The Polish elite seems to have a strange psychological complex whereby they can only feel national pride by becoming somebody's satrap.
[WS:] Indeed, I have been baffled by this kind of buffoonery myself. This sucking up to superpowers seems to be a part of their national character, yet Poland had relatively few quislings comparing to other countries of Europe. The best explanation of this apparent paradox I can think of is that this not really sucking up, but a desire to shine with reflected light. The reasons behind this desire are likely to be rooted in Poland's economic history.
Unlike many other European countries, Poland never developed its own urban economy and culture. Since the reformation, Polish cities were strangled by the landed gentry in alliance with the reactionary anti-reformation Catholic church. This feudal grip lasted until the second half of the 19th century, probably the longest in Europe.
The landed gentry have never produced anything themselves - they merely exploited peasantry in a rather crude and primitive way and used the surplus to import luxury goods from Europe (for an analysis of this type of economic system see Witold Kula, _An Economic Theory of the Feudal System_. ) This led to the underdevelopment of domestic industry and domestically produced high culture. In fact, Poland never developed strong domestic bourgeoisie - the 19th century industrialist class that inhabited Polish lands (Poland was under occupation at that time) was dominated by foreign imports, mainly from Germany, which continued a similar pattern of the exploitation of local labor for export oriented production and conspicuous consumption of imported cultural and luxury goods.
This pattern of economic development created a strong association between social status and the conspicuous consumption of imported goods and ideas in the local culture. The post WW2 communists inadvertently reinforced this pattern, which is quite ironic in the light of the fact that the main thrust of their economic policy was import substitution and rapid development of local industry. Two factors that seem to play a particularly important role in this are the shortages of consumer goods created by austerity measures designed to boost investment, and the forced friendship with the USSR. The shortages boosted demand for imports, while the popular reaction to what was seen as Soviet domination further legitimated the consumption of western cultural imports as a form of national resistance.
It seems to me that the buffoons who plan to erect Reagan statue in Warsaw are relicts from that era, almost certainly noveau riche seeking social status in a time-honored tradition of the conspicuous consumption of cultural imports.
Wojtek