Posted on 03/13/2007 2:16:05 PM PDT by lizol
Polish intelligentsia face post-communist vetting
Tue Mar 13, 2007 5:17am ET145
By Chris Johnson
WARSAW (Reuters) - Andrzej Krawczyk was arrested on a Warsaw street in 1982 with a backpack containing 1,000 pro-democracy leaflets protesting against martial law and the communist crackdown on the Solidarity trade union.
In prison, he was forced to sign a document saying he would collaborate with the secret police, but later retracted it and insists he never helped the Soviet-era authorities in any way.
Now, 25 years later, Krawczyk is one of thousands of senior Polish officials preparing to try to clear their name under a new law in force this month that aims to reveal collaborators with communist-era secret police.
The new law will require up to 700,000 Poles in any position of authority born before June 1, 1972 -- including academics, journalists and company executives -- to state in writing they did not collaborate with the communist regime, toppled in 1989.
Employers will need to verify staff have been vetted by a special institution, the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), that holds millions of documents from the state security apparatus that ran Poland for four decades after World War Two.
Making a false personal statement will be a crime punishable with a ban from public life of up to 10 years -- a term that would mean many of those accused could never work again in their chosen profession.
During the vetting, which could take months or even years, those concerned will have to step down from their jobs.
CLEANSING
"There really is a paradox here," said Krawczyk, who was undersecretary of state at the chancellery of Poland's conservative president, Lech Kaczynski, until last month when he was forced to resign because of allegations he had spied.
"I am being punished by anti-communist law for my pro-democracy, pro-Solidarity efforts 25 years ago."
No one doubts that the law, which will replace another one that focused on senior officials and politicians, will trace some of those who collaborated and spied for the former communist government.
Many Poles see it as an essential cleansing process that was not carried out immediately after communism because of the pressing need for national reconciliation and reconstruction.
Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the president's twin brother, came to power promising to sweep away the old communist espionage network, which his party says is still trying to exert power. Many people blame it for widespread corruption.
"The network still exists in Poland and is stronger than I had previously thought," the prime minister told the daily Rzeczpospolita in an interview on March 8.
A previous law, under which Krawczyk's case was first brought, expires on March 15 and affected as many as 27,000 public officials, including politicians and judges.
That forced the archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, to resign in disgrace on the day of his official installation ceremony after he had admitted to spying on fellow clerics.
Many Poles approve of the principle of vetting and there was widespread support for declarations by senior officials that they had not been part of the communist-era secret services.
PAPERWORK
But the new law will involve so many people -- up to 700,000 individuals, according to IPN spokesman Andrzej Arseniuk -- and so also much paperwork, that officials say it could take more than 15 years to process all the cases.
That could mean many Poles now in positions of authority would have to step down from their jobs and wait years before they have cleared their names, a vindication that might not come before they reach retirement.
Eugeniusz Smolar, a political analyst and head of Warsaw's Center for International Studies, says the vetting is particularly hard on older Poles and will have the effect of bringing younger ones into new roles throughout the country.
"The motive may be political but the effect is a generational change, sweeping older officials from their jobs and replacing them with much younger people," he said.
There is also distaste that the law will punish those who collaborated with the secret service -- many unlucky ordinary men and women who were blackmailed -- rather than the spymasters who ran them.
Many Poles worry that the net is now being cast too wide, particularly when it draws in lower-ranking officials and those outside the political sphere such as academics and journalists, many of whom say they will refuse to take part in the process.
Tomasz Nalecz, a professor of history at Warsaw University, fears the new law will force universities and other institutions to act politically when dealing with their staff.
"This law will cause great unhappiness because of the large numbers of people who are subject to it," he said.
What I don't understand: This effectively means that the state tells private enterprises whom they can hire or not - Right?
Like "Fighting communism with communism" - or am I wrong here?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.