Poland’s long farewell to the End of History

There are few ideas in the world as harshly criticized as the ‘end of history’ – and not without reason. After 1989, it was an expression of the West’s sense of superiority over the rest of the world. From then on, the rest was to mould itself in the West’s image. Freedom from oppression, equality before the law, growing opportunities for consumption and individual self-fulfilment were the last ideals standing on the ideological battlefield. Liberal democracy, the free market and trade were to be globalized and – sooner or later – to triumph all over the world.

Then came the Asian crisis, 9/11, the bursting of the dot.com bubble, the war in Iraq, the financial crisis of 2007-8 and beyond, the rise of China, Brexit and Trump’s first election victory, the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and Gaza… all reasons to consider the ‘end of history’ a bad joke.

Only in Eastern Europe, which itself prefers to be called ‘central’, did the thesis persist. In other words, Poland dreamt its end-of-history dream right up until February 2025, and for good reason. But we need to take this one step at a time.

Fukuyama’s idea becomes a faith

Francis Fukuyama's famous essay expressed the triumphalist spirit of the era. It appeared shortly after the collapse of the USSR and China’s practical conversion to (state-, but nevertheless) capitalism. The American political scientist deployed the ideas of Hegel and several lesser-known thinkers, but the general public (including many decisionmakers) understood it quite simply: from now on the West was not only the best, but in practice the only ideology. Competing visions of the good society, especially utopias, had been compromised. Perhaps the nationalists and religious fundamentalists had not surrendered completely; nevertheless it seemed that every rational person in the world wanted a life like those in the US and Western Europe.

It was a credo, obviously. Something resembling religious faith, and as a faith it had its dogmas (globalization is irreversible), its commandments (the Washington Consensus) and its theological studies (modernization theory, neoclassical economics). It also had a vision of the Good Society (democratic, liberal, capitalist), universalist aspirations (there is neither Jew nor Greek; all people desire freedom from coercion and the freedom to consume). Last but not least, all of this was backed by the entire might of the earthly Church, namely the geopolitical bloc of the West, anchored by US hegemony at sea, in the air and on the financial markets.

Critics – especially in the Global South – accused the advocates of the ‘end of history’ of hypocrisy: many of the economic dogmas of the time were suggested for the countries of the periphery (‘do as we say, not as we do,’ said the IMF experts). Many restrictions, rules and solutions were de facto imposed by force, under the slogan of ‘structural adjustments’. The argument for growth was accompanied by indifference towards social inequalities, violations of workers’ rights and degradation of the natural environment. Unsurprisingly, global capitalism could pollute the planet just like the Soviet planned economy. And in the name of freedom and to secure peace, wars were waged, which destabilized entire regions. Critical voices were countless, but the greatest blows to faith in the ‘end of history’ were dealt by events. Various pillars of faith fell one after another, even for the winners of globalization.

The earliest pillar to fall was that of universalism. It was gone by 2001, or at the latest in 2004-5, when Western public opinion quickly replaced the ‘end of history’ with the ‘clash of civilizations’, another concept by another influential US political scientist. A few years later, after a devastating war in Iraq, it was clear that the rest does not want to be like the West.

Then, in 2008, the dogma of neoliberal capitalism went to hell in a handcart, as did the arrogant belief that Beijing would soon replace Mao's Little Red Book with Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.

In 2016 the Brexit referendum put paid to the myth of ‘ever closer union’ in Europe, and at the same time the new president of the United States began to utter the language of protectionism. The liberal, free trade order was shaken to its core. Another blow to globalization was dealt by the pandemic in 2020 – it turned out that the optimization of supply chains generates costs for consumers and threats to entire countries. The 2020s made everyone realize that trade does not prevent war, and that interconnectivity can quite easily be weaponized – as Russia demonstrated with its gas supply to Europe.

