Popular antagonism forced communist parties to develop useful opposition-era skills

Evidence

Second, the longstanding resistance to communism in countries such as Poland was said to have eliminated the successor parties as political competitors in a freely elected party system. After all, the party was widely repudiated by the populace, and the imposition of the communist regime in Poland was likened to “placing a saddle on a cow,” in Josef Stalin’s rustic phrasing. However, this public antagonism had a very different effect on the party itself. The more the party had to respond to an antagonistic society, the more it could develop experience with policy innovation, negotiation, and justification. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 140

Categorization

• QUESTION: Does this ‘learning under antagonism’ effect hold for the Polish party specifically — and does it parallel other organizations that benefitted from harassment?
• XREF: Contrasts with threat-hardening accounts where external pressure entrenches beliefs rather than building adaptive skill; worth comparing to the reader’s ‘correction backfires’ theme. — connects to: Suppressing democracy trained communist elites in the skills democratic competition later needed — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 64; Communist mass-party organizational forms could not survive democratic transitions — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 388; Authoritarian-era party practices can later produce democratic competence — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 122 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Suppressing democracy trained communist elites in the skills democratic competition later needed #corroborates (0.92) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 64
• Authoritarian-era party practices can later produce democratic competence #expands (0.88) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 122
• Communist organizational legacies paradoxically enabled successor parties’ democratic survival #corroborates (0.82)
• Communist mass-party organizational forms could not survive democratic transitions #contradicts (0.80) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 388