Four Perspectives

When I look back, I have four perspectives: a Polish one, because I am a Pole; a Russian one, because the cards were really shuffled there; a Central European one, because the fall of communism was not a purely Polish phenomenon; and finally, the perspective of the West.

The West was not at all prepared for what happened... The decisive factor was Russia. The perestroika reforms set new forces free, and they triggered further processes that developed a new dynamic. For a long time, neither the ruling communist elite nor the opposition in Central Europe understood what was actually underway in Russia.

...In Poland, the idea behind the Round Table was to bring about a kind of Finlandization of Poland. We knew we could not win a war against Russia, which is why we had to work with what came to us from Russia. Thus perestroika was our natural ally.