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The Collapse of Communist Power in Poland: Strategic misperceptions and unanticipated outcomes. By JACQUELINE HAYDEN London: Routledge, 2006, 178 pp. £65.00 ISBN 0 415 36805 7
Jacqueline Hayden has been involved with Polish politics, firstly as a journalist then a scholar, for over two decades. Her latest book is part of the established BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies. It explores the reasons behind the 1989 collapse of the PZPR, the ruling communist party in Poland. The study does not intend to provide yet another holistic explanation of why communism collapsed, instead it is much more precisely aimed at elucidating the specific political reasons why PZPR failed and its timing.
The author applies an analytic narrative approach and utilises secondary sources complemented with impressive primary research data collected in the course of her interviews with the main actors negotiating on both sides at the Round Table (including all four presidents of Poland, other politicians, academics, and Roman Catholic Church officials). Assuming the Party's rationality, that is, interest in sustaining power, and that neither the communists nor the Solidarnosc-led opposition anticipated the fall of communism at the start of Round Table talks, Hayden sets out to discuss the...