From The Times
November 27, 2009
Che Guevara and red flags at a May Day parade by the Polish Communist Party in Warsaw six years ago. The proposed law will ban any display of communist symbols appearing ever again
Roger Boyes
Down come the cheesy Che Guevara posters in student bedsits across the land. Off come the T-shirts wittily emblazoned with a hammer and sickle.
Twenty years after Eastern Europe toppled statues of Lenin, the Polish Government is about to finish the job by making it all but impossible to wave the red flag — even in jest.
Up to two years in jail await anyone glorifying communism according to an amendment to Article 256 of the Polish criminal code — the race-hate article — which is likely to come into force next year. The ban outlaws “the production, distribution, sale or possession ... in print, recordings or other means of fascist, communist or other symbols of totalitarianism”. So if you planned to sing the Internationale while marching down the centre of Warsaw to the old communist headquarters — now housing financial services companies — forget it.
The revised Bill has already passed the Polish Senate. President Kaczynski has to sign it into law by Monday and no one in Warsaw
The great survivor
The flame that was snuffed out by freedom
His twin brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the opposition Law and Justice party, has made his view clear: “No symbol of communism has a right to exist in Poland because these are symbols of a genocidal system that should be compared to Nazism.”
Such comparisons make historians flinch in neighbouring Germany, since they seem to play down the force of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. There is wide popular acceptance in Poland that communism was one of the great evils of the 20th century even though many millions of Poles were registered as party members.
“Communism was a terrible, murderous system that took millions of lives,” said the Polish historian Wojciech Roszkowski. “It was similar to National Socialism and there is no reason to treat these two systems, and their symbols, differently.”
Although communism no longer plays a serious role in the Polish political landscape, emotions still run high. A recent film by the renowned director Andrzej Wajda stoked anger against communism even among the post-communist generation by depicting the Soviet wartime slaughter of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest. Communism is presented by the press as a system based on lies. The former Solidarity rebel and ex-President Lech Walesa made it plain this week that he was going to carry on the fight by launching a court action to bar anyone from suggesting that he served as a secret informer for the communist secret police while working in the Gdansk shipyards.
The national mood is clear: communism, which ruled Poland for more than 40 years, should be invisible.
Take Radoslaw Sikorski, the Foreign Minister, who suggested earlier this month that one of Warsaw’s landmarks, a skyscraper donated by Stalin to the Polish people, should be bulldozed. “The Polish equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall should be the demolition of the Palace of Science and Culture,” he said. “In ecologicial terms it is an unfriendly building.” He said that it should be replaced by a park with a pond and picnic tables.
The newly amended law also bans the display of the swastika and Nazi memorabilia, making it difficult for Polish-based internet dealers selling to German collectors. But it is the communist knick-knacks that are at the hub of the problem: the Lenin busts, the red stars that will have to be painted blue or yellow or unstitched from jackets. “The point is to show there is nothing romantic or amusing about communism,” said one commentator. “It was not a joke. Nor was it an ideology that made the heart beat faster: it made hearts stop, wither or turn cold.”
There are two objections to driving communism underground. The first is that it still plays a role in other countries. In Belarus, for example, Lenin is still a hero and its KGB secret police is still called the KGB.
Second, how far is a ban on communist apparel a violation of the right to freedom of expression? The European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that a similar Hungarian ban on wearing “symbols of tyranny” was too broad and indiscriminate.
November 27, 2009
Che Guevara and red flags at a May Day parade by the Polish Communist Party in Warsaw six years ago. The proposed law will ban any display of communist symbols appearing ever again
Roger Boyes
Down come the cheesy Che Guevara posters in student bedsits across the land. Off come the T-shirts wittily emblazoned with a hammer and sickle.
Twenty years after Eastern Europe toppled statues of Lenin, the Polish Government is about to finish the job by making it all but impossible to wave the red flag — even in jest.
Up to two years in jail await anyone glorifying communism according to an amendment to Article 256 of the Polish criminal code — the race-hate article — which is likely to come into force next year. The ban outlaws “the production, distribution, sale or possession ... in print, recordings or other means of fascist, communist or other symbols of totalitarianism”. So if you planned to sing the Internationale while marching down the centre of Warsaw to the old communist headquarters — now housing financial services companies — forget it.
The revised Bill has already passed the Polish Senate. President Kaczynski has to sign it into law by Monday and no one in Warsaw
The great survivor
The flame that was snuffed out by freedom
His twin brother, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, head of the opposition Law and Justice party, has made his view clear: “No symbol of communism has a right to exist in Poland because these are symbols of a genocidal system that should be compared to Nazism.”
Such comparisons make historians flinch in neighbouring Germany, since they seem to play down the force of the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews. There is wide popular acceptance in Poland that communism was one of the great evils of the 20th century even though many millions of Poles were registered as party members.
“Communism was a terrible, murderous system that took millions of lives,” said the Polish historian Wojciech Roszkowski. “It was similar to National Socialism and there is no reason to treat these two systems, and their symbols, differently.”
Although communism no longer plays a serious role in the Polish political landscape, emotions still run high. A recent film by the renowned director Andrzej Wajda stoked anger against communism even among the post-communist generation by depicting the Soviet wartime slaughter of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest. Communism is presented by the press as a system based on lies. The former Solidarity rebel and ex-President Lech Walesa made it plain this week that he was going to carry on the fight by launching a court action to bar anyone from suggesting that he served as a secret informer for the communist secret police while working in the Gdansk shipyards.
The national mood is clear: communism, which ruled Poland for more than 40 years, should be invisible.
Take Radoslaw Sikorski, the Foreign Minister, who suggested earlier this month that one of Warsaw’s landmarks, a skyscraper donated by Stalin to the Polish people, should be bulldozed. “The Polish equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall should be the demolition of the Palace of Science and Culture,” he said. “In ecologicial terms it is an unfriendly building.” He said that it should be replaced by a park with a pond and picnic tables.
The newly amended law also bans the display of the swastika and Nazi memorabilia, making it difficult for Polish-based internet dealers selling to German collectors. But it is the communist knick-knacks that are at the hub of the problem: the Lenin busts, the red stars that will have to be painted blue or yellow or unstitched from jackets. “The point is to show there is nothing romantic or amusing about communism,” said one commentator. “It was not a joke. Nor was it an ideology that made the heart beat faster: it made hearts stop, wither or turn cold.”
There are two objections to driving communism underground. The first is that it still plays a role in other countries. In Belarus, for example, Lenin is still a hero and its KGB secret police is still called the KGB.
Second, how far is a ban on communist apparel a violation of the right to freedom of expression? The European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that a similar Hungarian ban on wearing “symbols of tyranny” was too broad and indiscriminate.
