As Ukraine slowly comes to terms with its Soviet past, neighboring Poland, which had been racing ahead in the process, seems to be faltering. Polish opposition and international observers say the country’s new leadership under Polish President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Beata Szydlo is actively seeking to control and censor historical debate.
“Historical politics should be conducted by the Polish state as an element of the construction of our international position,” Duda told journalists during a meeting of the National Development Council on Feb. 16. The Polish president said that the policy should be aggressive and “consistently implemented to achieve the intended purpose.”
‘Under attack from everyone’
The Law and Justice Party, which returned to power last autumn, has reintroduced a bill to make the use of the term “Polish death camps” a jailable offense, even when used outside Poland. Poles weren’t involved in running Nazi Germany death camps on Polish soil. Under current legislation it is technically illegal, although there have been no prosecutions. but critics say the new legislation is unnecessary and impossible to enforce.
The Law and Justice Party is “trying to create the feeling that Poland is under attack from everyone, the West, Russia, and even the United States,” Lukasz Lipinski, the deputy director of Polytika Insight, Poland’s main liberal newspaper, told the Kyiv Post.
The party says “there are enemies everywhere trying to blame Poland for the Holocaust,” Lipinski said. “But I think this is a hysterical reaction.”
Gross falsification?
In February, the government announced it may strip historian Jan Gross of a medal he received in 1996 for services to Poland. A Polish-American, Gross has been a key contributor to researching the Holocaust in Poland. But his controversial statement in a German newspaper last year that “Poles killed more Jews than Germans” during World War II has sparked anger for challenging the dominant narrative of Polish victimhood.
The government-funded Institute of Polish Remembrance published a letter calling Gross’ claim a falsification, but others, like historian Timothy Snyder, have signed a petition in his defense. Snyder tweeted he will return his own medal if the government strips Gross of his award.
Monument removal
In a move supported by the government, the Institute of Polish Remembrance announced on March 26 that is was compiling an inventory of all remaining Soviet-era monuments that should be removed. Even monuments — except for gravestones — that bear the names of Soviet soldiers who were killed battling Nazis in Poland will be transferred to an outdoor museum, Paweł Ukielsk, the deputy president of the institute, told the Kyiv Post by phone.
“We believe they should be removed because they (the Red Army) didn’t bring liberty to Poland,” Ukielsk said.
Soviet ‘spy networks’
Many have also noted a McCarthy-like atmosphere being created in Poland by conservative media linked to the Law and Justice Party.
Dozens of articles have been written in such media about parents and grandparents of prominent Poles, alleging that they worked as informants for Communist and Soviet authorities. Books have also been published detailing links between the communist regime and prominent Polish journalists and businesspeople.
Former Agence France-Presse correspondent in Poland, Michel Viatteau, wrote in a blog piece in February: “This idea of a communist ‘plot’ or ‘network’ seems extremely useful for the party in power – a tool it can use for multiple usages.”
The biggest of the “Soviet spy” news stories focused on new evidence produced by Ukielsk’s institute, which allegedly showed Poland’s first president, Lech Walesa, had been a Soviet spy, something that Walesa strongly denies. Welsa led Poland’s Solidarity movement, which is credited with bringing an end to the country’s Communist regime.
However, Ukielsk said that he didn’t believe history in Poland was being falsified: “Just like different parties will have different views on the economy, each government has different views on history.”
Why now?
The Polish government came to power during a period of economic prosperity and relative stability. Political experts said that the turn to the right reflects unhappiness with the way the transition from communism has proceeded since independence. There is a substantial part of the population who feel that Western companies and rich people benefitted, not ordinary people, Lipinski told the Kyiv Post.
But Lipinski said that the Law and Justice Party was not up front in its 2015 campaign about the policies it would pursue if elected. The party “came to power in a center-right disguise.” n
