FREEDOM REGAINED 511shattered remnants of the defunct PZPR reformed itself as the Social
Democratic Left (SLD), headed by Aleksander Kwasniewski of Round Table
fame. As the only ex-Communist group to organize openly, it had to bear the
taunts of its opponents, who spared no feelings when it denounced the PZPR as
Piatni Zdrajcy, Pacbolki Rosji (Paid Traitors, Lackeys of Russia). Unconverted
hardliners did not dare show their face openly, although there were signs for a
time that the former secret police remained active behind the scenes in certain
branches of the foreign and civil service.
The collapse of the regime radically affected the range of events which the
state authorities were willing to patronise. The Warsaw Rising, for example,
one of the most painful events in the living memory of the country, had been sys-
tematically ignored for half a century. Though the Home Army veterans had not
been actively persecuted since 1956, they had been denied all official recogni-
tion. The history of the Rising had been left in the hands of those who were pre-
pared to pin the blame exclusively (and unjustly) on the Home Army's leaders.
Permission to erect a suitable Monument to the Rising was consistently refused
until 1989. The Fiftieth Anniversary, therefore, which fell on 1 August 1994,
provided an opportunity to make amends.^1 The festivities, sponsored by
President Walesa, were executed with all due pomp and circumstance. The
President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Roman Herzog, attended in con-
trite mood, having initially, in his acceptance of the invitation, confused the gen-
eral Rising of 1944 with the uprising in the Ghetto in 1943. He made a fine
speech:
The First of August is forever the unblemished symbol of the Polish People's will to fight
for freedom and human dignity... Fighting Poland never submitted to to humiliation,
to lawlessness and to the threat of extermination... Today, I bow my head before the
fighters of the Warsaw Rising, as before all the victims of war. And I beg forgiveness for
that which was perpetrated by Germans against each and every one of you.^2
The President of Russia, though invited, did not attend. The important thing,
however, was that the insurgents were paid the respect which they deserved.
President Walesa declared momentously: 'They did not die in vain.' The one
obvious omission was a suitable historical tribute. For whatever reason,
Poland's historians were still not ready to produce a full-scale revision.
It was surprising that in Poland of all places no purge of the criminal elements
of the Communist regime ever took place. In this, Poland's road to democracy
differed from that both in Germany and in Czechoslovakia. In the critical phase,
when decisive action was possible, Prime Minister Mazowiecki adopted the pol-
icy of a gruba kreska, of drawing a 'thick line' between the present and the past.
The Gazeta Wyborcza warned against a 'witchhunt'. And nothing was done. By
the time in 1992 when the Government demanded access to the files, the
Ministry of the Interior produced a list of sometime collaborators headed by the
name of President Walesa! And Walesa responded by naming a prominent
Government adviser for the same offence, and by dismissing the Government.