NOT MANY PEOPLE tune in these days, but Radio Maryja still has some political clout. The ultra-conservative broadcaster articulates the feelings of Poles alienated by their country’s new, materialist business culture and by what they see as the moral decay of society. Founded in 1991, it filled a vacuum. Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, the entrepreneurial Roman Catholic priest who runs the radio station, saw that this unhappy chunk of the population needed a mouthpiece. He has turned it into a lucrative business that includes a private university and even an aqua park in Torun, where his radio station is based.Radio Maryja’s most faithful listeners tend to be old, live in rural areas in eastern Poland and vote for the conservative PiS. They are part of “Polska B”, the poorer, less developed Poland, as opposed to “Polska A”, the growth centres in Warsaw and in western Poland, around Poznan and Wroclaw. The division amounts to more than a difference in wealth. “There is also the perception of a cultural divide between the two Polands, with Polska B being perceived as backward civilisationally, behind a wschodnia sciana (Eastern Wall),” says...
from The Economist: Special report http://ift.tt/VqUDMM
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