Search:

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was called "Rzeczpospolita" which is taken from Res Publica which literally means Republic. The system used back then is often called Nobles Democracy but there was a lot more Nobles in the Commonwealth than in the Western countries, somewhere around 10-20% of the population i think. Nobles were voting for the King and they were deciding most things about the country, the King's power was very limited. This lasted till XVIII century when absolute monarchies partitioned Commonwealth. When Poland was revived in 1918 it used standard democratic system. About the media, it is a weird relationship. Aside from National TV which will obviously be pro-government since they control it, the private TVs don't support a single politician or a party. They support the establishment as a whole. There is no direct tie between them and politicians. Actually there are more ties to the other countries like Germany or USA. Poles often blame Germans for controlling our elections through paper media because most of the paper media is owned by German corporations. TVN, one of the biggest two private TV stations is owned by Americans i think, the other one, Polsat i think is actually owned by a Pole. And of those two stations, the TVN is accused of most of the manipulations, while Polsat is usually seen as more fair one. What i mean is that on paper i think you can't find many differences between Polish democracy and other Western democracies. It's really complicated and it's hard for me to explain everything, especially in English. It all goes down to that people are either stupid or don't care. Polish elections attendance is usually around 50%, elections to EU Parliament usually had 25% attendance, only last year it increased. Any democracy won't work here, if u tried to implement a direct democracy here it would most likely be a disaster. It's not only because of Soviets. It's also because of partitions which pushed many intelligent people to migrate to countries like France and then Hitler's occupation which killed many intelligent Poles and Polish Jews. About that Oligarchy thing, i'm not sure how other Eastern countries see themselfs, but most of the Poles believe in democracy, they feel they belong to Western Europe and like i said Polish system is mostly influenced by the West while countries like Ukraine or Byelorussia are a lot more influenced by Russia. Maybe Polish system in practice has some similiarities to Eastern Countries but it's definitely not the same.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was called "Rzeczpospolita" which is taken from Res Publica which literally means Republic. The system used back then is often called Nobles Democracy but there was a lot more Nobles in the Commonwealth than in the Western countries, somewhere around 10-20% of the population i think. Nobles were voting for the King and they were deciding most things about the country, the King's power was very limited. This lasted till XVIII century when absolute monarchies partitioned Commonwealth. When Poland was revived in 1918 it used standard democratic system. About the media, it is a weird relationship. Aside from National TV which will obviously be pro-government since they control it, the private TVs don't support a single politician or a party. They support the establishment as a whole. There is no direct tie between them and politicians. Actually there are more ties to the other countries like Germany or USA. Poles often blame Germans for controlling our elections through paper media because most of the paper media is owned by German corporations. TVN, one of the biggest two private TV stations is owned by Americans i think, the other one, Polsat i think is actually owned by a Pole. And of those two stations, the TVN is accused of most of the manipulations, while Polsat is usually seen as more fair one. What i mean is that on paper i think you can't find many differences between Polish democracy and other Western democracies. It's really complicated and it's hard for me to explain everything, especially in English. It all goes down to that people are either stupid or don't care. Polish elections attendance is usually around 50%, elections to EU Parliament usually had 25% attendance, only last year it increased. Any democracy won't work here, if u tried to implement a direct democracy here it would most likely be a disaster. It's not only because of Soviets. It's also because of partitions which pushed many intelligent people to migrate to countries like France and then Hitler's occupation which killed many intelligent Poles and Polish Jews. About that Oligarchy thing, i'm not sure how other Eastern countries see themselfs, but most of the Poles believe in democracy, they feel they belong to Western Europe and like i said Polish system is mostly influenced by the West while countries like Ukraine or Byelorussia are a lot more influenced by Russia. Maybe Polish system in practice has some similiarities to Eastern Countries but it's definitely not the same.

You can't really call Poland not a democracy, it's definitely not typical eastern oligarchy. Poland has really long democratic history dating back to XV/XVI century. The problem doesn't lie here in Russian influence, everyone hates Russia and old PRL regime. Poland is mostly based on Western countries. Actually you could call it more democratic than countries like US or France since they have more of a presidential system, in Poland President can't do much.

You can't really call Poland not a democracy, it's definitely not typical eastern oligarchy. Poland has really long democratic history dating back to XV/XVI century. The problem doesn't lie here in Russian influence, everyone hates Russia and old PRL regime. Poland is mostly based on Western countries. Actually you could call it more democratic than countries like US or France since they have more of a presidential system, in Poland President can't do much.

