Poland’s greatness

Today’s reiterated appeals to national unity in the tragedy that ‘decapitated’ Poland are echoed in the biographies of those who perished in the Smolensk air crash. On board was 90-year-old Ryszard Kaczorowski, the last president of the Poles in exile. Only in 1990 did he have the freedom to pass his post to Lech Walesa, the winner of the democratic elections. A Member of the Solidarity movement since the very beginning, President Lech Kaczynski was repeatedly accused of being Russo-phobic and of National-populism. Today he is remembered as the faithful servant of his homeland, to which he had intended to assure an adequate place in Europe, an objective that more than once earned him the accusation of being Eurosceptic. Former Communist, vice-president of the Chamber and presidential candidate in the forthcoming elections Jerzy Szmajdzinski was also a passenger of the Tupolev 154. Among the victims of the tragedy was Anna Walentynowicz, a living “leading light” of Gdansk’s shipyard. Her firing in 1980 sparked the first strikes that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1980. The plane carried parliamentarians from all political groups, members of all Churches, chiefs of the army along with the Chief of Staff, and relatives of the victims of Katyn and of other massacres perpetrated in Soviet Union territories.”The blood of thousands of innocent compatriots was shed seventy years ago. Their only fault was their yearning to serve their Country. For dozens of years they even had to experience the consequences of fabrication which caused the division of the neighbouring populations, and prevented the wounds from healing”, said Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz on April 11. For fifty years a shadow was cast not only over the 15 thousand victims of the Katyn massacre, whom Soviet propaganda presented as Hitler’s victims, but also on the 7 thousand killed across Stalin’s boundless empire, while 4 thousand, of whom to date we have no trace, remain without a name or a tomb. They bring to memory the 120 thousand Poles killed during Stalin purges in the second half of the 1930s. The official propaganda said they had never existed. Upon the 70th anniversary of the massacre, President Kaczynski had wished to commemorate the victims of Stalin’s regime by visiting the Katyn memorial massacre with the relatives of the victims at a different moment from the official commemoration of past April 7, when for the first time in history Premier Putin and the Polish premier Tusk paid homage to the victims of the massacre together. Before the tragedy, Poland’ public opinion did not experience the division between those who demanded Moscow’s official apologies and those who could turn a blind eye. Perhaps the fact that Putin knelt and made the sign of the cross in front of the tombs of the murdered Polish military was seen as more that a mere official act. However the country is divided between those who see in Yalta’s established order a logical continuation of historical processes, and those who in the name of the truth of history had always made a point in honour of cherishing the memory of the victims of Katyn. Today’s appeal to unity was primarily addressed to these two currents, who have the full right to coexist within Poland’s contemporary democratic society. Secondly, the appeal is addressed to those who decided to embitter the tone of the debate in the course of the pre-presidential elections to gain consensus, leading the shocked public opinion to exasperation. In this context the appeal is also addressed to the media. The appeal to unity however also crosses the borders of Poland. Firstly it is directed to all Russia. Matvej Ganapolski ,the commentator of a Moscow radio station, saddened by the fact that once more the Poles have experienced an immense tragedy on Russian land, underlined that this twofold tribute of blood may severely put to the test the two populations and their mutual relations. However Adam Rotfeld, former foreign minister of Poland, and leader of the Russian-Polish Group for dialogue, is convinced of the positive developments. He highly values the condolences to the Poles by Putin and Medvedev. The same conviction is held by Cardinal Dziwisz , as expressed in the closing words of Sunday’s homily: “The last word is neither spoken by evil nor by death. The last word belongs to eternal life”.