Wiktor Osiatynski: Poland Makes Witch Hunting Easier
[Wiktor Osiatynski, an adviser to Poland’s Constitutional Committee from 1990 to 1996, is a law professor at Central European University.]
POLAND trembled this month when the newly appointed Catholic archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, announced his resignation after revelations that he had collaborated with the Communist secret police. The Wielgus scandal seemed to portend a new era in the church’s lustration, or the purging of former secret police collaborators. So far, that has been a slow process, because Pope John Paul II guided the Polish church with principles of reconciliation and mercy rather than revenge. Only after his death did the files on the clergy begin to leak out.
Today in Poland, lustration has become a tool not only of revenge, but of politics. What may look like an effort to reconcile with the Communist past is something else entirely. It is an assault on reconciliation and a generational bid for power....
To make a valid accusation, it was necessary to analyze the files and other evidence in detail. But this process was too slow for the advocates of de-communization, many of whom have always wanted to use the secret police files as a tool in fighting their opponents.
When historians and some journalists received access to the files, leaks soon began to attract media attention. In January 2005, the entire list of more than 120,000 names was leaked from the Institute of National Memory, where the files are held. The list did not discriminate between agents and those who were merely under surveillance. But its release pushed lustration forward. After the 2005 elections, lustration became a mechanism for enormous generational change in Polish politics and society.
In the early 1990s, the current president Lech Kaczynski; his twin brother Jaroslaw, who is now the prime minister; and their supporters were alienated from their higher-stature colleagues in Solidarity. President Lech Walesa even purged the Kaczynski brothers from his Chancery. So when the twins decided to create the Law and Justice party, they turned to young people on the far right. Now, driven by resentment against an entire generation of older politicians, the Kaczynskis are happy to see them purged from offices and replaced by their own loyalists....
Today, the files produced by the very same security services serve a new generation of decidedly anti-Communist young apparatchiks, who use the past to forward their own careers.
This is, of course, sad but not surprising. Politics breeds conflict. And that is why politicians should leave some sensitive realms of morality alone. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was separated from contemporary politics. In Poland, the past has became prey for today’s hunters, proving again that whenever history falls into the hands of politicians, distorted truth becomes an instrument for their own goals.
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POLAND trembled this month when the newly appointed Catholic archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, announced his resignation after revelations that he had collaborated with the Communist secret police. The Wielgus scandal seemed to portend a new era in the church’s lustration, or the purging of former secret police collaborators. So far, that has been a slow process, because Pope John Paul II guided the Polish church with principles of reconciliation and mercy rather than revenge. Only after his death did the files on the clergy begin to leak out.
Today in Poland, lustration has become a tool not only of revenge, but of politics. What may look like an effort to reconcile with the Communist past is something else entirely. It is an assault on reconciliation and a generational bid for power....
To make a valid accusation, it was necessary to analyze the files and other evidence in detail. But this process was too slow for the advocates of de-communization, many of whom have always wanted to use the secret police files as a tool in fighting their opponents.
When historians and some journalists received access to the files, leaks soon began to attract media attention. In January 2005, the entire list of more than 120,000 names was leaked from the Institute of National Memory, where the files are held. The list did not discriminate between agents and those who were merely under surveillance. But its release pushed lustration forward. After the 2005 elections, lustration became a mechanism for enormous generational change in Polish politics and society.
In the early 1990s, the current president Lech Kaczynski; his twin brother Jaroslaw, who is now the prime minister; and their supporters were alienated from their higher-stature colleagues in Solidarity. President Lech Walesa even purged the Kaczynski brothers from his Chancery. So when the twins decided to create the Law and Justice party, they turned to young people on the far right. Now, driven by resentment against an entire generation of older politicians, the Kaczynskis are happy to see them purged from offices and replaced by their own loyalists....
Today, the files produced by the very same security services serve a new generation of decidedly anti-Communist young apparatchiks, who use the past to forward their own careers.
This is, of course, sad but not surprising. Politics breeds conflict. And that is why politicians should leave some sensitive realms of morality alone. In South Africa, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was separated from contemporary politics. In Poland, the past has became prey for today’s hunters, proving again that whenever history falls into the hands of politicians, distorted truth becomes an instrument for their own goals.