KRAJ  UTRACONY CZYLI:  BOLACE BLIZNY & CO NAM SIE SNI PO NOCACH ® © Miroslaw M. Krupinski

41     12 wrzesnia 1999

From one of my friends living in USA I have just received the copy of the article, which is shown in black fonts below. I'm inserting, in white, my own comments.

It is an interesting consideration of one of Polish realities of the last decade, with digressive insight into preceding that decade years. However, in my opinion, despite good orientation in today's facts the conclusion suggested by Author is a wrong one. So I will try to express, between the verses, my own opinion:

WARSAW ÐÐ Just months after the Solidarity-led government pushed through a law to drive collaborators with the former Communist secret police from public life in the new Poland, heads are rolling. Solidarity heads.

It mean the heads of real Solidarity activists or the heads of the impostors "on duty" planted by well organized secret services of PRL? Let 's hung here this question unanswered till little later, when some other circumstances will be considered.

Last week Prime Minister Jerzy Buzek dismissed Janusz Tomaszewski, his deputy premier and interior minister, after Tomaszewski refused to end speculation that he had links with the secret police when he was active in the Solidarity movement that broke Communist rule here in the 1980s. Tomaszewski is the third government minister to be forced out since the spring for alleged collaboration after a review of Communist-era secret police files. Eight members of Parliament are also under investigation.

As I have read in some previous publications - Janusz Tomaszewski refused to go uninvited to the Court and investigate  the substance of the rumors about his links with former secret police. He was not summoned by the Court to do so and the charges against him at that stage were not delivered to him.

I'm not trying to judge here if he was guilty or not guilty. Instead of that I am suggesting that his behavior was normal. Considering his position as interior minister such visit could only be read as the intention of obstructing course of justice. Even if he is guilty as rumors said - it is a Court to decide about it after, not before, considering charges and supporting it materials. The reaction of Prime Minister was premature. Tomaszewski could be suspended in his duties after formally charged, and if acquitted shall return to his position.

But, for the sake of the further discussion - let's assume that considered person of "Solidarity origin" was guilty as whispered around and that it will be confirmed by the Court. Where is the moment of surprise there?

The irony has not been lost on Solidarity leaders and their supporters. In approving the law--after years of delay--the government's unspoken target was the Communists' successor party whose forebears once tormented and jailed Solidarity democratic activists. The government never imagined that some of those same activists would themselves be tarnished.

From the start of Solidarity in 1980 and 1981 PRL authorities and secret police did not spare efforts to infiltrate that political movement. Not only to know its secrets, but to influence it's behavior and actions. More - the Communists knew that their era is ending, and they already had grown their own "dissidents and opposition" which planted in the enemy ranks could make possible future agreement (as Round Table) and turn red coats white side on. It, as shows history of last 10 years, have worked perfectly. So who's who under the Solidarity shield? And is an implant into Solidarity  still "Solidarity activist" ?

It must be very stupid government, which "never imagined that some of those same activists would themselves be tarnished". Where are the members of such government from? Not from Poland?
They know nothing about methods of "former" Communists in the past and now?

"I think the government is surprised," said Andrzej Paczkowski, a historian and former Solidarity activist. "But it's completely obvious that the collaborators were some of the people involved in anti-government activities" during the Communist era.

Wrong. The most prominent collaborators were instructed and delegated to demonstrate such "anti-government activities" to get their later status, so useful in 1989 and now. It was much easier to grow such activists and plant them than turn over the real activists. So more, such implants even in the dangerous years 1980 and 1981 had license to be viciously anti-government. Time to time they were demonstratively punished, but nobody really knows how that punishment looked inside and how was awarded than and now.

The opposition Democratic Left Alliance--the former Communists--has emerged unscathed and is relishing the purging of its opponent's ranks. Solidarity is like "carp on Christmas Eve," said a lip-licking Leszek Miller, the Democratic Left leader, referring to the traditional holiday feast of fish
on a platter.

