noticed that they were missing something. They felt like they lost something what they had known before. They realized that it is not so easy to introduce open society to their life. They didn’t want to accept new life’s order, new rules. However they still believed in a better future and more dynamic economic growth.
The main target taken by new democratic governance was to reach the level of development of other, highly developed countries in Western Europe. It meant that social life had to be totally re-organized, especially relations between people. In Eastern Europe we got constitution that by itself is useless. There is democracy that will not help individuals be less oppressed by local elites and local powers. But the constitution allows people to organize themselves into various kind of legal organization and other NGOs outside the structure of government to make substantial societal changes.  Because of that, it was easier to be part of a Western Europe Society.

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