The media didn't like Donald Trump that's true, but the media was still transmitting his speeches because people wanted to see them and this is profit for TV stations. Here in Poland if someone isn't accepted by establishment he will not be even mentioned anywhere in media outside of internet. We have only 3 TV stations that are big enough to count, one is national Polish TV run by government so it's always pushing the current rulling party agenda and other 2 are private but they still have ties with politicians so they support current establishment, you can't say politicians own them but they are obviously tied in some way. To transmit anything you need to have license from the government so you could say they control TV. And since our society either doesn't care about politics at all or is too old and too devoted to the parties they are voting for for years the TV has a very big influence over elections. So since 90s we have same 4 political parties in the parliament with same people only changing parties names. Currently it is PiS (Law and Justice), the rulling party with high chances of keeping their dominance in upcoming elections, they are very conservative in terms of religion and LGBT rights but their economic agenda is straight from 1930s Poland, they want to nationalise some economic branches like banking and are giving money left and right basically buying votes. The second one is PO (Citizen's Platform) which would be polish version of Democrats but more conservative since Polish society is more conservative than the Western ones, for example they will say that LGBT rights are important for them but in 8 years of rulling they did nothing about changing them. And 2 which are a lot smaller than they were 20 years ago are SLD (Alliance of Democratic Left) which is typical leftist party and PSL (Polish People Party) which is a centrist party focused on farmers and they have a lot of power in local power structures like Cities councils and such. So there is literally no one in Polish parliament who will oppose increasing taxes and increasing regulations. After 30 years it seems like the SLD which is described as the most leftist party was actually the most sober and capitalistic of them all. No matter how many "Polish Watergate" scandals there are it only leads to few weeks of outrage and then coming back to normal. People also don't understand what they vote for, they literally only look on few campaign lines right before elections. For example PO 12 years ago said they will decrease taxes so people voted for them but they didn't decrease a single tax in 8 years, 4 years ago they said they are against PiS social programs and 2 years ago they changed their mind and said they will keep them. But their voters didn't seem to notice, many of them still think they are voting against increasing taxes and state social programs like 500+ (500 PLN monthly for every child the family raises). Basically 2 biggest political parties in Poland which are getting like 80% of total votes every election are barely different from eachother but fighting between those parties and their voters sometimes seems like it's civil war, but they don't even know over what.

The media didn't like Donald Trump that's true, but the media was still transmitting his speeches because people wanted to see them and this is profit for TV stations. Here in Poland if someone isn't accepted by establishment he will not be even mentioned anywhere in media outside of internet. We have only 3 TV stations that are big enough to count, one is national Polish TV run by government so it's always pushing the current rulling party agenda and other 2 are private but they still have ties with politicians so they support current establishment, you can't say politicians own them but they are obviously tied in some way. To transmit anything you need to have license from the government so you could say they control TV. And since our society either doesn't care about politics at all or is too old and too devoted to the parties they are voting for for years the TV has a very big influence over elections. So since 90s we have same 4 political parties in the parliament with same people only changing parties names. Currently it is PiS (Law and Justice), the rulling party with high chances of keeping their dominance in upcoming elections, they are very conservative in terms of religion and LGBT rights but their economic agenda is straight from 1930s Poland, they want to nationalise some economic branches like banking and are giving money left and right basically buying votes. The second one is PO (Citizen's Platform) which would be polish version of Democrats but more conservative since Polish society is more conservative than the Western ones, for example they will say that LGBT rights are important for them but in 8 years of rulling they did nothing about changing them. And 2 which are a lot smaller than they were 20 years ago are SLD (Alliance of Democratic Left) which is typical leftist party and PSL (Polish People Party) which is a centrist party focused on farmers and they have a lot of power in local power structures like Cities councils and such. So there is literally no one in Polish parliament who will oppose increasing taxes and increasing regulations. After 30 years it seems like the SLD which is described as the most leftist party was actually the most sober and capitalistic of them all. No matter how many "Polish Watergate" scandals there are it only leads to few weeks of outrage and then coming back to normal. People also don't understand what they vote for, they literally only look on few campaign lines right before elections. For example PO 12 years ago said they will decrease taxes so people voted for them but they didn't decrease a single tax in 8 years, 4 years ago they said they are against PiS social programs and 2 years ago they changed their mind and said they will keep them. But their voters didn't seem to notice, many of them still think they are voting against increasing taxes and state social programs like 500+ (500 PLN monthly for every child the family raises). Basically 2 biggest political parties in Poland which are getting like 80% of total votes every election are barely different from eachother but fighting between those parties and their voters sometimes seems like it's civil war, but they don't even know over what.