That's right. The prominent post communists have nothing to hide. The "thick line" (Pol: "gruba kreska") enabled them proudly forget about their criminal past, so they did not need to make any false declarations. So more (again) they are truthful in the declaration that they were not working for secret police. It was the secret police working for them and on their orders. And partly still do.

Unlike other countries in Eastern Europe, Poland came late to what is called "lustration," from the Latin word for purification. The Czech Republic ruthlessly purged "conscious  collaborators" from public life, drawing protests from the Council of Europe for the crudeness of its approach. In eastern Germany, marriages and friendships were ripped apart as individuals accessed their files and discovered that they had been betrayed by friends and loved ones. Hungary branded some of those in the Communist regime "war criminals" and tried them for crimes against humanity.

Poland took a more circumspect--and perhaps forgiving--attitude to historical reckoning. In the first years of freedom after the fall of communism in 1989, the country concentrated on the development of its economic life amid fears that vengeance could poison public life. And Solidarity's benevolence was helped in no small part by the belief that the Communists--or their successors--could never return politically.

That's truth. And it was and still is the biggest mistake and problem of so called "non-communist Poland". But I was already trying to explain the preconditions and successful plans of Communists to create such situation above.

But they did. The notion of lustration was largely put on ice when the former Communists came to power in the mid-1990s. It was revived with fervor when Solidarity Electoral Action and Freedom Union formed a governing coalition in 1997.

As it has in other countries in Eastern Europe, however, the process of digging up the past has revealed how the fight against communism was not always as simple as good vs. evil but was colored by shades of gray.

Again - that's truth. But not for the Author's reason which follows, but by the simple fact that uncovered mole in the ranks of Solidarity casts not the shade on the Communists, who planted it, but on contaminated by it Solidarity. I must admit here that for the Polish voters the picture of Solidarity is gray and that is justified. Because for the average Poles is not important the reason of
degeneration and corruption - but it's result. So they don't see the difference between the Solidarity contaminated by Communists and post communists and the party where Communists are diluted by new members and supporters. And I don't blame them for it. I rather blame the first Solidarity leaders admitted to the power of government, who instead fight as before - become demoralized and corrupted. Their only excuse is that they mostly had no previous experience in handling such power.

It is unclear whether those currently accused of collaboration were threatened or bribed by the police or whether they were, in fact, committed to the old regime. But for Solidarity the struggle against communism was one for the soul of Poland, and those who helped the secret police are
guilty--forever--of the gravest betrayal.

The reasons of collaboration with secret police is not important. There is not a punishment for that apart of the ban to held some prominent positions and perform some professional duties (lawyers). The person who was forced into collaboration  unlikely applies for such position by his own desire, stopped by shame and guilt. The collaborators "delegated" to the political or other influential positions - contrary. Because it is a continuation of their collaboration. And their former bosses never let them forget the past and to slip from their hands.

Even so, a number of political figures, human rights activists and former dissidents have begun to question a vetting system that relies on Communist documents and testimony, and can ruin careers before the accused has a day in court. "I voted for this bill and I regard my vote as a contribution to
the entire mess," said Andrzej Potocki, a member of Parliament and spokesman for Freedom Union. "What is unfair is that whoever is subject to this process is treated like they are utomatically guilty."

There is nothing wrong with the bill - the whole fault is how it is executed. I fully agree that nobody should be condemned until is found guilty by court. The problem is that Polish courts has not very good opinion, due to many evidently wrong verdicts in the last decade. The Polish people know the crimes, the victims who are dead, and the criminals who still are free. There is no hope that Polish Temida will change from a whore into the virgin without proper treatment. And discussed bill is a part of that treatment.

