STANISLAW BARANCZAK
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gan of "acceleration." For the latter, "acceleration" means not so much
speeding up the economic changes (they admit they do not have any eco–
nomic program of their own) as being able to gain popularity by unleashing
society's thirst for revenge on the hated "Reds." To that end, they exploit
many people's irrational yet deep-seated distrust in the alleged "new
nomen–
klatura"
of today's Poland by suggesting the existence of some leftist plot in
the Parliament and government, one aimed at protecting the former Com–
munists and keeping some ofthem in power. To every thinking person, this
is obvious trash: the government and the Parliament have no choice but to
honor the provisions of the "historic compromise" achieved as a result of the
Roundtable Negotiations in 1989, at least until the new general elections. To
throw out the elected deputies from the Sejm, to confiscate by decree all the
assets of the former Communist party, or to prevent each and every former
Communist from political activity (as if each and every former member of
the Polish United Workers' Party had to be automatically responsible for a
crime or two), as some propose to do, would mean lawlessness, rule of the
mob, and the virtual end of democracy in Poland.
It
is true that Polish society
is seriously bothered by the fact that many officials of the old regime, instead
of being punished in one way or another, are using their past connections to
make new careers in free enterprise; or that employees of the now-dis–
banded secret police have managed to destroy a large part of their files and
continue to be a threat to social stability. Yet no one in his right mind can
seriously claim that the Mazowiecki government condones all this. On the
contrary, events such as the nomination of KrzysztofKozlowski as Deputy
Minister and then Minister of the Interior, and the energetic purge he started
immediately in his Ministry, show the government's intentions clearly enough.
Demagoguery is always easy, if you neglect to mention to the people what
the cost of radical "acceleration" would be.
My visit in May happened to coincide with the first signs of the im–
pending rift in Solidarity.
As
I write, in mid-August, the rift has become real–
ity.
Mter
several increasingly bitter confrontations between Lech Walesa
and his recent supporters on the one hand and his former collaborators on the
other, Solidarity has split into two factions which at this writing have evolved
into full-fledged political parties. But the split consists of much more than this.
What broke in half in the process was also Solidarity's old unity, the very
ethos of solidarity with a small "s," tested in the fire of much harsher times
but now unable to withstand the pressure ofconflicting political interests.
Natural as it is under the conditions of today's Poland, where no single
powerful enemy exists any longer and where freedom of speech and free–
dom of association have been restored precisely to allow society'S conllicting
interests
to
manifest themselves publicly, this outcome nevertheless has
something sad about it. Gone are the good old days of noble heroes and their
common struggle against unequivocal evil. Gone is the moral authority of the
