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What ever happened to fact checking on your own? The Communist party in Poland changed their name to the Social Democrats and won in a landslide - defeating Walesa despite the fact he and his party were supported by the Catholic Church.

Walesa is a moron, besides he doesn't have any party.

In fact - the SLD is a party, which has its roots in Polish communist party.

We call them here in Poland communists, post-communists, commies and so on, but in fact they are hardly ones. They are just oportunists, that would say anything that people wanted them to - only to be in power. Actually in Poland there is to serious political party, which is really a communist one (like Zuyganov's in Russia).

Saying, that our Kwasniewski, or Miller or others from that party are genuine communists today would be like saying, that Jose Maria Aznar of Spain or Gianfranco Finni of Italy are fascists - because their parties have roots in times of Franco or Mussolini (altough some say so, but those are typical European lefties).

SLD actually won the election in Poland in 2001. The turnout was 46,29%. They got 41,04 % of votes and the split center - right wing parties got altogether 47,73 (6 of them summed up altogether). So - as you can see - the "commies" won because of stupidity and incompetence of rightist politicians.

A very important factor was, that the election was conducted after 12 years of very difficult transition process, which was very painful for many people. All the responsibility for that transition was focused on the Right, which actually reformed the country. At the same time SLD was running very brutal, populist, but efficient election campaign. And the result was - like it was.

But it was nothing typical for Poland. The same happened at some moment in fact in every post-communist country.

OK, in Russia the communist party today is in opposition. But - as I wrote above - they have no equivalent in Poland. As to people who rule Russia today - their political past is not better than our "commies". Most of them are former KGB or army officers, or Soviet diplomats. So - Destro - do you really believe, that they are less "communist" than our Kwasniewski?

And just for your information - accordiong to latest opinion polls - the SLD has 4-6 % of support, and are likely to be swept out of the political stage during the election this October (the election threshold is 5%).