Interview by Noora Valkonen with an introduction by Irene Tomaszewski
noora[at]cosmopolitanreview.com
WARSAW, Poland -- The long separation of Eastern Europe from Western Europe created, among other things, some language that is not always understood by the other. Two such words come to mind immediately because of their importance in the history of the former Soviet Bloc: nomenklatura and lustration. The first, nomenklatura, defines the ruling elite of Communist countries, a class so privileged that it was a society set quite apart from those they ruled; and the ruled, in turn, were aware of them more as a force than as fellow citizens. (Left: photo of Georges Mink by K. Adamczyk.)
Lustration is a term used to define the practice in post-Communist countries of exposing and identifying people who collaborated with the Communist regime in order to keep them from participating in public office. Obviously these were not people who were part of the ruling elite -- the nomenklatura, after all, was well known and needed no exposure. Lustration, then, is a search for secret collaborators, people from the ranks of the ruled, who cooperated with the regime.
Since Poland gained its freedom through peaceful negotiation rather than through violent revolution, the nomenklatura naturally formed one side of the negotiation team, and in the elections that followed, this regime was soundly rejected in favour of the democratic opposition. The first democratic prime minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, used the phrase Gruba Kreska – a thick line – to mark the point from which the new democratic forces would govern, separate from and not responsible for the actions of the former regime.
Those negotiations of 1988 brought about one of the most dramatic revolutions in history, bringing democracy not only to Poland but, in rapid succession, to most European countries so long subjugated by the Soviet Union. This peaceful transition enabled Poland to reform itself, to build new institutions, and to rejoin democratic Europe.
But for some, the peaceful nature of the revolution meant that the injustices of the old regime went unpunished, and collaborators with the old regime were able to conceal their past. Fifteen years later, some began demanding a lustration, and a reckoning. Ironically, the evidence against alleged collaborators is usually found in the documents of the former secret police, the very organ that was built on deceit and entrapment, and was never trusted. Is it to be trusted now?
Noora Valkonen discusses these issues with Central and Eastern European history specialist Georges Mink.
CR: Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the Polish politician and author proposed the "Gruba Kreska," a big, thick line separating the past from the present. Was it really Mazowiecki's idea?
G.M.: You know he never proposed to forget about the past or to have amnesia. When he talked about the big line it was only to say that he wanted, as a prime minister with new non-communist ministers, to assume responsibility only for his government, not for the past. So it was clearly said that he did not want to have responsibility of what happened before 1989. He put the big line between his governmental work and the communist past.
But for some kind of a social need and for some political actors it was useful to stigmatize him saying he proposed to forget about the past. They associated this with the idea that he proposed not to talk about the Communists' responsibilities, especially the responsibility of some criminals in the communist period. So his adversaries used this to stigmatize him showing him as a "traitor of the nation," who authorized amnesia‚ that being equivalent to no judgment of the past.
CR: I understand that at the time a lot of people thought that separating the past from the present would be great, though, because it would prevent a lot of score settling, as happened for example in Hungary?
G.M.: The Polish model of escape from communism has to be understood as a negotiation among adversaries of that time but partners of today. It was a bit like the Spanish model of getting out of the Franco era. There is like an unformulated pact on the question of responsibility, because the representatives of the regime decided to negotiate and to break down the ancient regime. There is no place for judgment, like a Nuremberg of communism. It was a question of the historical moment.
Of course the problem is the general law of history: you can't keep stuff under the carpet for long because one day somebody will come and think that it is a very interesting resource for stigmatizing people, especially the people responsible for amnesia. But this somebody is analyzing it in a new context. It is what I have called de-contextualizing. Manipulation of history can be done because actors de-contextualize.
CR: This is a huge question, but how did the "old" elite actually make its way out of the communist system in practice? How premeditated was it?
G.M.: My hypothesis is that there are two countries, where -- because they had more flexible systems -- the nomenklatura observed that the end of the regime was coming because there was no more legitimization. So they prepared, in a certain sense, the transition. It is what I call an invisible transition, for example, with special laws, which grounded the possibility to convert their political power into economic power.
There was not so much premeditation. It was a question of necessity, not about constructing a special strategy, a plan or a plot, but it was the weakness of the communist elites, the feeling that they would be the losers. They responded to the necessity of the moment.
The real process started with the old nomenklatura, because they had in their hands the social relations capital and the knowledge of how-to-do. They had the opportunity to do something and they had the privilege. They responded to the challenge of history, so they today appear as winners. But what we have to remember, even in the situation of Czechoslovakia, where there was no possibility to imagine the end of the regime, where they were totally surprised, that even then there was a strategy of conversion to go to the private sector. Why? Because like in Poland and in Hungary the nomenklatura had the social and cultural capital.
