The Best and Worst Thing About America: Konstanty Gebert on the Interlibrary Loan and Yalta

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“The United States and America are not the same thing. The United States is a government, an administration. America is an idea — and that idea is still there, even when the government is not.” — Konstanty Gebert

What is the best thing about America? At least when viewed from Warsaw. For Konstanty Gebert — Polish-Jewish journalist, Solidarity activist, co-founder of Gazeta Wyborcza, and one of his country’s most celebrated public intellectuals — the answer is the interlibrary loan system. The ability to order any book from any library in the United States and have it delivered to your local branch within days, for free. To Gebert, it represents something irreducibly American: access to knowledge as a public good. What the internet once was. What America once represented to freedom-loving Poles like Gebert.

And the worst? Yalta. Gebert’s narrative is damning. In February 1945, FDR and Churchill caved into Stalin’s demands and agreed to Soviet colonisation of Eastern Europe in exchange for Russia’s entry into the Pacific War. Poland was once again bartered by the great powers. “We were sold,” Gebert describes a perfidy that resulted in a forty-year Soviet occupation of Poland.

Between the interlibrary loan and Yalta lies a more complex Polish-American history: Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points enabling an independent Poland; Herbert Hoover feeding a starving Europe after WW1; Reagan’s support for Solidarity. Now, however, Konstanty Gebert warns, Trump’s America isn’t just failing Poland, but all of Europe in its disdain for freedom, especially in Ukraine. That’s the view from Warsaw. And it’s closer to Yalta than the interlibrary loan system.

Five Takeaways

• The Interlibrary Loan System: The Peak of American Civilisation: Gebert’s opening answer to Andrew’s question about what the United States means to him: the interlibrary loan system. The ability to order any book from any library in the country and have it delivered to your local branch within days, for free. It represents something specific about the American idea: that access to knowledge is a public good, that no individual library can hold everything, and that the solution is to share rather than compete. It is, he says, the most civilised thing any country has ever done. He is not entirely joking.

• The United States and America Are Not the Same Thing: Gebert’s structural distinction: the United States is a government, a foreign policy, a set of institutions that can be well or badly run. America is an idea — a myth of liberty, opportunity, and democratic self-governance — that has shaped the world’s imagination since 1776. When the United States fails, as it has under Trump, that is serious and damaging. But it does not destroy America. The idea persists independently of what any administration does to it. Poland’s relationship is with America, not just the United States. That is what survived Yalta. That is what survived Trump’s first term. He is less sure it will survive the second.

• Wilson Square, Hoover, and Yalta: America’s Polish History: The arc of American-Polish relations is extraordinary. Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points gave Poland its independence after 123 years of partition — which is why Wilson Square in Warsaw exists. Herbert Hoover fed Europe after the First World War — a gesture of generosity that Poles still remember. But at Yalta in 1945, Franklin Roosevelt traded Eastern Europe to Stalin in exchange for Soviet entry into the Pacific War — or so the Polish reading goes. “We were sold,” Gebert says flatly. Reagan’s support for Solidarity rehabilitated the American image. Trump’s presidency has damaged it again. The cycle is long but the memory is longer.