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.The liberal/peasant- 135 - division again relates first and foremost to centre-peripheral differences, but also tosome extent to the old state boundaries.In addition, there are local differences that can be thought to result fromsocioeconomic distinctiveness and that display certain rules when it comes tospatial distribution (Fig.28, 29).At regional level these have gone unheeded forobjective reasons, while also being subject to "spatial contagion", i.e.the impact ofthe electoral trends dominant within the region and reflecting its socioeconomic andcultural specifics (see Walmsley and Lewis 1997).Thus the behaviour of localcommunities that are similar from the socioeconomic point of view, albeit locatedin different regions, may only be compared effectively once these regularities havebeen taken account of.The strong differentiation to Polish society which harks back to the divisionof Polish lands in the years 1815-1918 or even 1772-1945 evokes suppositions as tocivilisational distinctiveness in Polish society that are reminiscent of differencesobserved in Europe and referred to recently by S.P.Huntington (1998).Poland maybe considered to have come under the influence of three civilisational and culturalqualities (Fig.31): that of the southern, i.e.Catholic, variant of Western civilisationconsidered most strongly associated with Polish tradition; that of the northern, i.e.Protestant, variant of that same civilisation; and that of Russian civilisation.Itwould also seem significant that the Protestant formation appeared here in itsPrussian guise, which the Polish historian F.Koneczny (1972) regarded to as anorth European form of the Byzantine civilisation.The civilisational impacts ofPrussia and Russia were bound up with stronger state interference in public life,with authoritarianism and with the state-sponsored modernisation that laterfacilitated the entry of the communist system.Somewhat at a second pole is thesociety less subjected to the impact of these civilisations and thus remaining inclosest contact with the Catholic, i.e.southern European, variant of Westerncivilisation, with its traditionalism, respect for private property and minimal stateintervention in socioeconomic life.In F.Koneczny's opinion, it is just thisformation that constitutes the essence of this civilisation.These communities werethe most resistant to the communist system, as well as being most closely associatedwith the "Solidarity" movement.Such a civilisational and cultural differentiation ofPolish society was above all transformed in the 1990s into support for left and right.Certain linkages between this division and the peasant and liberal options are alsodiscernible.The peasants would represent the traditions of rural societies leastclosely-linked with Western civilisation, while the liberal influences would first andforemost represent the elite urban societies for which the values characteristic ofWestern civilisation are closest to heart - thereby leaving a greater distance wherereligious devotion of the peasant type is concerned.Similarities with the Polish situation are to be observed in other post-communist societies, most especially those crossed by state boundaries in the not-too-distant past, and hence left open to the impacts of different civilisational andcultural systems.Thus, in Romania, Transylvania differs from the rest of thecountry, while in Belarus and Ukraine there are clear east-west divisions.Similarly,the Länder of Brandenburg and Saxony are seen to differ in eastern Germany.Indeed, this may be regarded as a rather universal phenomenon in Central andEastern Europe, notwithstanding the differences existing between the societies inthe states there.However, on account of its specifics, it would be difficult to placethis phenomenon within the classical scheme for political divisions in WesternEuropean countries (see Zarzycki 1997).For the societies there were not subject to- 136 - such severe impacts of different civilisational systems, and nor did they findthemselves under communist governments.The question remaining concerns thedegree to which the phenomenon is associated with those new socioeconomictrends to be observed for some time now in Western Europe.In fact, similaritiesmay only be looked for in the certain kind of crisis that seems to be facingmodernism (Bell 1994, Gowin 1999) and the political trends hitherto associatedwith it like the idea of the welfare state (Habermas 1998); as well as the appearanceof new political currents (the greens, regional movements and the "Haiderphenomenon") that seek inter alia to limit the ever-growing state bureaucracy.Itmay thus be that both parts of Europe are faced with a more universal politicalphenomenon characteristic of the new epoch with its different substratum forpolitical division reflecting the new social, cultural and economic conditioning, aswell as the intensification of modernism and the search for new systemic solutions.In post-Communist countries, particularly those differing in civilisational andcultural terms, the political systems would seem to be more distinct.Thisundoubtedly results from the stronger civilisational contrasts and - deriving fromthem - the differing susceptibility to state-sponsored modernisation of differentfragments of Central and Eastern European societies
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