The controversy stems from the song’s perceived criticism of Jarosław Kaczyński, Poland’s former Prime Minister and leader of the ruling Law and Justice Party. Although formally only a backbencher, Kaczyński is said to wield the true political power in his Party; to the point where many consider him to be the country’s unofficial head of state.

“You alone can soothe your pain, everyone else is in trouble. Two limousines, or one, the entire cemetery just for you,” sings Kazik Staszewski to a jaunty accordion accompaniment. And by doing so he points to the epicentre of the public discontent.

When Poland began to take measures to limit the spread of coronavirus, it closed down a swathe of public places, including cemeteries. For the Polish, cemeteries are a national preoccupation. Family graves are tended on a weekly basis, even those several generations old. All Saints’ Day, or Zaduszki, is a particularly important national festival, when ancestors are honoured and graveyards lit up with countless rows of candles and miniature flags. The honouring of the dead is a keenly cherished cultural practice in a country which is 85% Catholic.

The closure of the cemeteries, therefore, has been one of the most significant — and stark — moments in the pandemic. It is largely unprecedented in this country, even though it has such a tragic history of disaster and disruption.

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No wonder, when it emerged in April that Kaczyński had continued to visit cemeteries that were closed to the public, there was an outburst of anger from opposition politicians and on social media. One rule for him, another for everyone else.

Among those graves he broke the rules to visit were his mother’s, in Warsaw, and his twin brother’s, in Krakow. This brother, Lech Kaczyński had served as President until 2010, when he was killed in a plane crash in Smolensk in Russia en route to a commemoration of the Katyn Massacre. Jarosław’s graveside visit, on the anniversary of the air crash, is another instalment in one of the defining sagas of Polish nationhood, a permanent scar in an already bloody and tragic national history.

The grave itself is also problematic, since Lech was laid to rest in Wawel Castle — the historic resting place of Poland’s ancient kings and warriors. The honour, awarded to no other leader in recent memory, provoked questions about the nature of Poland’s democracy and protests from those who saw it as the inappropriate veneration of a controversial President. For many Poles, equating the former leader with their most revered historical figures proved too much in a society that is often deeply distrusting of politicians.

“Cemeteries closed as a result of the events of recent weeks, recent events. I look at the chains, I wipe away my tear, just like you, just like you. The gate opens, I can’t believe my eyes. Perhaps things are different after all. I run over, your heavies shout stop, because your pain is better than mine.”

The jaunty tones touch on some of the most complex and traumatic parts of Poland’s history. And the song’s rise to the top of the chart seems to indicate that it voices the public’s sense of unfairness and anger.

Poland isn’t the only country in which political leaders have been accused of failing to adhere to the coronavirus restrictions that they have put in place. However, it is a particularly sore subject here, given the polarised political landscape and the deep sense of distrust in elites that stems from years of foreign occupation and subsequent Communist rule.

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While corruption has steadily dropped since Poland’s transitioned to a liberal market democracy, with Transparency International ranking it as the 41^st least corrupt country in the world, Poles often perceive the issue to be one of the most important challenges facing their country. Corruption remains a key concern for the public and, since 2015, surveys show that Polish people believe it to be getting worse.

Poland’s political sphere is as polarised as it has ever been, with close to 20 parties represented in the Sejm, ranging from centre-left social democratic parties and those with links to the far Right, to the Confederation of the Polish Crown party that advocates the return of monarchy. These fractures, and the lack of clear consensus even among people who occupy the same space on the political compass, have taken its toll on Polish civil discourse. In many well-documented  cases, these political divisions spill over into every aspect of people’s lives and come between friends, colleagues and family members.

If Kazik Staszewski’s song crystallised a sense of unfairness and anti-government hostility when it was released, that was then amplified tenfold by the reaction to it. Shortly after ‘Your pain is better than mine’ was unveiled as the number one track, the station’s website was scrubbed of references to it and links and news were taken down. An acrimonious and public dispute broke out between the head of Radio Three, who insisted that the charts had been manipulated to elevate the song to the top spot, and the journalists and radio DJs who work on the show. The latter allege censorship, and three of the channel’s best-known DJs have now resigned over the issue, with silent protests held outside the building.

