the Polish Women’s League is worth retelling. By 1989 the organization was utterly moribund at the national level. In the early 1990s it more or less collapsed altogether: no one needed a women’s group that provided propaganda for a communist party that no longer existed. But in the late 1990s, once again in the city of Łódź, a group of local women decided that some of the functions that the league had originally been designed to perform were still necessary. And so the league regrouped, reorganized, and refounded itself—now for the third time—as an independent organization. As in 1945, its leaders identified a set of problems no one else seemed able to solve, and they set about addressing them. Initially, the league offered free legal clinics for women who could not afford legal advice. Later it branched into assistance for unemployed women; job training, advice, and services for single women with children; help for alcoholics and drug addicts. At Christmas, the league began to organize parties for the homeless in Łódź. Its website now carries a straightforward motto: “If you have a problem, come to us, we’ll help you or we’ll point you in the right direction.” 6 It is a much smaller organization, but its character is charitable, just as it was in the past.
In part, the new Women’s League succeeded because its leaders, like othersin Poland, were so eager to copy Western European models. Though they themselves had never worked for a charity or a nonprofit organization, the league’s leaders certainly knew what these legal entities were. Polish law by then accommodated their existence, and the Polish political class welcomed them, just as they welcomed independent schools, private businesses, and political parties. This made Poland different from Russia, where hostility to independent organizations remains strong, even a generation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and where the legal environment is still not conducive to their formation or their funding. The Russian political elite still considers independent charities, advocacy groups, and nongovernmental organizations of all kinds suspicious, by definition, and uses both legal and extralegal means to restrain them. 7
In Poland the legal framework not only accommodated the existence of independent organizations but also permitted them to raise funds. At first, the Women’s League had petitioned the government for money to support their projects because that was how they had been supported in the past. In an era of economic restructuring, they had only minimal success. But Łódź is a city of textile mills, and textile mills employ women. The Women’s League approached the new mill owners and convinced a few of them to help. Donations began to come in, the organization stayed alive. In 2006, seventeen years after the fall of communism, the Łódź Women’s League became a registered private charity. As it turned out, the modern Polish Women’s League needed not only energetic and patriotic volunteers but also an intact legal system, a functioning economic system, and a democratic political system in order to thrive.
Some of the energy and the initiative to start these projects also came from a sharp consciousness of the organization’s communist and pre-communist history. One of the new leaders, Janina Miziołek, had spent time as a very small child in one of the shelters set up by the Women’s League in train stations. Others who had been active in the league in the communist period sought to retrieve something useful from the organization’s wreckage: if they could remove the politics, some of them told me, perhaps they could really do something useful. They remembered what had gone wrong, and they were anxious to fix it.
The women of Łódź were clearly motivated by history, though not by history as it is sometimes used or abused by politicians. They were inspirednot by state-sponsored celebrations of past tragedies or national
In part, the new Women’s League succeeded because its leaders, like othersin Poland, were so eager to copy Western European models. Though they themselves had never worked for a charity or a nonprofit organization, the league’s leaders certainly knew what these legal entities were. Polish law by then accommodated their existence, and the Polish political class welcomed them, just as they welcomed independent schools, private businesses, and political parties. This made Poland different from Russia, where hostility to independent organizations remains strong, even a generation after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and where the legal environment is still not conducive to their formation or their funding. The Russian political elite still considers independent charities, advocacy groups, and nongovernmental organizations of all kinds suspicious, by definition, and uses both legal and extralegal means to restrain them. 7
In Poland the legal framework not only accommodated the existence of independent organizations but also permitted them to raise funds. At first, the Women’s League had petitioned the government for money to support their projects because that was how they had been supported in the past. In an era of economic restructuring, they had only minimal success. But Łódź is a city of textile mills, and textile mills employ women. The Women’s League approached the new mill owners and convinced a few of them to help. Donations began to come in, the organization stayed alive. In 2006, seventeen years after the fall of communism, the Łódź Women’s League became a registered private charity. As it turned out, the modern Polish Women’s League needed not only energetic and patriotic volunteers but also an intact legal system, a functioning economic system, and a democratic political system in order to thrive.
Some of the energy and the initiative to start these projects also came from a sharp consciousness of the organization’s communist and pre-communist history. One of the new leaders, Janina Miziołek, had spent time as a very small child in one of the shelters set up by the Women’s League in train stations. Others who had been active in the league in the communist period sought to retrieve something useful from the organization’s wreckage: if they could remove the politics, some of them told me, perhaps they could really do something useful. They remembered what had gone wrong, and they were anxious to fix it.
The women of Łódź were clearly motivated by history, though not by history as it is sometimes used or abused by politicians. They were inspirednot by state-sponsored celebrations of past tragedies or national
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