Poles apart: opening the files on a Communist past

He was among Poland's most acclaimed and respected writers. His works based on his travels across Africa and Latin America, including his best-known book The Emperor chronicling the downfall of Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, put him on course to be tipped for the Nobel Prize.

So why has the distinguished journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died last January at 74, been posthumously "outed" as a spy for the communist-era secret police, and his reputation tarnished for ever?

The revelation, in a Polish weekly magazine last week, which prompted an outraged denial from his widow, was the latest damaging leak to emerge from the Institute of National Remembrance where the secret files are held.

Poland has unfinished business with its Soviet-era past, and the stage-managed leaks by historians with access to the archives are part of a political war as the country moves to expose collaborators almost two decades after the fall of communism.

The debate, now focusing on whether the 53 miles of secret files should be thrown open completely, has split families and the political elite. The turmoil has divided the historic figures of the Solidarity movement, the trade union that opened the way to democracy in Poland.

As Adam Michnik, a former Solidarity leader who is now editor-in-chief of the country's largest newspaper, put it: "Today, two Polands confront each other. A Poland of suspicion, fear and revenge is fighting a Poland of hope, courage and dialogue."

Pawel Kowalewski, an artist who now heads an advertising agency, says: " Let's finish the job." He firmly believes that the secret files should be opened, no matter how painful for individuals and society. "Until that time, someone can come and say, 'I have papers against you and you must do this and this'," he says. "I want to know if my daughter is being educated by a guy who used to work for the political police."

His former wife, Nina Kowalewska-Motlik, a marketing executive, is equally adamant that the files should remain secret. "They should bury them in a vault for 50 years until everyone concerned is dead. It serves no purpose. Poles should be looking to the future, now that we are in Europe, not to the past."

The issue came to a head after a new vetting law came into effect on 15 March. It provided for 53 categories of workers, including journalists, politicians, academics, lawyers, directors of public and private schools, and the board members of publicly listed companies, to fill out declarations on whether they had collaborated with the political police. The law applied not only to an estimated 700,000 Poles born before 1 August 1972, but also to foreigners and foreign companies operating in Poland.

Those who admitted to past collaboration were expected to provide details in the questionnaire. Those who refused to sign by 15 May - or who were caught lying about their past - would lose their posts and be banned from holding any public office for 10 years.

The law was a result of a campaign promise by the ruling twins, President Lech Kaczynski and Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, who pledged a " moral renewal" would deal with Poland's communist demons once and for all by purging from public life the "Reds under the bed".

The conservative leaders, encouraged by young politicians who saw an opportunity for advancement, maintained that an earlier attempt had not been sufficient to end the influence of the corrupt communist elite who had recycled their talents and freshened their CVs. The twins hoped the anti-communist drive would be a big political success, but they have now ended up with egg on their faces.

A political storm ensued amid fears of a witch-hunt. Some said that many documents in the Institute of Public Remembrance could not be trusted, or had already been destroyed. University rectors were up in arms and journalists predicted the end of freedom of speech as the climate of suspicion deepened. Cardinal Dziwisz of Krakow entered the fray, saying there could be no place in Poland "for retribution, revenge, lack of respect for human dignity and reckless accusations".

But just before the 15 May deadline, the constitutional court stepped in and struck down the essence of the law. Now, the country is waiting to see whether Prime Minister Kaczynski, a former Solidarity figure himself, will make good on a threat to throw open the files completely.

In a hotel dining room in the mountain resort of Zakopane, a two-hour drive from Krakow, Mr Kowalewski is engaged in a heated argument over lunch with his former wife about the botched vetting law.

Mr Kowalewski explains that - like Kapuscinski - he had to visit the secret police during the communist days to obtain a passport to travel. But that did not make him a collaborator, he insists. He refused to sign the vetting law declaration, exposing himself to the sack. "I wrote to the dean of the Academy of Fine Arts, saying that after 25 years I could not sign such a declaration," he said. Luckily for Mr Kowalewski, the dean did not react before the law was struck down.

Ireneusz Bobrowski, a 55-year-old professor of logic and semiotics at Krakow's Jagiellonian university, wrestled with his conscience over his own personal dilemma. Puffing on a cigarette during a break from class on a sultry Krakow afternoon, he says: "This was a stupid law." He studied in the Netherlands in the late 1970s, so he had to get a passport and visit the secret police.

"I had to write that if someone was against Poland, I would report it to the Polish embassy. Of course, I never did anything. But I had to sign a paper, and that paper is in the files."

Professor Bobrowski thought long and hard about signing the vetting declaration. "I did sign," he says, "but I said I didn't know if I was an informer or not, because of the problem of the file saying so."

One of the most prominent Poles to refuse to sign the declaration was Bronislaw Geremek, a founder member of Solidarity and former Polish foreign minister who is now a member of the European Parliament. He was warned that he faced losing his mandate because of his refusal to co-operate. The EU assembly strongly supported Mr Geremek, 75, who had argued that the law was undemocratic. Although Solidarity was infiltrated by the political police, there has never been a suggestion that Mr Geremek was a collaborator.

