Poland

January 12, 2007

Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski of Poland on Thursday promised a new law that would take aim at former secret police agents, excluding them from serving in numerous public posts and leaving many of them with reduced or no pensions.

Mr. Kaczynski said the proposed law, which his Law and Justice party would introduce to Parliament in the coming weeks, would “free Poland of the last traces of Communism by removing all the privileges of individuals responsible for the crimes and repression of the totalitarian state.”

The law would declare Poland ’s Communist-era secret police, the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, a “criminal” organization. Mr. Kaczynski, who took the prime minister’s post last year, has promised with his twin brother, President Lech Kaczynski, to cleanse Poland of the lingering secret police presence.

The move, if put in practice the way that Mr. Kaczynski suggested, would represent the strongest purge yet of former agents in the post-Communist Eastern bloc. While Communist governments in the region were replaced by free-market democracies after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the hated secret services that had kept people in line during the Communist years faded away without facing much retribution.

In some of the countries, including Poland , many Communist-era secret police agents simply changed hats and began working for the intelligence services of the new democratic governments. In others, the agents were let go when the secret services were disbanded. Many of the former agents used their contacts and inside knowledge to get rich during the dismantling of their countries’ centrally planned economies. Others retired and draw pensions from their new governments today.

But several countries in the region have recently begun delving into their dark pasts, opening the archives of their secret police and revealing the names of those people who participated in the mechanisms of oppression. Some of the most disturbing revelations concern the identities of informers who spied on friends, colleagues and neighbors for the secret services.

On Sunday, the newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw , Stanislaw Wielgus, abruptly resigned at a Mass meant to celebrate his new position only days after admitting that he had worked with the Communist-era secret police in Poland . The next day, a second prelate stepped down because of his ties to the secret police during Communist times.