Remembering the past in Poland
In a flurry of activity last week, the Office of State Security (UOP), the domestic security and intelligence service, released a swathe of documents from the files of the old communist secret police, which was finally disbanded in 1990. The documents, released according to legislation on making available such documents were they not to be damaging to current state security, were nothing short of a potential bombshell. They revealed that even after the semi-free elections of 1989, which led to the creation of the first non-communist government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, senior officials in the then Interior Ministry were instructing their underlings to draw up lists of people to be interned in the event of a new Martial Law being announced. Other documents describe how senior security service personnel gave instructions that Solidarity MPs and senators, who were collaborators of the communist secret police, be given instructions to vote in favor of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the last communist leader of Poland, becoming president in a parliamentary vote in 1989. Other documents conclusively prove that the first 1989-1991 Parliament was riddled with agents of the communist secret police.
So what, you may say? Indeed, for now, not much, given that 10 years have passed since those events. But the point is that for a significant part of the Polish political class, the entire legitimacy of the way in which the transition from communism to freedom occurred in 1989 is rooted in an assumption that the communists who gave up power in favor of democrats were doing so out of some realization that they had done wrong in the past and were now acting in the interests of the Polish state. These latest documents suggest the opposite. Namely, that while handing over power with one hand, they were making contingency plans to recover it by force with the other. And moreover, that the entire foundation of legitimacy upon which the peaceful transition of power was based may well have been a sham, the product of a few votes in Parliament by stooges of the secret police. Hardly a rousing and edifying basis for building a democracy with popular legitimacy.
Perhaps at the moment such musings are of interest only to purists. But the sense among many politicians is that these documents are but the tip of an iceberg, which were it ever to be wholly revealed may well do much to discredit those politicians who have defended the process of the handover of power in 1989-1990, through showing them up to be naive at best about the intentions of their former communist opponents, and at worse – their direct agents. The only way of proving these suspicions one way or the other ought to be their complete publication, and indeed that was the intention of the framers of legislation which last year set up the so-called Institute of National Memory, which is charged of obtaining all the documents of the former secret police, archiving them, and then releasing them to the general public. But recall that the passage of the legislation was possible only after a protracted struggle, including a veto by Kwasniewski, later overcome through an unexpected deal with the Peasants Party (PSL).
Now it turns out that getting the institute running is proving difficult. A couple of weeks ago, Parliament failed to elect a chairman by the necessary 60% majority vote, blocked by the PSL. Parliament will try again, but if it fails – without a chairman the institute cannot begin activity – there will be an attempt to water down the voting requirement to a straight 50%, through passing an amendment to the original law. But – here's the catch – that amendment itself may well be vetoed by Kwasniewski, leading to a complete blockage of the commencement of work by the institute.
Why? The selected release by UOP of the documents it has in its possession hints that were the institute to ever commence activity, there would be a very large amount of skeletons tumbling out of both Solidarity Election Action (AWS) and Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) cupboards. So no wonder that many politicians are now getting cold feet about the institute starting work. Overall, there is still a sense of fragility over the current political order, a suspicion that history has not yet had its final say about who did what to whom, when and why. If the truth is as embarrassing as it appears to be, many current political alliances and relationships may well fall apart. Which explains why the Institute for National Memory could remain on paper for some time to come, and why some are actively working to prevent it from existing at all.
So what, you may say? Indeed, for now, not much, given that 10 years have passed since those events. But the point is that for a significant part of the Polish political class, the entire legitimacy of the way in which the transition from communism to freedom occurred in 1989 is rooted in an assumption that the communists who gave up power in favor of democrats were doing so out of some realization that they had done wrong in the past and were now acting in the interests of the Polish state. These latest documents suggest the opposite. Namely, that while handing over power with one hand, they were making contingency plans to recover it by force with the other. And moreover, that the entire foundation of legitimacy upon which the peaceful transition of power was based may well have been a sham, the product of a few votes in Parliament by stooges of the secret police. Hardly a rousing and edifying basis for building a democracy with popular legitimacy.
Perhaps at the moment such musings are of interest only to purists. But the sense among many politicians is that these documents are but the tip of an iceberg, which were it ever to be wholly revealed may well do much to discredit those politicians who have defended the process of the handover of power in 1989-1990, through showing them up to be naive at best about the intentions of their former communist opponents, and at worse – their direct agents. The only way of proving these suspicions one way or the other ought to be their complete publication, and indeed that was the intention of the framers of legislation which last year set up the so-called Institute of National Memory, which is charged of obtaining all the documents of the former secret police, archiving them, and then releasing them to the general public. But recall that the passage of the legislation was possible only after a protracted struggle, including a veto by Kwasniewski, later overcome through an unexpected deal with the Peasants Party (PSL).
Now it turns out that getting the institute running is proving difficult. A couple of weeks ago, Parliament failed to elect a chairman by the necessary 60% majority vote, blocked by the PSL. Parliament will try again, but if it fails – without a chairman the institute cannot begin activity – there will be an attempt to water down the voting requirement to a straight 50%, through passing an amendment to the original law. But – here's the catch – that amendment itself may well be vetoed by Kwasniewski, leading to a complete blockage of the commencement of work by the institute.
Why? The selected release by UOP of the documents it has in its possession hints that were the institute to ever commence activity, there would be a very large amount of skeletons tumbling out of both Solidarity Election Action (AWS) and Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) cupboards. So no wonder that many politicians are now getting cold feet about the institute starting work. Overall, there is still a sense of fragility over the current political order, a suspicion that history has not yet had its final say about who did what to whom, when and why. If the truth is as embarrassing as it appears to be, many current political alliances and relationships may well fall apart. Which explains why the Institute for National Memory could remain on paper for some time to come, and why some are actively working to prevent it from existing at all.