Other founders of Solidarity have spoken out. Lech Walesa, the Gdansk electrician who became Solidarity leader and subsequently president of Poland, is a strong supporter of throwing open the files. He has already gone twice to court to clear himself of allegations that he was an informer of the SB security service. "Only cowards and those who didn't fight didn't have any files," he told The Washington Post in Gdansk last month. "But we need to get it over with as quickly as possible and do it once and for all. We need to make this issue disappear forever."

Mr Michnik, another Solidarity champion, had long said the ghosts of the past should not be disturbed. But he abruptly reversed his opinion this month and announced in his paper, Gazeta Wyborcza, that he was now convinced all the files should be opened.

Poland's first post-communist prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, was among those who refused to sign the declaration. But an aide said he did not want to talk about the issue because it was "a source of conflict" in Poland.

Andrzej Jonas, the editor-in-chief of the English language weekly magazine The Warsaw Voice, filled out his company form and collected those from his journalists and placed them in a drawer in his desk. "When the court decision came down, just before the deadline, I sent the forms back to the centre," he said.

Pending a government decision on the way forward, the court ruling has left a n uneasy limbo, with tens of thousands of people having filled out the forms before the deadline. "The court decided the forms were unconstitutional, so that means those who signed them have carried out an unconstitutional act," said a bemused Polish official.

Surprisingly, the debate is not just affecting the generation which grew up under communism while the young look on. On the streets of Krakow, students had strong opinions on each side of the argument, although one group of film students sitting on the university library steps decided the collapse of the vetting law was hilarious. "It's a farce," said one. Damian Szparaga, a 22-year-old English student, argued that the issue "is important for the future. Many in the public sector should be lustrated," he says. In Poland, the vetting law is known as lustration, a ceremonial purification of the collaborators. But Przemek Dziedzic, an IT student, feels it is now too late. "Communism is long gone; it should have been done earlier," he says.

For Mr Jonas, the vetting laws are more of interest to those who lived under the old regime than to younger generations. "My children, who are in their 30s, are not interested in who collaborated. They say, what is it for?" He sees the vetting issue as part of a political war. "A lot of people would like to use the files to kill their enemies."

Supporters of the vetting law contend that Poland had never de-communised properly. When Mr Walesa became president, he resisted calls for opening the intelligence archives because it risked destabilising the country's fragile democracy after decades of Soviet-backed rule. But the persistent outing of prominent Poles through media leaks has increased the pressure for the files to be opened. Kapucsinski was the latest in a series of leading figures to be fingered as a communist-era collaborator.

One of them, the Archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, abruptly resigned last January at a Mass meant to celebrate his new position, only moments before his inauguration, after newspapers accused him of having been a police informer for decades from the late 1960s. His admission that he had been a collaborator stunned the devout Catholic country. Another leak forced the finance minister, Zyta Gilowska, to leave the government while she cleared her name.

Poles are wondering how many other families will be torn apart by suspicion and innuendo before the government decides how to proceed with the purge of former collaborators. There seems to be growing support in parliament for a new law providing for the files to be opened, removing the pol- itical poison from the process.

Kapuscinski's widow, Alicja, said last Friday that it was "revolting" that such allegations about her husband had surfaced after his death. Mrs Kapuscinska lived with the writer for more than 50 years and is now based in Rome. "There is no evidence that he actively co-operated with the secret services, there is no proof that he wrote reports commissioned by them," she said.

The Kaczynski brothers have opened another can of worms by proceeding with the prosecution of General Wojciech Jaruzelski over the 1981 introduction of martial law in Poland.

The twins are keen to ensure that privileges still enjoyed by communist-era generals are ended. General Jaruzelski, Poland's last communist leader and now 83, has been charged with "communist crimes" stemming from the declaration of martial law. But Poles are equally divided on the wisdom of taking General Jaruzelski to court. Although nearly 100 people were killed under martial law, and tens of thousands were arrested, the general has said that he acted to prevent a Soviet invasion.

"I am very sorry it is so late for Poland," Mr Kowalewski said. "The tragedy for us is being first," he added, referring to the country's place in history by becoming the first in the Soviet bloc to negotiate the collapse of communism in early 1989.

Unlike Poland, East Germany came to terms with the dark legacy of the Soviet era by opening the secret police files to their victims months after the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, although many documents were destroyed by departing Stasi officers. The Germans had already had a painful reckoning after the Second World War.

In Russia, access to the KGB files remains strictly controlled, preventing the living relatives of Stalin's victims from learning about the millions killed or deported by the Soviet dictator.

But it is not the only country to have hesitated to confront its demons. General Charles de Gaulle decided against pitting the French against each other over the collaboration by the Vichy regime after the Second World War, and Spain let bygones be bygones after the death of the dictator, General Francisco Franco. Japan is still grappling with with its wartime atrocities in China and Korea, and even American states have only recently begun apologising for slavery.

As for Poland, "It's a mess," said a Warsaw-based Western diplomat. Kapuscinski must be turning in his grave.