Poles split down the middle over digging up the past

Poland: The debate has exposed a faultline as deep as Ireland's pro- and anti-Treaty divide, writes Derek Scally in Warsaw.

Poland:The debate has exposed a faultline as deep as Ireland's pro- and anti-Treaty divide, writes Derek Scallyin Warsaw.

Ewa Beynar-Czeczott uncovered just one of the countless secrets hidden in the 50 miles of files left behind by communist-era Poland's secret police, the SB.

In the file kept on her father, popular historical author Pawel Jasienca, she found hundreds of pages of reports written by his second wife, Zofia. "She recorded everything: who came over, what they said, the songs they sang, who drank what, even the liquor my grandmother served the better guests," says Ms Beynar-Czeczott, sitting in her Warsaw kitchen.

Zofia took her spying secret to the grave in 1997, but when Ewa discovered the truth she went to court to demand back the copyright to her father's work which Zofia had left to her own son, Ewa's step-brother. Last month, thanks to her spying stepmother's reports, Ewa won a spectacular legal victory.

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Now hundreds of similar court cases are likely thanks to a new law which, for the first time, will permit a full evaluation or "lustration" of Poland's secret police files.

The proposed law has revived a bitter and divisive ideological battle that goes back to the founding moments of modern Polish democracy 18 years ago, and which could have unforeseen consequences for the future.

The custodian of the SB files, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), faces a mammoth task under the new law: to cross-check up to 600,000 names, from scientists to journalists, with an old SB register containing up to one million names, and identify former collaborators.

"SB agents made collaborators' careers easier but using the information collaborators gave, the agents destroyed the lives of people who are now on the margins of society," says Dr Lukasz Kaminski, an IPN deputy director. "This is about helping the victims." The new "lustration" debate has exposed the faultline in Polish politics as deep as Ireland's pro- and anti-Treaty divide.

In Poland the two camps are those for and against the "round table" talks between Poland's communist leaders and the Solidarity opposition. The round table agreement of April 1989 opened the door to democracy in Poland, making it the first east bloc country to throw off communism, seven months before the Berlin Wall fell.

In this new unprecedented position, the euphoria of Solidarity officials was tempered by fears of dividing the country or provoking the Soviet Union if they appeared to be seeking revenge on ex-communist leaders.

With that in mind, the first democratically-elected government drew a symbolic "thick line" between the past and the present. Former communist officials were not automatically ostracised from politics and the SB files remained closed.

Today, these fundamental decisions are under attack from the ruling national conservative twins Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski. Both former Solidarity activists, one of the reasons for breaking with the movement was their fervent belief in punishing everyone involved in the communist regime.

In the Kaczynski world view, the negotiated transition kept alive old networks of ex-communists who, together with business men, hold huge influence in Poland today. The new "lustration" law is their latest effort to clean house since taking office in 2005.

Right-wing newspapers have taken up the cause, seeing a chance to seize power in Polish society by smashing idols of the left, like leading intellectual Adam Michnik.

The "revolution" reached its peak last week when conservative newspaper Dziennik used its front page to proclaim the "end of the Michnik Republic" and the post-communist era.

"It was a temporary creation, transitory and grotesque, that lasted far too long," wrote the newspaper. "The premier architect of this edifice of hypocrisy is Gazeta Wyborcza editor-in-chief, Adam Michnik." Left-wingers and Gazeta Wyborcza reject this "revolution" as a transparent power grab sweeping all round table participants into the same historical bin.

"This is an ideological battle," says Pawel Wronski of Poland's leading newspaper, the left-wing Gazeta Wyborcza. "The Kaczynskis are trying to persuade people that the last 17 years are nothing but a rotten compromise and that we need to build a new country."

Ryszard Kalisz, of the post-communist SLD party, sees the "lustration" campaign as a symptom of a right-wing "complex" of being excluded from the negotiated transition to democracy and the last 17 years of development. "This is the source of the radicalism of these belated revolutionaries," he said.

The "lustration" debate moved up a gear following this month's dramatic resignation of Stanislaw Wielgus as archbishop of Warsaw after he admitted collaborating with the SB.

For the right, Wielgus is a by-product of the flawed "thick line" policy towards the past that encouraged concealment. Left-wingers see Wielgus as a victim of his own lies about his SB involvement.

Either way, the new fervour for "lustration" that spawned the Wielgus revelations has forced church leaders to launch background checks on its bishops.

Their motivation is the fear that further revelations will undermine the church's image as the bedrock of national resistance during the communist period.

Not all priests share those fears; many suggest that attempts by bishops to conceal collaboration, rather than the fact of collaboration itself, could be a greater threat to its moral authority.

With that in mind, Krakow-based priest Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski will next month publish a book revealing the names of 39 bishops and priests he found listed as SB collaborators in his own file. "I informed them all and gave them a chance to defend themselves," he said. "If they can't choose the right way, I'll do it for them."

As the countdown begins for the Polish parliament to vote on the "lustration" Bill, there are signs that the implications of "lustration" for the church may have Polish leaders reconsidering their position.

The Wielgus mess has already driven a wedge between the Kaczynskis and a major source of political support, the fundamentalist station Radio Maryja, which suspects government involvement in the Wielgus affair.

Now president Lech Kaczynski has rejected the original, more aggressive, "lustration" Bill - and what critics called its "McCarthy methods" of guilt until proven innocent - in favour of a milder legal approach.

But the process is no longer being driven forward by the Kaczysnki twins but the so-called "Generation '72", old enough to remember the worst of the communist regime, but young enough not to have been entangled themselves. Many of these see "lustration" as an effective way of furthering their careers by clearing out older generations from leading positions.

If the "lustration" Bill becomes law, it may yet face opposition from the body meant to implement it, the IPN. Founded in 1998 to educate the people about Poland's communist past, many senior officials of the IPN are fuming behind closed doors at being transformed into a partisan prosecutor in an ideological war.

Trapped between the two camps are perplexed Poles. Is "lustration" a vital act of national hygiene, as "lustration" proponents claim? Or is it, as opponents suggest, an attempt to seize power by purging the country now as they were unable to do in 1989?

"I think 'lustration' is necessary work that needs to be done. But in a well-behaved and moderate way," says Ewa Beynar-Czeczott. "I get the impression the government wants to open everything up for the sake of it and that we are losing control of the process."