On 6 Feb it will be thirty years since the start of the Round Table Talks, proceedings that became an essential element of the foundation myth of the democratic Polish state. To mark the occasion, CBOS carried out a survey to see how Polish people remember those times and what, in retrospect, is their assessment of the negotiations between the communist government and the democratic opposition, that took place in early 1989.

It turns out that, with the passage of time, perceptions of the end of communism have been changing: the symbolic position of the Round Table has diminished, with a concurrent increase in the significance of the first properly free elections of 1991. Only ten years ago, when people were asked to indicate when communism in Poland ended, 40% of respondents chose the Round Table Talks. Now this percentage is markedly lower, at 22%. Conversely, when people were asked whether they thought the 1991 parliamentary elections constituted the end of communism in Poland, in 2009 only 9% of respondents thought so, while now it is 25%. In this year’s survey, it was the most frequently selected answer out of all the options provided.

These two occurrences, which were the inception and the finale of the formal process of power ceding by the communist side, are the ones that stand out in the collective memory of those times. Other answers tend to be selected much less frequently.

More on this subject in the CBOS report.