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.
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