Examining the Archives - II

Marius has commented on my earlier post Examining the Archives, in which I linked to Anne Applebaum's recent Washington Post article about the so-called "lustration" debate currently underway in Poland. He maintains that the matter is not as simple or straightforward as Applebaum - wittingly or unwittingly - suggests.

With regard to your blog post "Examining the Archives" let me add my five cents to it. This list - so called Wildstein List (Bronislaw Wildstein - the journalist of Rzeczpospolita, who allegedly electronically copied this list http://www.listawildsteina.com/ from the IPN's computer in Warsaw's main office) is creating a lot of havoc.

Wildstein's List, although is incomplete, is widely assumed to be an index of names of Poles who spied for the hated Communist authorities prior to the democratic changes of 1989. The Poles dread seeing their name on the list, as they fear they will be associated with this ugly deal of informing on their friends and relatives during those days.

Every day in the Polish media there's talk about this list, the lustration process, and people who are on this are being interviewed. Btw Lithuania has similar problem, someone posts on the web a list of Lithuanians who work in the government and used be KGB officers in reserve. Foreign Minister Valionis already admitted that he used to be a KGB officer in reserve.

However, the list is in fact an index of spies and their victims, often the very same democratic activists who helped bring down the Communist regime.

The confusion between victims and perpetrators that the list creates has caused personal anguish as well as a means by which former and present intelligence officers can conceal their true identity.

It came to the IPN's director havning to apologize for this in the Polish parliament:


Kieres apologizes for the list

Wojciech Czuchnowski 19-02-2005, last update 18-02-2005 21:13

I stand before of you with feeling of guilt - was saying yesterday in the Parliament (Sejm) the chief of IPN, professor Leon Kieres, apologizing to all of those who have problems, because their names have got on this list which was taken from the Institute.

[passage omitted]

Almost all of the political parties (in the Parliament) have been in the agreement that the Institute's error was to mix on the list the names of full time employees secret informants, candidates on agents and persons who were victims of the secret services.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

There's even a rumor going on, that the leaking of these files has been arranged by the conservative right opposition, who is expected to win a landslide victory in elections this year.

Below is an excerpt from interview with Tadeusz Mazowiecki , the first non-communist premier in the Polish government


http://serwisy.gazeta.pl/wyborcza/1,34591,2560810.html

Revolution won't solve anything

Conversed Jarosław Kurski 18-02-2005, last updated 18-02-2005 19:17

Q: How do you view this act of Bronislaw Wildstein?

- I don't want to evaluate his motives, because I can't assume right away that he was guided by bad motives, but when I listen to his comments, I don't find in them a bit of of awareness, that in this, what has happened, there's also human injustice, and that it is important. When on all questions regarding this, there's an answer
that our lustration has to be painful for all of us, this is not acceptable for me.

Q: Your critics think that the lustration was needed to be done on the wave of revolution of 1989. And you, as the first non-communist premier had missed this rchance, and therefore we've got this now, what we have now.

Till the end of 1990, during my government's tenure, this word "lustration" hadn't been heard in the public. Nobody remembers this now at all. We've got an ahistorical thinking. Let me recall what we were doing then: putting our hyperinflation down, conversion of our currency (zloty), reform of Balcerowicz, confirmation of recognition by Germany of our Western border, getting out the Soviet troops from Poland. Also, we had the first free municipal-administration and presidential elections. There was no talk about lustration then. Now, after 15 years, a tool of political revolution it's being made from this.

Q: What do you mean?

It's that this lustration, propelled as peoples' revolution, is a way to negate the achievements of the last 15 years. Lustration as a moral guillotine of the III Republic of Poland. It's a waste of everything that we - Polish society - during the last 15 years, have done and what we have achieved.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
It appears that Ms Applebaum is little misinformed on the issue of lustration (her own words: soon after the fall of communism, the ex-dissidents who took control of the Polish government decreed that they would not conduct any form of "lustration," or political vetting, of anybody who came into the new government. Unlike the West Germans, who gave East Germans access to their police files, the new Polish leadership kept the files locked up. Partly they feared the social consequences, partly they wanted to protect their friends, and partly that was the deal they made with the outgoing communists. When some accused them of hiding the truth, they called their opponents "witch-hunters." After a few rounds of name-calling, the argument petered out.)

On the 3rd of June 1992 - speaker of the Polish Parliament Wiesław Chrzanowski signed the lustration bill.

This bill says that all candidates for a post in the government must be "lustrated". That means: they must submit a written statement stating whether they were consciously unofficial employees or officers of the Secret Service between 1945 and 1989. If documents and/or witnesses testify to the fact that the person under investigation lied in his statement, he can no longer run for office for 10 years. They can appeal this decision to the Lustration Court to prove, for example, that their file was fabricated. This bill also provides that any person who was a victim of the communist system (persecuted, put in jail, etc.) may see his or her personal file collated by the secret services.

Ms Applebaum is right that - the specter of the "files" kept haunting Polish politics in last 15 years. There was even a proposal from serious opposition figure already long time ago not open those files or simply to destroy them. They had a valid point, any in Poland can recall that even Walesa was accused to be a "lustration liar" and a former secret service [ SB] agent, code name "Bolek. It was revealed that the the SB had created false documents for years, including
fictitious anonymous information, allegedly authored by Walesa under the code name "Bolek," and payment receipts for his services.

It was shown that these materials were created by a special group in the one of the SB departments with a lot help of Eligiusz Naszkowski - who was the SB agent and in the same time Solidarity leader in the city of Pila. It was he who also wire-tapped the last meeting of Solidarity leaders in the city of Radom, a week before the introduction of martial law on Dec. the 13th of 1981. These fabricated documents were used within Poland and abroad, and were even sent to the Nobel Peace Prize Committee in 1982 in an attempt to compromise Walesa's candidacy. They must have had some effect since his candidacy was put off for a year, and the Prize was awarded to Alva Myrdal and Alfonso Garcia Robles, Walesa got the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983.

Please read this article:

Struggling with the Past. Poland's controversial lustration trials

http://www.ce-review.org/00/30/rohozinska30.html


To finish this, even I'm confused and don't want to make any judgment about this list. There's name of well-known figure in Poland on it, as secret service informer, code name "Zapalniczka". He's name is Zdzislaw Najder, a dissident, director of the Polish section of the RFE in 1982-1987 - sentenced to death in absentia by the Polish military court, later politician and advisor to the government officials in the Solidarity government. He admitted that in the late '50s he signed a paper to be an informer of secret services for money, allegedly to find out what the service think and know, thinking that he would outsmart them.

The words below are those of former Defence Minister Jan Parys from 1992


http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~sarmatia/193/parys.html

Q: What about Zdzislaw Najder? He was accused of being an agent using the secret name of "Zapalniczka" - [Cigarette Lighter].

Jan Parys: Mr. Najder is my political friend. He is a politician and former director of the Polish section of Radio Free Europe. He was adviser to Prime Minister Olszewski. It is true that he was investigated a number of times during the past twenty-five years by the police, and had to meet with them, but nothing serious has been found about him in the secret police files. It is not true that he was an agent. A lot of people from the Polish opposition had problems with the secret police, but this does not mean that they became agents.

Marius