CR: I am especially interested in the accumulation of the financial capital. It seems that in the collapsing process of the Soviet Union a great amount of assets ended up in the hands of the old elite. To what extent did this happen in Poland?
G.M.: First, you cannot put the sign of equality between the Russian system and the Polish system. In Poland there was not a system of an oligarchy connected to a half "sultanic" system that in Russia went even beyond the elite of Gorbachev, when he created laws that left opportunities for the Communists to buy the very big monopolies of gas, petrol, iron, aluminum and so on. In Poland the scale was lower of course and the possible time to enrich each other was shorter. Almost immediately you had the arriving of Western capital, which was married to the nomenklatura from time to time, but corruption was not so easy. Of course on the margins it happened and you have some cases of post-nomenklatura with oligarchic accumulation of capital. But the sector of healthy capital was immediately larger. Privatizing was under control of the western countries.
CR: Then there is the moral side to the story and the possibility of perhaps opening up a public discussion on the transition period to democracy and market economy. Do you think that Poland needs some kind of a public exploration of all the complexities of the period?
G.M.: They did it from the very beginning! There was a special institution, a national enquiries court. They did enquiries from the beginning; they did investigate and they had a series of processes with tribunals and judgments. And the public debate is continuing really form the beginning, in the Polish press and in the public, on how to have a healthy public life. There was also a big discussion on the civil service, because it was one of the demands of the European Union to obtain a clear status of civil servants as one of the important tools to stop corruption.
CR: What do you think about the Jaruzelski case?
G.M.: There are two Jaruzelskis, so from the point of view of the law it is very difficult to have one judgment. There is the Jaruzelski of martial law and the Jaruzelski of the Round Table talks. The question is mostly for historians, not for the law. Of course there is the problem of victims, and you have to judge criminal acts, but it is also difficult to establish who is guilty, really, and what kind of a scale is necessary. The problem is that some political actors have a very big interest for the process to be as long as possible. Each day when you speak about Jaruzelski you gain something, each day you can use this negative image for your own gains.
In Nuremberg for the Nazis, after the judgment, you had the historical facts and everybody said okay, it is finished and now we can have a healthy democracy. But for some people in the post-communist countries it is very convenient to say it is not finished. They are still in politics. They have enemies and they can try to make people forget about the real economic and social difficulties. It is also an element to stigmatize, to distinguish enemies -- even when they are not really connected to Jaruzelski.
CR: This brings us to my last question. Do you think Poland could or should have a truth and reconciliation commission like in South Africa? Do you think it is necessary or possible?
G.M.: If you remember, the commission on the truth, reconciliation and justice had a very specific function immediately. This is very important. The people who were considered responsible for the crimes and the victims of these crimes met, there was a contact. It was like a psychoanalytical therapy process. It is too late in the post-communist countries. You can of course try, but I do not see the possibility of a small security official from one small region, being responsible for putting somebody in prison, coming now to a special place to say yes, I did that, I am sorry for that. And the people saying, okay, I pardon you and now we can live peacefully. It is too late, and it was not possible in the beginning, because in the Round Table talks it was necessary to have confidence in each other. It was not possible to have confidence and to punish people at the same time. It would have interrupted the talks and the army could have intervened. The guarantee was not to punish people; it was the condition of sine qua non.
CR: Do you think the general public in Poland, the man of the street‚ shares your view?
G.M.: You know, it is a strange story because public opinion is constructed in a general way by the small facts that arrive just when the public is being consulted. So at the moment of polling, for instance, a new document can appear and it can change the opinion of the public. And the new generation can forget the past and the context. If you put the question in a certain way you can completely forget that Poland came from the Round Table talks. So there is the question of permanent simplification of the past and playing with stereotypes.
For instance during the elections of 2005 the people were so under the influence of PIS that they followed it in all things, also in the condemnation of the Communist past. They considered it was not good to avoid a process of judgment. But today PIS is compromised and very demagogic, so the public has changed its opinion. CR
Finnish Noora Valkonen is a journalist and human rights activist currently completing a post-graduate degree at the College of Europe in Natolin, Warsaw. When Noora's not busy inquiring into the challengess facing the globe and seeking solutions for them by working accross the boundaries of journalism, research and NGOs, she skips the tube and "over-consumption", and instead indulges in art, nature walks, history, art, and books, preferably with a splash of wine, when appropriate. When away from Helskinki, she misses Finnish liquorice and her husband. (Picture: at the Polish parliament)
