This book looks at documents about Polish social and political reality in the socialist period, compared to the experience of searching for alternative statism. The documents are grouped in three phases of post-war development: from 1956 until 1975, from 1976 until 1979, during which time there was a search for alternative paths of development, and then the period from 1979 until 1981, that is, the beginning of the end of real socialism and the gradual rise of Solidarity. The selected sources testify to an ever-greater influx of civil society and non-party elements in the thinking about Polish development.