The law forces more than 22,000 office holders, including the president, cabinet ministers, members of Parliament, judges and senior civil servants, to declare whether they ever helped the Communist security services. Collaboration is defined as the secret passing of information or documents to someone the informant knew to be a member of the secret police. Anyone who admitted collaboration could not be punished, but anyone found to have lied would be banned from public life for 10 years.

And again - there is a fault in such  definition of collaboration. There is plenty of the prominent people in Polish government and high rank administration, who had no needs to "pass the information (or order) secretly". They were in one or another way managing, organizing and inspiring the activities of secret police. What about them? Does the "thick line" cover all ?

According to Krzysztof Kauba, a judge in the Office of Public Interest, which scrutinizes the statements, about 130 people have admitted to collaboration and their names are gradually being published as their admissions are verified.

The Author is not accurate here. If they are investigated now - they had submitted false declarations before. Because only false declarations, which were a conditions for some positions, are punishable, not fact of collaboration. The people who collaborated and admitted it themselves or are not in need for such declaration are not subject of such investigation.

Beginning with the most important figures in public life, the Office of Public Interest is sending the names of those who signed statements saying they did nothing to the state security service. If someone has a Communist-era file, it is checked and if prosecutors have a "suspicion" of
collaboration, the case is sent to the lustration court, which can then initiate a trial.

That's where things have slipped off the tracks in Poland, according to human rights groups and others. "In its current shape, lustration is discrediting people," said Marek Nowicki, head of the Warsaw office of the Helsinki Committee, a human rights group.

It is not the lustration itself discrediting people, but discovered false declaration in junction with the collaboration. I agree with Mr. Nowicki that improper execution of the lustration proceedings can abuse human rights - and that should be, and can be prevented - not the lustration itself stopped.

Court proceedings are supposed to be secret if the defendant requests a closed hearing, but names leak here almost immediately and the taint of collaboration is career-breaking, particularly for anyone in Solidarity.

I agree in general, however I do not see any particularity regarding Solidarity. If they were collaborators - their Solidarity membership and past has nothing to do with it and should be not a cover or excuse.

"Many of us were interrogated then," Tomaszewski said in a television interview last week. "But contact with them [the secret police] and cooperation are two different things." The Solidarity government, however, has forced its members to pledge that if they are even referred to the
court they will immediately resign from ministerial posts.

There is some "fogginess" in such statement, because "contact with them" has some reasons which need to be explained. Especially if such contact has been recorded in register of secret police informers, together with discriminatory results of such contacts.

Robert Mroziewicz, a deputy defense minister who was a liaison with NATO during negotiations on Poland's accession to the Western alliance, and Krzysztof Luks, a deputy transportation minister, also have had to step down. The accusation against Mroziewicz, an underground journalist in Solidarity during the 1980s, has shocked former dissidents who have rallied
to his defense. Onetime supporters of lustration now think even that benefit of the law--which does give people some legal recourse to combat unfair allegations--is outweighed by the summary justice of ruining lives on a mere suspicion.

There always is a possibility, that allegation can be false and supported by false documments. But is possible as well that the picture of the accused, carefully prepared by his police employers and himself is a camuflage. The reasoning "we were for the bill but now they are investigating our friends" is very human, very Polish - but otherwise meaningless.

"Solidarity still believes the law has magic powers and it will clean up Polish politics," said Potocki, who fears that with a six-year mandate the work of the Office of Public Interest will lead to endless accusations and political crises as ministers, including future appointees, are forced to resign. "We had the best solution 10 years ago. We should have burned all the files."

What mean "We" ? Those who are recorded in such files? Their friends and relatives? Because definitely not the victims of documented in those files collaborators. There were more victims than collaborators in Poland. And in the past their victims should have human rights too - but it was refused to them.

And there is no doubt that collaborators and their employers will cry laud, will demand "human rights" and will call to end lustration. Are you surprised? It is their sin and their skin a public target now and it is not what they had expected years ago - when collaboration was profitable, not risky business.

Miroslaw Krupinski

© 1999 The Washington Post Company

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