Poland and the Return of History

The ‘return of history’ meant there was no sense in taking Fukuyama’s concept, the whole myth, this quasi-religious belief, seriously. Yet Poland, my home country, is only now parting ways with its belief in the end of history. Does this mean the Poles slept through everything that happened after 2001? Not at all. It is just that for Poles, the ‘end of history’ meant something more than just the triumph of the West. This was not a manifestation of our complacency, as it was in the affluent West, but rather a titanic challenge. We wanted to be part of the world that – in its eyes and ours – had won 1989 and was an ‘active utopia’, an unrivalled ideal that mobilized us to act after the defeat of real socialism. It helped us endure the collateral damage of economic transition. It also pacified political discontent – for a long time, the social suffering could be blamed on the failure of state-planned economic policies. So for over a decade, unemployment in Poland, reaching up to 20 per cent of the workforce, was treated as a sad but necessary cost of transformation, not a failure of the new neoliberal policies. On the other hand, the desire to join the Western club limited the wilfulness of elites and curbed corruption – because there was a need to prove Poland’s worthiness of admission to the rich and happy circle of ‘civilized nations’.

This enthusiasm was not so very naive: we took advantage of the American security umbrella, we embraced Western hegemony, with liberal democracy and capitalism as the context; it gave us a sense of existential certainty. The spectres of Yalta’s division of Europe were banished forever. Realists of that era said that we had moved from the Soviet to the US sphere of influence. Idealists thought there would be no spheres of influence any more. Either way, everyone believed that as long as America was in, Russia would be out. The rest, namely the economy, would be dealt with inside Europe.

So European integration became our way to globalization; it enforced a tough fiscal policy, but gave real hope for future prosperity. We became a leader in free trade and supply chain optimization. When political tensions were growing in the western EU, transfers from Brussels and from Polish workers abroad began to flow into Poland. For years, we were an exporter of workers, but an importer of jobs in factories that the German automotive industry built on our side of the border. When the American economic crisis spread to the eurozone, Spanish youths were unemployed and Greek pensioners impoverished, but Poland stayed afloat even though employees paid the price and saw the precarization of the labour market. Brexit, although painful for many migrant families in the UK, was hardly the social disaster many people in Poland feared. In politics, this whole ‘end of history’ narrative enabled mainstream parties to keep right-wing populists at bay for the first 25 years after 1989. Despite tensions surrounding the rule of law in Poland more recently, conflicts with EU institutions and opposition to the excessively submissive, naive or cynical policies of Western countries towards Russia, the survival of the Western world and Poland’s place within it was beyond doubt.

It was only with the pandemic and a full-scale war on our doorstep that we started to feel that the old world was coming to an end. The growth of affluence is no longer regarded as unstoppable (since 1992 the Polish economy had grown every year); the individualism of consumer aspirations has been replaced by a fear for individual self-preservation, marking an egoistical turn in politics (namely a weakening of the valence of the ‘common good’).

Another pillar of the ‘end of history’ fell in February 2022; the full-scale Russian invasion of our neighbour, with millions of refugees received by Polish communities, was something beyond imagination. But one prop continued to support the facade of the old way of thinking: US President Joe Biden's commitment to stand with Ukraine ‘as long as it takes’, which was followed by US Javelins, HIMARSs and Bradleys (as well as Polish T-72s, German Marders and French CAESARs).

Despite theological dogmas being long dead, and the ranks of true believers thinning to become a minority, the belief system persisted. The global power, whose highest authority reaffirmed core values, remained steadfast: the US backed its European allies against a shared mortal enemy. In spite of its reservations (too little, too soft, too late), a great sigh of relief was audible in Poland at that time. It was not just a question of Ukraine and its survival; the order of the world was being confirmed. The US President spoke of Western values, signed a Lend-lease Act and sent weapons. If the US is on our side, the return of history is not to be feared.

But when Volodymyr Zelensky was humiliated in the Oval Office and there were suggestions of the US withdrawing from Europe, when threats were directed at allied Denmark and Trump made blandishments to Vladimir Putin, it became easy to imagine how Poles feel.

Faith as Betrayal

After 1989, Poland built its capitalism and democracy at a rapid pace, because it had no other choice. The costs were high, not everyone knew what they were signing up for, but the direction was known and was shared by most of society. The vision of a new world of the ‘end of history’ was coherent and attractive. Behind it stood material power – the military, economic, political and cultural hegemony of the USA – and with it, the presence of America in Europe.

This last pillar of the post-1989 era may now topple at any moment. The uncertainty of when is a game-changer. The ‘end of history’ was a time of certainty for us, no matter if it was illusory. Now nothing is certain, everything is possible, but we as a society are divided on the question of what happens next. In recent weeks, Polish women and men have woken to find themselves living in a fast-changing era. It is worth remembering that the Far Eastern dictum ‘may you live in interesting times’ was a curse.