From Communism To Democracy: The Evolution Of LGBTQIA+ Rights In Poland
Tomasz Jedrowski is the author of Service95 Book Club’s Monthly Read for May: Swimming In The Dark. Set in 1980s Poland, two students fall in love one summer but have to return to Warsaw under the watchful eye of the party. To celebrate, author and journalist Mark Lynas discusses the history of Poland and the development of LGBTQIA+ rights.
By the 1980s, virtually no-one in Communist Poland still believed in Communism. The Polish People’s Republic, an Eastern European puppet state established by the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin in the aftermath of the Second World War, was by then several decades old. As part of the Warsaw Pact of 1955, Poland found itself on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain, and life for ordinary people was severely curtailed. Media was censored, the secret police listened in to phone calls, and basic goods were rationed. As much of Warsaw had been destroyed by bombing in the war, many people lived in Soviet-style drab tower blocks.
This pervasive gloom born of political and economic stagnation forms the backdrop of Tomasz Jedrowski’s novel Swimming In The Dark, a masterful coming-of-age story about gay life in Cold War Poland. The story illustrates how ordinary people were forced to lead double lives, outwardly pretending to believe in the Communist system despite its widespread corruption and the knowledge that living standards in the capitalist West were much higher. Like Jedrowski’s protagonists Ludwik and Janusz, many citizens – including gay people – lived in constant fear of arrest, blackmail or worse.
While LGBTQIA+ activity was never officially illegal, the combined conservatism of the Communist authorities and the Catholic Church, the predominant religion in Poland at the time, made open same-sex relationships impossible – a tension that forms the main narrative drive of the book.
Swimming In The Dark also references the political opposition that was beginning to mobilise in Poland at the time, with workers’ strikes and the rise of the pro-democracy trade union movement Solidarity. By the 1970s, the state was bankrupt and forced to borrow from the West, leaving Polish currency increasingly worthless. As a result, there were constant shortages of basic goods and medicine. In 1981, the Communist government proclaimed martial law, driving Solidarity underground. But efforts to crush the opposition failed and by the late 1980s, nationwide strikes and marches forced the Communists to allow Solidarity into government as a political party. The regime officially ended with the first free elections in June 1989. That year also brought revolutions, which led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of Communism across Eastern Europe.
In the new democratic Poland, the situation for LGBTQIA+ people improved as society became more free, but there have also been serious setbacks. Pride marches have been opposed by politicians, and in just the past decade, the ruling ultra-conservative Law and Justice Party made opposing “LGBT ideology” one of the centrepieces of its political campaigns. Many regions and towns declared themselves “LGBT-free zones” in a conservative backlash encouraged by Law and Justice. However, Law and Justice lost the most recent elections in October 2023, which brought a more liberal government led by Donald Tusk to power. The new government has made efforts to promote marriage equality and to integrate EU human rights laws that the previous government had refused to implement. Same-sex marriages are still not recognised, however, and there is a long way to go until LGBTQIA+ people have truly equal rights in Poland.
Mark Lynas is an author and campaigner based in Wales. He is climate advisor to former president of the Maldives Mohamed Nasheed, and his latest book is Our Final Warning: Six Degrees Of Climate Emergency
