Two events in one week symbolize the dramatic revival of Poland.

Last Saturday the new Bishop of Cracow, succeeding to the position held until 1978 by Karol Wotyla, better known today as Pope John Paul II, was elevated to the status of cardinal. His enthronement was a magnificent ceremonial occasion in which the whole of Cracow in the south of Poland seemingly joined.

Wednesday begins a series of ceremonies and conferences marking the 25th anniversary of the legalization of Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the Communist world, by Poland's then communist government. These celebrations will be held in Gdansk in the north of Poland where a Solidarity strike in the Lenin shipyard continued the slow unraveling of communist power that Pope John Paul's 1979 visit to Poland had begun.

That unraveling reached its triumphant conclusion in 1991 when Lech Walesa, a leader of the 1980 Solidarity strike in the Lenin shipyard, was elected the first non-communist president in Poland since the second world war.

And there is a great deal to celebrate. Anyone visiting Poland after a long absence -- in my case, more than a decade -- notices a vast change in the nation. Physically, the gray grime of communism has been wiped from the face of Poland. It is visibly a much more prosperous country. Lines outside shops with no goods inside have been replaced by consumers snapping up the brand names of Paris, New York, Rome and London. As in America, there is a property boom. Poland is now a member of the European Union. And information industries are springing up over those bones of heavy industries scattered over the centrally planned desert. Economic problems remain but the transition to a new modern economy has been successfully achieved.

The spiritual legacy of communism has been harder to eradicate -- envy. Communists thrived on dividing Poles by arousing envy toward those who did a little better when most people were doing very badly. That has continued under democracy with post-communist parties benefiting from nostalgia among older people for those times when all classes had equal shares of nothing.

Poland elected such a post-communist government a few years ago. But the appeal of such parties rests in part on at least some claim to integrity. Yet the current Polish government has been involved in financial and security scandals in recent years and it is suffering severely in the polls as a result.

Those scandals -- together with Solidarity's anniversary celebrations -- have created the worst possible background for it to fight the forthcoming elections next month. It is almost universally agreed that the two main center-right parties ("Civic Platform" and "Law and Justice") will form the next government. It is also likely -- but less certain -- that one of their candidates will beat the Left's protagonist to become the next Polish president.

From Washington's point of view, this will be an improvement -- but only a modest one. Poland's post-communist government (like other left-wing parties in the former communist bloc) has been friendly toward the United States. It put Polish troops into Iraq and Afghanistan. The Polish president -- a former communist of the opportunist tendency -- helped to prevent Putin and his Ukrainian allies from stealing the Ukraine election. And the center-left usually reflected the strong pro-Americanism of Polish public opinion.

No new center-right government is likely to do a great deal better than that. Moreover, it will be rightly pre-occupied with the serious domestic problems left behind by the center-left. Unemployment is very high, about 18 percent. The country's infrastructure, notably, its road system, is extremely poor -- though subsidies from the EU may help improve that. And Poland's health care system needs a vast capital infusion.

All these problems may tempt the new government to cut defense spending and ignore the unsettling problems that Poland still faces internationally. Russia under Putin does not really want Poland to become fully part of the West. Putin plainly resented the role Poland played in settling the Ukraine crisis against Russia's wishes. Russia hopes to use its current role as an energy supplier to keep Poland in line in future crises.

There is no clear and present danger, of course, but a stronger Poland that was more independent of Russia in energy and economic terms would be in a better position to follow its own foreign policy rather than bow to Russia's.

Some candidates see these dangers even if through a glass darkly. Radek Sikorski, former deputy defense and foreign minister, is standing for the Senate. His current job is in Washington as executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative at AEI. He has maintained his house in Poland. And his sense of Polish politics is as keen as ever. (Full disclosure: I once hired Sikorski as roving correspondent of National Review and his cover story for the January 1989 issue of the magazine was "The Coming Crack-Up of Communism.")

Sikorski wants Poland to be fully integrated in the West. That can only happen if Polish forces in NATO are up to standard. He wants to ensure that the United States is fully aware of the delicate balance of forces operating between Poland, Belarus, Russia and Ukraine. And he wants Poland in the EU to help ensure that Europe and America remain strong allies. In short he wants no geopolitical surprises.

That is the natural policy of a sensible center-right Polish government. It would also be to the advantage of Western Europe and the United States. Today's Poland is prosperous and stable. But that is not the normal condition of Poland -- and it won't persist unless Poland, Europe and America cooperate to keep it that way.