Polish lustration and the models of transitional justice (original) (raw)
Related papers
On Violations of Human Rights by the Communist Regime in Poland
Kultura Bezpieczeństwa. Nauka – Praktyka - Refleksje, 2021
During the communist regime, the Polish judicial apparatus was construed as a tool to liquidate the opposition. Many people were killed, imprisoned, tortured, dispossessed, and their families persecuted and condemned to lives of abject poverty. After the fall of communism, the perpetrators of these atrocities were not confronted with their crimes and continued to function surreptitiously. Their shame and guilt have been suppressed, while the wrongs suffered by the victims have not been remedied, and thus continue to hang over the nation like the Sword of Damocles. The unexpunged culpability and corrupted conscience inherited by their descendants continue to foment social resentments. The aim of the article is to suggest the approach to restoring social equilibrium taking as the premise that the legacy of historical violence must be remedied, and the wrongs must be rectified a priori. The scientific methods used in the article are restitution, restoration, reconciliation, and mediati...
This article addresses issues arising in the context of transition to democracy in Central and Eastern Europe, namely in Ger-many (former East Germany), Czech Republic , Slovakia and Hungary. The contribution reflects various means of transitional justice which were applied in these countries: access to the archives of secret police, lustration and prosecution of the crimes of the past (successor trials). Central issue of this article is the criminal prosecution of communist crimes. Here authors focus their attention on two interrelated aspects: choice of applicable law and statutory limitations, which both are linked to the principle of legality. Practice and methods in prosecution of the communist crimes adopted across the analyzed countries reveal considerable he-terogeneity and from comparative perspective pose a unique legal laboratory. Despite differences in applicable law, including treatment and interpretation of statutory limitations, and differences in overall outcomes of prosecution and punishment of the communist crimes, all countries were conformed to requirements of the principle of legality. The article thus confirms that states, when dealing with their past, enjoy a wide margin of appreciation.
Explaining patterns of lustration and communist security service file access in post-1989 Poland
2014
As an archetypal case of late and recurring lustration and communist security service file access, Poland provides us with an excellent basis for developing frameworks to explain this phenomenon. This paper examines whether and how the explanations available in the comparative and theoretical literature that has developed in recent years on lustration and transitional justice in the newly emerging democracies of post-communist Central and Eastern Europe help us to understand the extent and recurrence of lustration and file access in countries like post-communist Poland. It shows how these issues became entwined with other discourses and developments in post-communist politics and identifies two such fields of debate which could form the basis for more detailed, grounded research both on the Polish case specifically and other cases of ‘late lustration’ more generally. Firstly, the re-emergence of the lustration and file access issue as an element of broader concerns about the need to...
Although the revival of pragmatic, as well as scholarly, interest in transitional justice has been prompted by recent democratization procedures, this chapter argues that the general spirit of transitional justice in post-communist states in East-Central Europe is very similar to those purges which took place in Europe after the Second World War. Not only did the new elites in both cases aim to rewrite history by drawing a clear line between the guilty (collaborators, former elites, and secret service agents) and the innocent/victims (the rest of the population), but they also used transitional justice (trials, “national disgrace”, screening, and lustration) to stabilize and legitimize their rule. This chapter analyzes these parallels between postwar and post-communist transitional justice, focusing on several Central-European countries (Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland). These countries offer good examples to prove the above-mentioned hypothesis, and they also provide good cases for comparative studies not only between countries, but also over time. At the same time, examples and arguments are also drawn from postwar France, the exemplary case of postwar transitional justice and the reconstruction of history
Transitional Justice and the Constitutional Crisis: The Case of Poland (2015–2019)
Archiwum Filozofii Prawa i Filozofii Społecznej, 2019
During the last four years the situation in Poland has been a matter of interest to the worldwide legal community mostly due to the constitutional crisis. Yet, the years 2015–2019 were also a time of a revival of transitional justice measures, such as cleansing the public sphere of communist symbols, remodelling of lustration law, and further reduction of pensions of communist secret service employees and officers. In this paper I argue that these spheres are interconnected and that Poland’s constitutional crisis has a transitional justice dimension. I start with an overview of retrospective instruments dealing with the communist past introduced in the last four years. Next, I turn to the constitutional crisis itself, discussing its possible explanations and transitional justice aspects. In the end I claim that the dramatic constitutional backsliding that Poland has recently experienced can be explained not only as a power grab, but also as a result of the tension between the rule of law and the principle of individual responsibility on one hand – and the resort to collective accountability in an attempt to get what the government sees as justice on the other.
Lustration (administrative justice) and closure in post-communist East Central Europe
International Journal, 2012
This article discusses the various dimensions of East Central Europe's closure with the communist past, and then assesses the impact of transitional justice measures in the closure with communism. Special attention is paid to the so called 'lustration', which in the view of the author performs important functions in transitions to democratic regimes, related to the reconstruction of a moral and rational community, and to the closure with the communist past. The article shows that the failures and controversies surrounding 'lustration' were due to its radical potential of reconstruction of a moral–rational democratic community, and also to specific socio–political factors of the post–communist ECE. What specific features of ECE post–communist transitions and of lustration conducted to the recurrence of debates related to the communist past is a question that has not been addressed heretofore, despite a fairly well–developed literature on post–communist administrative justice.
Post-Communist Transitional Justice at 25: Unresolved Dilemmas
2014
The main purpose of this article is to assess the r elationship between transitional justice and democratization in post-communist Easte rn Europe since the fall of communism in 1989. The analysis is focused on the role of lustra tion and the opening of communist secret police files in encouraging accountability and promoting t he rule of law. An overview of these developments in the countries of the region – inclu ding Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia – emphasizes the different appr oaches undertaken in dealing with the abuses and crimes committed by previous non-democratic gov ernments. These differences are examined in relationship to three interrelated variables: (1 ) the exit mode from communism; (2) the nature of the communist regime; and (3) the politics of th e present. The second part of the article provides an extensive analysis of the Romanian case, whose specificity lies in its violent and abrupt exit from communism. The unfinished reckonin g wi...
Files and Privacy: Challenges of Transitional Justice in Slovakia
Studia Universitatis Cibiniensis. Series Historica, Volume XI/2014
One of the main responsibilities of the Nation’s Memory Institute (NMI) in Slovakia is the analysis and disclosure of secret police collaborators’ files. This practice however creates a tension between two important rights – the individual right to privacy and the collective right to information. On the one hand, the revelation of the names is perceived as something society has a right to know and it serves as a form of symbolic lustration. On the other hand, the files are incomplete and often offer only a very limited image of a particular person. The activities of the NMI stirred a lot of controversies and subsequently led to a number of court trials concerning the revelation of information, which was labeled as untrue by the affected individuals. This article aims at mapping out these controversies and engaging in the discussion of whether and in which case are these activities fruitful for the society.