| Felix Molski's comments on Professor Adam Czarnota's paper: The Catastrophes of Katyń: Personal Tragedies, National Traumas, and Institutional Resilience, delivered at the Polish Consulate, Woollahra, on the 23rd of April, 2010.
In hearing Professor Adam Czarnota's paper on 'The Catastrophes of Katyn' I am appreciative of his generally positive tone about the response of regular folks of Poland to the recent tragedy. However, I came away with the perception that he has just seen a magic trick performed but hasn't quite been able to put his finger on how it happened.
In the transition from communism to post communism, experience showed what didn't work, but that is not enough to build something that does. It's all well and good using tags like 'mature behaviour', 'democracy', 'building institutions' and 'institutional resilience' but does it say anything about the difference between the old and the new? After all, there are two kinds of institutional resilience. Still in Polish living memory is the kind that was imposed through totalitarian power and controlled by secret police networks of family, friends, neighbours, workmates and acquaintances seeking 'manna' from the State. But what of the new institutions? How is it that they passed a severe test? Likewise, there are democracies and democracies. The phrase 'democratically elected Chavez' pervades the mainstream media, but thankfully this is not Poland today.
Link to Prof. Czarnota's speech
Link to: Katyń - Przeklęte miejsce by J. Moskała (in Polish)
I believe the deep faith and spirituality of Polish people is fundamental to the mature behaviour witnessed in the aftermath of Smolensk. But whereas religiosity was used as a defence mechanism against the former institutional framework, now Poles feel empowered by it in building the smoothly functioning new framework. This is why I think Professor Czarnota made a mistake by rejecting the similarity between the Polish response to the death of JP2 and the deaths at Katyn this April.
Rather than a dichotomy between feeling Polish and being a believer, I think they are inextricably linked in the Polish soul and this is an essential element for democracies to work and last. JP2 wisely observed in Centesimus Annus on the 1st of May, 1991:
Prof. Adam Czarnota |
"As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism."
In his remarks at an Ecumenical Prayer Breakfast in Dallas, Texas, on August 23, 1984, President Ronald Reagan remarked:
"The truth is, politics and morality are inseparable. And as morality's foundation is religion, religion and politics are necessarily related. We need religion as a guide. We need it because we are imperfect, and our government needs the church, because only those humble enough to admit they're sinners can bring to democracy the tolerance it requires in order to survive. . . . . Without God, there is no virtue, because there's no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we're mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we're one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under."
Polish Ambassador Andrzej Jaroszynski |
In describing Lech Kaczynski and his office only in terms such as 'represents dignity', 'legitimately elected', and 'worked tirelessly' the Professor has committed a sin of omission. At the seminar I asked the question:
To what extent is the reaction of the Polish people one of a show of respect for the incorruptibility, the integrity and the courage to fight for the truth, to what extent has that had an influence on the Polish reaction.
I asked this question because the very point of difference of Lech Kaczynski was his character and record of willingness to stand up for the truth whilst in peril. This is a significant factor in hundreds of thousands of people coming from near and far, and sometimes waiting in queues for up to four hours, even if they had differences of opinion with the former President's policies. Furthermore, they have an awareness that it is such character that will make the new institutions and democracy work, as it is capable of working.
It is for these reasons and other similar reasons that I agree with Professor Czarnota's conclusion that Poland will definitely rise to the challenges it faces.
Felix Molski
| 
