Poland: Continuity and Change

Poland: Continuity and Change ANDRZEJ GRAJEWSKI uring the years of the Polish People’s Republic, the secret political police Doccupied a prominent role. Their mandate was extensive and their influence pervasive. As a result, the transformation of the secret services became a funda- mental political and constitutional task following the anti-Communist opposition’s assumption of power in 1989. The fate of the secret service’s archives and the problems of lustration—the identification of secret collaborators—became part and parcel of this transformation. But in Poland, as elsewhere in the former Soviet bloc, this process was not carried out consistently. Political Conditions The nature of Poland’s peaceful social change was undoubtedly the major deter- minant of the country’s future course. The activists of Solidarity had gained power with the June 1989 political victory of the Citizens’ Committee bloc. However, even those partially free elections were the result of a settlement arrived at during the “Roundtable” talks the same year. Offering the presidency to General Woj- ciech Jaruzelski was also an informal part of this settlement. General Czeslaw Kiszczak, the Minister of Internal Affairs and Jaruzelski’s most trusted colleague, was the initiator of the talks as well as the guarantor of the negotiated terms. Since 1956, a civilian entity known as Security Service (SB) had existed within the framework of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MSW). The SB functioned as a secret political police, simultaneously conducting intelligence and counterintelligence operations. For decades, the SB operated with broad powers, largely free of oversight or restraint. In the 1980s, however, the MSW began to scrutinize the power and reach of the civilian civil services. The result was the enactment of cer- tain legal provisions in an attempt to regulate the SB’s activities.1 Legal rules, however, would end up playing only a minor role in deciding the future of an agency that, by the 1980s, was operating under its own supervision, beholden only to the formal oversight by the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR).2 Andrzej Grajewski is an historian and deptuy editor-in-chief of the Catholic weekly review Goœ œ Niedzielny. He is an associate of the Center for East Studies in Warsaw and author of The Shield and the Sword: Russian Special Services 1991–1998 (Center for Interna- tional Relations: Warsaw, 1998) and Difficult Reconciliation: Czech-German Relations 1989–1999 (Center for International Relations: Warsaw, 2000). 451 452 DEMOKRATIZATSIYA By 1989, the SB had become one of the most important power structures in the Polish state. Most of the SB’s 24,000 functionaries were well-trained profes- sionals with logistical support from the governmental administration. The SB’s huge archival resources, accumulated throughout the decades, and its network of thousands of secret collaborators (some of them strategically placed within the ranks of the opposition), also constituted major factors in the agency’s position of power. The SB’s political dominance remained largely unchanged despite the tumul- tuous events of June 1989. This was ensured by the elevation of General Kiszczak, Jaruzelski’s confidante, to a preeminent position in the new, post-Communist political order. During Kiszczak’s tenure as Minister of Internal Affairs in the administration of Tadeusz Mazowiecki (July 1989–May 1990), no structural or personnel changes took place in the MSW. Indeed, of all the officials in this branch of government, only Krzysztof Kozlowski, the former deputy editor of the influential Tygodnik Powszechny Catholic weekly, had not held a Communist Party identity card earlier. (Kozlowski would be promoted to Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs in February 1990.) Nor were there any changes in the area of the military special services, which functioned as Administration II of the General Staff of the Polish People’s Army (intelligence) and Military Internal Service (WSW, or counterintelligence and military police). Not many people were aware of how often the military special services were used to combat the opposition and to penetrate Polish political circles. But these elements enjoyed a special trust from General Jaruzelski, and Gen- eral Kiszczak had come from their ranks. A revolution in the special services was certainly hard to accomplish. For many months, even under the new political conditions that prevailed after the summer of 1989, the special services were supervised by the same people that had led them earlier in the struggle against the anti-Communist opposition. It was also significant that the opposition did not have people at its disposal who were versed in the specific tasks and features of special services. Further compound- ing the problem was the involvement of many influential figures from among the new political elites with the secret agencies. It was a foregone conclusion that these factors—which made it impossible to bring about “de-Communization” as a process—would also prevent a squaring of accounts with the legacy of the