Looking for something positive from the Polish disaster

This inspiring article The Glory of Poland by Roger Cohen appeared in today’s New York Times.

“NEW YORK — My first thought, hearing of the Polish tragedy, was that history’s gyre can be of an unbearable cruelty, decapitating Poland’s elite twice in the same cursed place, Katyn. My second was to call my old friend Adam Michnik in Warsaw. Michnik, an intellectual imprisoned six times by the former puppet-Soviet Communist rulers, once told me:

“Anyone who has suffered that humiliation, at some level, wants revenge. I know all the lies. I saw people being killed. But I also know that revanchism is never ending. And my obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag.”

Michnik’s obsession has yielded fruit. President Lech Kaczynski is dead. Slawomir Skrzypek, the president of the National Bank, is dead. An explosion in the fog of the forest took them and 94 others on the way to Katyn. But Poland’s democracy has scarcely skipped a beat. The leader of the lower house of Parliament has become acting president pending an election. The first deputy president of the National Bank has assumed the duties of the late president. Poland, oft dismembered, even wiped from the map, is calm and at peace.

“Katyn is the place of death of the Polish intelligentsia,” Michnik, now the soul of Poland’s successful Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, said when I reached him by phone. “This is a terrible national tragedy. But in my sadness I am optimistic because Putin’s strong and wise declaration has opened a new phase in Polish-Russian relations, and because we Poles are showing we can be responsible and stable.”

Michnik was referring to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s words after he decided last week to join, for the first time, Polish officials commemorating the anniversary of the murder at Katyn of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the start of World War II. Putin, while defending the Russian people, denounced the “cynical lies” that had hidden the truth of Katyn, said “there is no justification for these crimes” of a “totalitarian regime” and declared, “We should meet each other halfway, realizing that it is impossible to live only in the past.”

The declaration, dismissed by the paleolithic Russian Communist Party, mattered less than Putin’s presence, head bowed in that forest of shame. Watching him beside Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, I thought of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl hand-in-hand at Verdun in 1984: of such solemn moments of reconciliation has the miracle of a Europe whole and free been built. Now that Europe extends eastward toward the Urals.

I thought even of Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970, a turning point on the road to a German-Polish reconciliation more miraculous in its way even than the dawning of the post-war German-French alliance. And now perhaps comes the most wondrous rapprochement, the Polish-Russian.

It is too early to say where Warsaw-Moscow relations are headed but not too early to say that 96 lost souls would be dishonored if Polish and Russian leaders do not make of this tragedy a solemn bond. As Tusk told Putin, “A word of truth can mobilize two peoples looking for the road to reconciliation. Are we capable of transforming a lie into reconciliation? We must believe we can.”

Poland should shame every nation that believes peace and reconciliation are impossible, every state that believes the sacrifice of new generations is needed to avenge the grievances of history. The thing about competitive victimhood, a favorite Middle Eastern pastime, is that it condemns the children of today to join the long list of the dead.

For scarcely any nation has suffered since 1939 as Poland, carved up by the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, transformed by the Nazis into the epicenter of their program to annihilate European Jewry, land of Auschwitz and Majdanek, killing field for millions of Christian Poles and millions of Polish Jews, brave home to the Warsaw Uprising, Soviet pawn, lonely Solidarity-led leader of post-Yalta Europe’s fight for freedom, a place where, as one of its great poets, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote, “History counts its skeletons in round numbers” — 20,000 of them at Katyn.

It is this Poland that is now at peace with its neighbors and stable. It is this Poland that has joined Germany in the European Union. It is this Poland that has just seen the very symbols of its tumultuous history (including the Gdansk dock worker Anna Walentynowicz and former president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski) go down in a Soviet-made jet and responded with dignity, according to the rule of law.

So do not tell me that cruel history cannot be overcome. Do not tell me that Israelis and Palestinians can never make peace. Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever.

Ask the Poles. They know.”

An update from a less lofty perspective - the party of the dead President is already moving to make his twin brother a candidate for the next presidential election that will be held within the next 60 days. In my view this would be a backward move for the country in terms of its progress towards liberal modernity and improved international relations. Jaroslaw Kaczynski was the leader of the PIS (Law & Justice) party who, while PM, effectively manoeuvred his brother into power. He was always a tougher and more aggressive figure than his twin and is seen as the real Machiavellian power of the nationalistic and populist PIS party. The party will now win a populist surge of emotional support unrelated to their policies, not only from the sympathy and shock over Lech and his wife's tragic death but also because the majority of the dead members of parliament in the entourage were PIS members personally invited to travel with the President. Lech Kaczynski who notably failed to rise above party political preferences once he assumed presidential office.

Fingers crossed for the warming of Russo-Polish relations to which Cohen’s article refers. This optimistic momentum will be curtailed if another Kaczynski attains presidential office. He would be even less of a 'statesman' than his brother has been and would likely step up the simmering conflict with the Prime Minister that has marred his brother's term in office as well as renewing the animosity towards Russia.

The body of Mrs Kaczynski will be returned in state today with similar ceremony and TV coverage as her husband's received. Hundreds of thousands of people are still out on the streets in Warsaw paying their shocked tributes by lighting their candles and making mountains of flowers. Two marches will take place in Katowice today, one organised by the Institute of National Remembrance whose director died in the tragedy. There are no adverts on TV channels, just emotion-provoking images of the presidential couple, accompanied by uplifting music. It is a remarkable example of media's power to massage the masses and fan the emotions. There is a level of engagement here that is well beyond politics and is deeply tied to a sense of national, even tribal identity with one's leader(s), something perhaps encoded by evolution into our psyches.

