The Ambivalence of Social Change in Post-Communist Societies. The Case of Poland

  • Piotr Sztompka
Chapter

Abstract

Why ambivalence? Because the story of the almost eighteen years since the collapse of communism has been told in two opposite ways. The optimistic, heroic narratives describe an epochal success of couomes which have come a long way from. Soviet satellites to tnembers of the European Union and Atlantic Alliance; the process of liberation, emanoipation, modernization, Europeaniaiation, Westernization. The pessimistic, gloomy narratives see the same process as the sequence of failures, escessive social hardships, growing inequalities, survivals of communism, unfinished revolution.

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© VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften | Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH 2010

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  • Piotr Sztompka

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