Recently, the European Parliament condemned the Polish government's attempt to strip Bronislaw Geremek of his parliamentary mandate. A leader of Solidarity, a former political prisoner and the foreign minister responsible for Poland's accession to NATO, Geremek had refused to sign yet another declaration that he had not been a communist secret police agent.
The EU parliamentarians called the Polish government's actions a witch-hunt, and Geremek declared Poland's "lustration" law a threat to civil liberties. In response, Polish Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski accused Geremek of "damaging his fatherland" and "provoking an anti-Polish affair."
The same phrases were used by Communists when Geremek criticized their misrule.
A ruling by Poland's Constitutional Court issued on Friday gutted much of the lustration law, and made Germek's position in the EU parliament safe -- at least for now. But the lustration law was but one act among many in a systematic effort by Poland's current government to undermine the country's democratic institutions and fabric.
What is happening in Poland, the country where communism's downfall began? Every revolution has two phases. First comes a struggle for freedom, then a struggle for power. The first makes the human spirit soar and brings out the best in people. The second unleashes the worst: envy, intrigue, greed, suspicion, and the urge for revenge.
The Polish Solidarity revolution followed an unusual course. Solidarity, pushed underground when martial law was declared in December 1981, survived seven years of repression and then returned in 1989 on the wave of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's "perestroika."
During the Round Table negotiations that brought about the end of communist rule, a compromise was reached between the reform wing of the communist government and Solidarity. This cleared a path to the peaceful dismantling of communist dictatorship throughout the entire Soviet bloc.
Solidarity adopted a philosophy of compromise rather than revenge, and embraced the idea of a Poland for everyone rather than a state divided between omnipotent winners and oppressed losers. Since 1989, governments changed, but the state remained stable; even the postcommunists approved the rules of parliamentary democracy and a market economy.
But not everyone accepted this path. Today, Poland is ruled by a coalition of post-Solidarity revanchists, postcommunist provincial trouble-makers, the heirs of pre-World War II chauvinist, xenophobic and anti-Semitic groups, and the milieu of Radio Maryja, the spokesmen for ethno-clerical fundamentalism.
Worrying signs are everywhere: the authority of the courts is undermined, the independence of the Constitutional Tribunal is attacked, the civil service corrupted, and prosecutors are politicized. Everyday social life is being repressively regulated.
Why is this happening? Every successful revolution creates winners and losers. Poland's revolution brought civil rights along with increased criminality, a market economy along with failed enterprises and high unemployment, and the formation of a dynamic middle class along with increased income inequality. It opened Poland to Europe, but also brought a fear of foreigners and an invasion of Western mass culture.
For the losers of Poland's revolution of 1989, freedom is a great uncertainty. The Solidarity workers at giant enterprises have become victims of the freedoms they won. In the prison world of communism, a person was the property of the state, but the state took care of one's existence. In the world of freedom, nobody provides care. It is in this anxious atmosphere that the current coalition rules, combining US President George W. Bush's conservative nostrums with the centralizing practices of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
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