Success at last

A couple of years ago, Adam Zamoyski — who is, yes, a friend — told me that he was revising The Polish Way, a history of Poland he had published back in 1987. At first he had thought merely to shorten a few over-long paragraphs and check facts. But as he re-read his work, he decided it needed more dramatic changes. In 1987, Poland had not been a sovereign country: Polish domestic and foreign politics were still directly controlled by the Soviet Union, which itself was still very much in existence. That meant, he explained, that he was writing the history of a country which had failed. His task, as a historian, had been to explain that failure.

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Matthew Lynn

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Twenty years later, Poland is not only a sovereign country, but one which is growing, economically and politically, with astonishing speed — so much so that one Polish acquaintance describes the last decade as ‘the most successful in three centuries.’