special services of the Polish People’s Republic (PRL).3 At the same time, however, there were attempts “from below,” inspired by various political circles and milieus, to carry on this process. The question of dealing with the special services became the focus of a bitter political dispute that far transcended the technical transformation of the PRL. This was because the essence of the dispute touched on the foundation of Poland’s political transformation and the pace and depth of Polish reforms. Among the factors that gal- vanized public opinion on this topic was the government’s decision to establish an extraordinary parliamentary committee to investigate the activities of the MSW. In particular, the committee was charged with identifying the individuals responsible for the death of nearly one hundred persons who lost their lives in Poland: Continuity and Change 453 unexplained circumstances through the activities of the SB and the police (the “citizens’ militia” or MO) during and after the martial law period. Expectations of such changes were rising in society, steadily fuelled by new information about past crimes committed by SB functionaries. The Establishment of the Office of State Protection (UOP) On January 19, 1990, the Citizens’ Parliamentary Club (OKP), representing the still-unified bloc of the former anti-Communist opposition, adopted a proposal for two “police laws”: one designed to revise the scope of the office of Minister of Internal Affairs and the other providing for state security and public order. The proposal envisioned a division of the services, especially in the archival and technical units, between the police and a new agency, the Office of State Protection (UOP). Under the proposed measures, police functionaries would be barred from mem- bership in political parties and the functionaries of the Office would be prohibited from associating in trade unions. In response, the then-leadership of the MSW sub- mitted its own proposal for a reform of the special services, in which it opposed a clear elimination of these services from the structure of the Ministry, claiming that a common technical and logistic infrastructure was necessary in the interests of efficiency. But in early February 1990, the Council of Ministers adopted the proposal prepared by the OKP and forwarded it to the Sejm, the lower chamber of the Polish parliament. Following a stormy debate, the Sejm adopted the new law on April 6, 1990.4 It provided for the replacement of the MO by a new structure with the prewar name of the State Police (PP). For its part, the SB was disbanded and its functionaries dismissed. At the same time, the law created the UOP as a new institution per- forming both intelligence and counterintelligence functions. Like the SB before it, the UOP remained part of the MSW—which continued to hold the status of a “superministry” uniting police, fire department, and special services functions. On May 10, 1990, the day the law entered into effect, Krzysztof Kozlowski was appointed as the UOP’s first head, and Andrzej Milczanowski as his deputy. Compared to the SB structures, the UOP and its branches were radically smaller in size and scope. The UOP employed only about six thousand functionaries, and its operational techniques—censorship of correspondence, surveillance, and other activities by secret agents—were sharply limited under the April 6, 1990 law, which also prohibited the recruitment of politicians, clergymen, and journalists. The law’s restrictions on operational work also extended to the activities of legal political parties and trade unions. Institutionally, the UOP also housed an information and analytical unit of the Bureau of Analyses and Infor- mation, the cadres that were composed mainly from personnel that had joined the services after 1989. Verification of the Former SB Functionaries From the very beginning of the intelligence reform process, however, much con- troversy was engendered by the fact that the UOP’s initial core consisted of old SB functionaries. These Communist-era cadres had been brought into the new 454 DEMOKRATIZATSIYA agency under the prevailing rules of verification. At that time, persons over fifty- five years of age and core functionaries of the SB (those responsible primarily for surveillance of the political opposition, trade unions, workers, the rural popula- tion, the Churches and the intelligentsia) were not eligible for service. But oth- ers were. From among the SB’s 25,000 functionaries, 14,500 chose verification. The remainder, including the Bureau’s leadership, resigned their posts and made no attempt to find employment with the UOP. Further complicating the matter were ambiguities in the verification process. Carried out on both a federal level (through the Central Qualifying Commission) and through district commissions, the procedures raised a number of questions. Given the difficulty of determining clear, set criteria for exclusion of former SB officials, the process in practice became wholly dependent upon the composition of the individual commission presiding over the case at hand.

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