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While the facts of the song’s removal will be the focus of debate and speculation in Poland, it has highlighted the way in which coronavirus has been a catalyst for social unease in the country. The fears of corruption and a political power-grab were doubtless amplified by the news that the Sejm has legislated for a Presidential Election to take place despite the pandemic.

The decision to go to the polls has drawn criticism from across the opposition parties. For many, it represents a cynical attempt by the governing Law and Justice Party to consolidate their vote at a time when Poles are looking for stability and reassurance. Certainly, when the decision to hold the poll was taken, the governing Law and Justice were polling at near-record highs, virtually guaranteeing a second term for their candidate, Andrzej Duda.

Duda’s lead has, however, slimmed since Rafał Trzaskowski, the popular Mayor of Warsaw was announced as the candidate for the liberal conversative Civic Platform party. Trzaskowski is seen both as the pro-European candidate and as a social liberal, having gone further than many of his rivals in his support for issues such as LGBT+ rights, which are still a source of controversy in Poland. It will be interesting to see what effect, if any the cemetery backlash has on his support.

In any case, it is a febrile time to ask the electorate what they think. Opposition parties, who hold a majority in the upper house, have succeeded in delaying the ballot until June at the earliest. Meanwhile, the election has also drawn criticism from the EU, who have threatened Poland with a suspension of its voting rights. Processes and transparency — it is a postal vote in its entirety — will obviously be scrutinised. But observers will also be keen to note whether there’s a candidate who could bring Polish people together at a time of adversity, and enable the country to emerge from the coronavirus crisis more united than before.

For a country with a rapidly growing economy, increasing prominence in the EU and NATO, and aspirations of once again becoming a European regional power, the stakes have never been higher. For Poland’s politicans, they will have to work harder than ever before to prove that they don’t regard their pain as better than anyone else’s.

Much of the world is in a fertility free-fall. As a new report by the Institute for Family Studies illustrates, very low birth rates are becoming increasingly normal across the globe: the number of children born by each successive cohort is dropping rapidly. Outside of sub-Saharan Africa, almost all countries are below replacement fertility or on their way, and this applies both to rich and middle-income countries, to Christian, Muslim or officially atheist states.

Places such as China, Iran and Bangladesh have, at different times in the past 50 years, seen the number of children born per woman fall from six to three in the space of a decade or two, and in all three countries it is now much lower than that.

This has been achieved through different strategies; coercion in the case of China (although the six-to-three fall was actually achieved before the introduction of the One Child Policy); the blessing of the mullahs on birth control in the case of Iran; and a widespread, grassroots movement to spread understanding of and access to family planning in Bangladesh.

But in all the places where fertility rates have fallen fast, from Belize to Burma, governments have had the luxury of working with the basic grain of human development. Higher levels of literacy (especially for women), greater urbanisation and a rise in per capita income are invariably associated with smaller family size, so as countries develop, family size declines whether or not encouraged to do so by government.

For already developed countries with low fertile rates, which have the opposite problem — of wanting to get the fertility rate up — things are not so straightforward. There is nothing very new in pro-natalism; in the inter-war years, when much of Europe and North America was moving towards replacement level fertility, dictators were keen to boost numbers.

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Both Hitler and Mussolini incentivised childbearing with limited success. In the 1960s Romanian dictator Nicolai Ceaușescu, eager to boost his nation’s demographic heft, removed the availability of contraception overnight. At first there was a sharp increase in the number of babies being born, but before too long people found ways around the system, and by the time of his fall, Ceaușescu’s Romania was not performing much better from a population perspective than most of its neighbours – which is to say, very poorly.

Although birth rates were limp in much of the developed world in the inter-war years and particularly during the depression of the 1930s, there was a famous post-war bounce in most places, and in many it lasted for a good couple of decades. In Japan, the baby boom was an intense but brief phenomenon, and likewise in much of central and eastern Europe the number of children born per woman has been extremely low for a long time.

