Political Bulimia

I stand second to almost no one in my distaste for communism, but as much as I hate the ideology and those who served under it, I have to wonder what the Polish government hopes to achieve by carrying out a purge of former state spies a full 17 years after the collapse of the communist regime.

The Polish parliament has approved a bill designed to remove people who collaborated with the communist secret services from public life.

The bill could lead to the dismissal of hundreds of thousands of people working in business, the media and government.

Unlike other former Soviet-bloc countries, Poland has never carried out a purge of people who collaborated with the former communist regime.

The legislation will now go to Poland's upper house and president for approval.

My stock of sympathy for those who spied for the communists is pretty much nonexistent, but I'm not one to let my ideological preferences cloud my pragmatic judgment, and I don't realistically see anything coming of this endeavor other than the unleashing of chaos; we aren't talking about hunting down state-employed SS or KGB-style torturers here, but of ferreting out the sorts of snitches that are a dime a dozen in any totalitarian state, many of whom have since gone on to actually begin to make positive contributions to society: in any case, the most likely outcome of this initiative will be nothing more than a witch-hunt crafted to provide patronage opportunities to the incumbent political parties, and guaranteed to do serious damage to the Polish political scene for many years to come.

Comments

[Steve Edwards]

You have a good point about leaving the poor snitches alone - I still think there was a strong case for executing every member of the politburo following the 1989 capitulation. I see no reason why criminals such as Gorbachev, Jaruzelski, Honecker, etc should have been spared the Nuremberg treatment (or, better yet, the Ceaucescu treatment). All former communists should be brutally executed as an example to any future aspiring Marxist politician.

I'm tempted to extend this standard to all former high-level communist collaborators in the West (Javier Solana, Romano Prodi, etc) but they are too well ensconced in the Western elite to get them.

[Ross]

{All former communists should be brutally executed as an example to any future aspiring Marxist politician.}

But wouldn't the example show that it was in every dictators interests to cling to power by any means necessary? If it were possible to persuade existing totalitarian regimes to stand down voluntarily with guarantees against punishment it would surely be a good thing overall.

[Nick]

Ross is right. Romania was the only country in the Eastern Europe that had mass casualties in 1989. In all the other countries the Communists handed over power peacefully - they certainly wouldn't have if they'd known they'd be shot. And what does Steve mean 'the Ceaucescu treatment'? The 'National Salvation Front' (FSN) that executed the Ceaucescus was made up of second rank Communists who wanted the Ceaucescus dead before they could squeal about all the stuff the FSN guys had done.

[Nick]

Ross is right. Romania was the only country in the Eastern Europe that had mass casualties in 1989. In all the other countries the Communists handed over power peacefully - they certainly wouldn't have if they'd known they'd be shot. And what does Steve mean 'the Ceaucescu treatment'? The 'National Salvation Front' (FSN) that executed the Ceaucescus was made up of second rank Communists who wanted the Ceaucescus dead before they could squeal about all the stuff the FSN guys had done.

[Steve Edwards]

Second rank communists killing the first? Magnificent! Precisely what I had in mind. The more communist corpses the better. Too bad Yeltsin didn't bump off the evil Gorbachev when he had the chance.