![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
Abstract
Post-Communist Europe has not chosen to imitate the Truth and Justice or Truth and Reconciliation Commissions set up on several other continents. The notion of reconciliation with the Communist regime is not of much interest to certain political parties, many of which are rooted in the protest against the compromises that were part of the negotiated revolutions. The model admired by post-Communist countries was the one conceived by the Germans. Almost all the countries founded specific institutions – institutes – for managing memory, with archives located in these institutes. Some have archives that date from before World War II to 1990; they handle both totalitarianisms. What is feared is that through the game of partisan appointments, these institutes will become little more than instruments in less than honest hands for use in political contests. This is especially likely given that the Polish Institute of National Memory (IPN) employees perform several functions: classification, prosecution, and evaluating individual applicants to certain administrative positions. The specialized literature usually explains the trials and tribulations of Poland’s IPN in terms of the personalities of its different directors and the period in which each occupied that post. In this paper, we have verified this hypothesis.
Notes
1. Pytlakowski Citation2014. I used this concept in my analysis of memory games in “post-Communist” countries in the context of EU enlargement (Mink and Neumayer Citation2013).
2. Decree of 18 December 1998, on the Institute of National Remembrance-Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Dziennik Ustaw, 1998, 155, position 1016, modified in the Dziennik Ustaw, 1999, 38, position 360). But the IPN started to be organized only in mid-2000s.
3. Adam Michnik exposé during the conference at the University of Michigan University, 7–10 April 1999, https://webapps.lsa.umich.edu/ii/polishroundtable/pdf/rtssession2polish.pdf.
4. Decree of 23 February 1991 (Dziennik Ustaw, 1991, 34, position 149).
5. Information available on the IPN website (Biuletyn IPN 2: 22, Warsaw, 2013).
6. Talk by Gauck at the “De-communization” conference held at the Polish Sejm, 10–12 December 1999.
7. Remark made on the occasion of the Tenth IPN Anniversary Conference, December 2010. Andrzej Friszke, a moderate historian identified with the center-left who participated in IPN studies but was critical of the institution, recalled that on the positive side it had hired a few dozen fine young historians, former students who had written good Masters theses and graduated from the country's most highly reputed universities.
8. This status was abolished when the PiS-LPR-Samoobrona coalition, identified as nationalist-populist, was in power (2005–2007).
9. In January 2005, the journalist Bronislaw Wildstein, a member of the movement demanding that former agents be checked at last and de-communization made real and effective, slipped out of the IPN reading room with a catalogue – a tool required for locating personal files. The catalogue contained personal information on several categories of persons: people who had effectively collaborated with the secret police were listed together with persons who the police were hoping to recruit and some names that were there for no reason. The list immediately began to circulate on the internet (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildstein_list). See also Dudek (Citation2011, 30).
10. In August 2005, another legal barrier to file access was put up, this time by the general inspector for personal data privacy. Applicants now had to justify being given access to personal information about themselves. This did not prevent unauthorized consultations, however.
11. Dudek was a member of IPN from 2000 to 2011, working first as head of the scientific research department, then, from 2005, as advisor to Janusz Kurtyka, the second director. He is a staunch supporter of the institution, but he does allow himself to criticize some aspects of its operation.
12. Przewoznik was cleared of dissimulating collaboration in November 2005 but it was too late to change the election proceedings. Kurtyka later explained that he had authorized access to documents that would compromise Przewoznik's chances (Dudek Citation2011, 234).
13. KOR (Workers’ Defense Committee) was formed following the revolt of Polish workers in 1976 to ensure legal and material assistance to victims of government repression while ROBCIO (Movement for the Defense of Human and Civic Rights) was a center-right anti-Communist, autonomist organization founded in 1977.
14. Some Polish historians have been receptive to the attitude of French historian associations about the profusion of memory laws and the intrusion of politics in history during Nicolas Sarkozy's term as president. See Zamorski (Citation2008, 56):
The objections of professional historians concerning the effects of ‘historical policy’ is perfectly expressed in the following declaration by French historians: (1) history is not morality: historians do not judge, condemn or magnify; they explain; (2) history is not memory; historians are conscious of the weight of memory but their work is to find evidence to back up an account that complies with the norms established by the academic profession; (3) history is not a subject in law; in a democratic country, the search for historical truth is not a matter for parliamentary or judicial decisions or rulings; (4) state policy shall not be historical in nature.
15. Andrzej Nowak pronounced this sentence during the special session organized by the President Andrzej Duda, 16 February 2016, dedicated to the new historical policies imposed by the program of the ruling Law and Justice Party.
16. Should the left come to power in Poland (a very unlikely occurrence in any near future), IPN would certainly be dissolved and its archives transferred to the Archivum Akt Nowych. This is the oft-mentioned plan (with some variations) of the entire spectrum of left-identified parties.
17. I paraphrase here the speech done by Dariusz Stola during the conference dedicated to the 10th anniversary of the existence of IPN in December 2010, from Bez Taryfy ulgowej, 381–393.