Examining the Archives

Last month I discussed a New York Times article by Tina Rosenberg about the difficult process now underway in Poland to determine who was a collaborator under the Communist regime. Now Anne Applebaum has written an account for the Washington Post of a recent visit to Warsaw, where she witnessed

the unexpectedly fierce renewal of a debate that last gripped the country a decade ago. At stake was a list of actual and potential secret police informers, preserved intact from the communist era, discovered in an archive, electronically copied by a journalist, and then somehow posted, in an unverifiable form, on the Internet. Since it appeared the country has been convulsed by an intense, déjà vu frenzy. One acquaintance told me that she walked into her office the morning after the story broke and found everyone silently scanning the list with their doors shut, looking for the names of friends, neighbors or themselves. The list was the most sought-after item on Polish Google. On the day I visited, crowds of people were standing outside the Institute of National Memory, where the files are kept, clamoring to see their files.

She has some interesting conclusions, and draws the Polish experience out into an international, global context:

This Polish experience is hardly unique. Not long ago I spent an evening with a group of young politicians and economists from around the world, all of whom had come to spend a semester at Yale University. I brought up this subject -- how to discuss the undemocratic past in a new democracy -- in a conversation about Russia, where locking up the secret police files has helped former secret police officers return to power. It quickly became clear that almost everyone in the room, whether from South Africa, Chile or Slovakia, had grappled with some version of the problem. So had the Iraqi Kurd. And their conclusions were simple and unanimous: Whether through public debate, trials or parliamentary investigations, the crimes of the past have to be dealt with. In some fashion, justice has to be served if the new democracy is to be perceived as a just society.

It's worth remembering those conclusions this week, as Iraq forms a new government, and it's worth remembering them in general, as we analyze what has happened there over the past two years. It is certainly possible that "de-Baathification" -- the removal of Saddam Hussein's officials from power -- went too far and too deep. It's also possible that Iraq might have been worse off in the long run if it hadn't happened at all. Either way, if Hussein's crimes are not discussed now, and if the Baathist archives, many still in the possession of the CIA, are not made accessible to Iraqis, they will continue to haunt Iraqi public life. Whether in Central Europe, southern Africa or the Middle East, the more information that is made public about the past, the less the past can be used to influence the politics of the present.

(Via BH)