The latest Polish tragedy

We awoke on Saturday 10 April to hear on the news an inconclusive report of an air crash near Smolensk. It took a little time to establish that the 20-year old Russian-built plane carrying the President of Poland Lech Kaczynski and his entourage was the plane that has crashed and that all 96 on board were killed. There were initially reports of four gravely wounded passengers but these were later discounted. The enormity of the loss to the nation’s cadre of leaders was revealed only gradually, as it was not clear that the passenger list matched the actual travellers. The invitation to travel with the President’s separately arranged trip to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre was his private initiative and normal ticketing and check-in procedures are not followed on such occasions. The first list was only of those invited. There is an unpleasant history of conflict between the President and the Prime Minister about attending international events and Kaczynski had foregone the opportunity to attend the official international ceremony with PM Tusk and Vladimir Putin two days before. In addition to his disagreements with the Polish Prime Minister, arch-nationalist Kaczynski was disinclined to be seen with Putin and had taken no part in Tusk’s move to rebuild the frosty post-World War II relations with Russia. Putin had taken a major step in acknowledging that it was the Soviets and not the Nazis who had murdered 22000 Polish officers (although without giving a formal apology) and this seemed to herald a better and more open relationship between the two countries.

It is a terribly dark irony that this peacetime disaster happened as a consequence of that much greater wartime tragedy so long ago. "This is so very much like Katyn, where our head was cut off," said former President Lech Walesa. “It could only happen to Poland” said another commentator, reflecting the pessimism arising from the tragic history of this vulnerable nation. Also adding to the irony is the fact that the abrasive and largely unpopular president who was avoiding normal international courtesies to organise his own Polish-only commemoration at Katyn has now been elevated to the status of a national martyr. The tragic accident, possibly an act of Polish aviational bravura, took the lives of the top military commanders, over 30 members of the parliament, the head of the national bank and so many other key people belonging to the ruling class. Russian investigators suspect pilot error caused the crash. They say the pilots were warned that they were flying too low just before the plane clipped tree-tops in heavy fog, as it was coming in to land.

Here are some of the victims:

National leaders - President Lech Kaczynski and wife Maria; Ryszard Kaczorowski Former President-in-exile
Top civil servant - Slawomir Skrzypek National Bank of Poland chairman
Other politicians - Wladyslaw Stasiak chief of the president's chancellery; Aleksander Szczyglo chief of the National Security Office; Jerzy Szmajdzinski deputy speaker of the lower house Andrzej Kremer Foreign Ministry's undersecretary of state Stanislaw Komorowski deputy minister of national defence Przemyslaw Gosiewski Law and Justice party deputy chair
Military figures - Franciszek Gagor chief of the general staff; Andrzej Blasik head of the air force; Andrzej Karweta head of the navy; Tadeusz Buk land forces commander; Aleksander Szczyglo head of the National Security Office
Cultural figures - Andrzej Przewoznik head of Poland's Council for the Protection of Struggle and Martyrdom Sites; Tomasz Merta chief historical conservator

No doubt after the many upcoming funerals questions will be asked about the policy of placing so many top people on a single airplane for a day trip to a ceremonial event. It is, of course, hard to refuse a personal invitation from the President himself, especially when the event commemorates a national tragedy, only unwittingly to become another national tragedy.

We are now in a 7-day period of national mourning. All shops were closed on Sunday and national TV has stopped all entertainment programmes to give 24 hour coverage of the event and its consequences. Canal +, the private subscription channel on which I see live UK Premiership soccer games, ran the weekend matches without the commentary in Polish. The return of the president’s body, one of only 24 yet to be identified, was covered and repeated endlessly on TV. Some of the images are available on http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8614296.stm including a poignant picture of Jaroslaw Zaczynski, the President’s twin brother, kneeling by the coffin after it landed on Polish territory. The cortege reminded me of that of Princess Diana’s, as did the throwing of flowers by the masses of people along the route as it passed.

One possible silver lining to this unprecedented cloud on Poland’s peacetime history is pointed to in this BBC News website item:

‘The Russian authorities have announced that they will meet all of the expenses of the Polish relatives coming to Moscow, and provide counselling alongside Polish colleagues. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flew to Smolensk just hours after the crash and sought to console his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk. Russia's handling of the tragedy has won some admiration in Poland. Witold Waszczykowski, deputy head of Poland's National Security Bureau and one of the few Kaczynski aides not to have been on Saturday's ill-fated flight, was quoted by Reuters as saying: "We did not expect this gentle, kind approach, this personal involvement from Putin. "Naturally it will have a positive impact on the relationship between our countries." Poland's ambassador to Russia, Jerzy Bahr, told Polish TV: "We can sense Russian solidarity at every step of the way."

Russians have also been deeply moved by this extraordinary tragedy. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev declared Monday an official day of mourning with flags flying at half mast and television channels cancelling all entertainment programmes. Large numbers of flowers have been laid outside the Polish embassy In Moscow. It is just one of many indications of how the disaster on Saturday may ultimately help Russia and Poland bring to an end the hostility which has characterised their relations for so long’.

Sadly Jaroslaw Kaczynski did not contribute to this momentum when he refused the offer of PM Tusk and Vladimir Putin to accompany him in laying down a wreath to the dead when he visited Moscow to identify his brother’s body. And predictably, the conspiracy theorists are coming out of the woodwork to construct fantasies about the crash being a Russian plot. Der Spiegel the German newspaper has already speculated the Jaroslaw could become the next president on a wave of emotional voting when Parliamentary Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski calls for early elections within 14 days, in line with the constitution. The vote must be held within another 60 days. The people with whom we normally engage, sincerely hope that this does not happen. But this is a classic example of the non-linearity and unpredictability of how our human systems work. Poland will adapt and, as with Kennedy’s assassination and 9/11 we will always remember where we were on first hearing of that awful day of national loss.