Which brings us back to Hungary, where people have been having too few children to replace themselves for most of the last 60 years. If each cohort of child-bearing women is smaller than the last, and has fewer children, something like a population vortex starts to take effect, especially where supplementing numbers through immigration is unpopular and where emigration opportunities — such as membership of the EU — mean that many people are leaving.

Since the early Eighties, Hungary has lost just under a tenth of its population — around a million people — but the legacy of a very low fertility rate in the two decades since the mid-1990s has yet to fully work its way through the system; that is, there will be a smaller number of child-bearers in the couple of decades to come, which will have a knock-on effect in future.

Couple this with lengthening life expectancy and it is little wonder that the median Hungarian is now in his or her mid-forties, almost as senior as the super-old societies of Italy, Germany and Japan. Another characteristic of Hungary is an ethnic shift towards the Roma, who appear to have a higher fertility rate than ethnic Magyars, feeding nationalistic concerns that the majority is under threat in its own country. This is a sentiment which has also strengthened Hungary’s resolve to resist immigration from the south, but while it has largely prevented the rise of a multicultural society, it does not help boost numbers or counter the corrosive economic effects of falling numbers.

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Those familiar with the Orban government should not be surprised that it sees demography as a serious challenge and has introduced a wide range of measures to tackle population decline, from tax breaks to increased parental leave and the provision of creches.

Many of these policies are too recent for us to gauge their impact but there is no doubt that something positive has happened, with fertility rates rising by perhaps a quarter of a child per woman. But before the Hungarians uncork the champagne — or perhaps the Tokaj — three words of caution must be sounded.

First, a quarter of a child per woman is nowhere near enough to get Hungary up to replacement level, and even this improvement seems to be faltering.

Second, some of the effect may be what is known as “tempo”, which is the ending of the delay in childbearing; during the period when childbearing is delayed and women have children later, the fertility rate is artificially depressed. When this stops — and there is only so long that women can delay having children — the effect is unwound and the fertility rate rebounds, but the extent of the difference this makes is limited.

Third, detailed work by the Institute for Family Studies suggests that not that many of the extra children in Hungary are third children, and this is where the government efforts have been focused, so government policy may not be the real driving force in any recovery there has been. Full marks to the Hungarians for trying, then, but far too early to say whether they have proven that government policy really can make a difference.

Likewise in nearby Poland, where the current government stands on a pro-traditional-family platform and since 2016 has offered relatively generous child benefits – £100 per month per child – as well as maintaining strict anti-abortion laws. The policy has been credited with helping the ruling Law and Justice party win re-election, but, as in Hungary, the rise in fertility is small and still leaves Poland at barely two-thirds of what would be required for replacement.

With more and more countries within and beyond Europe moving into the low- and ultra-low fertility realm, then, the challenge for a society wanting to reproduce itself will become more and more prominent in the politics of the future.

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For now, two things for sure can be said. First, the best guarantee of avoiding the very lowest fertility rates in developed countries is an acceptance of extra-marital births and assistance to women in combining work and family. Where women get the education to aspire but are not encouraged to combine aspiration with motherhood, they tend to opt for the former, which is why fertility rates are so low in countries with traditional attitudes to women in the workplace, such as Italy and Japan, but higher in places like Scandinavia and France.

Second, much as governments can try their best, the only true guarantee of replacement fertility is a family-oriented and child-loving culture. Societies or ethnic groups wanting to survive and thrive should not just look to their governments for tax breaks and benefits but should look to themselves, their values and attitudes.

In this Israel is an exemplar, an OECD member with a fertility rate half as high again as its nearest rival. This is not just about the religious Jews (whose fertility rate, although high, may be falling) or Arab Israelis (whose fertility rate is no higher than that of the country as a whole), but is true also of the secular majority.

While this small state has many detractors, if we wish to learn how a people is to thrive not just culturally and materially but also demographically, we must look to those who first brought into the world the famous command: “Be fruitful and multiply”.