Events | 2010.04.19
A glimmer in Poland's darkness | Timothy Garton Ash
This second Katyn offers a message of hope for a country that has won its place as a free fatherland
For the bereaved, this is a time for hearts opened in sympathy, not minds hastening with historical reflections. For Poland, however, and for Europe, there is already a glimmer of hope discernible in the darkness. This hope lies in the contrast between the two Katyn s: the original secret massacre of Polish officers by the Soviets in 1940, and last Saturday\'s plane crash that killed the Polish president and other leading figures on their way to mark the 70th anniversary of that crime. More accurately, it lies in the contrast between the historical circumstances revealed by the two events. These are like night and day.
The secret execution of thousands of Polish officers in the Katyn forest, at a time when the Soviet Union had joined Nazi Germany in the Hitler-Stalin pact, was a totemic crime of mid-20th century European barbarism. Back then there was no Polish state to mark their passing with the kind of rites we are seeing today, because the Polish state had been erased from the map by the Nazis and Soviets between them.
The crime of 1940 was totemic, too, in the way it was concealed by giant lies. At first, widows and children knew nothing at all of the fate of husbands and fathers. Then in 1943, when bodies were unearthed in the Katyn forest by occupying German forces, the Soviets claimed they had been killed by the Nazis after Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941. The Soviet Union persisted in this lie almost to its own dying day – and, shamefully, countries such as Britain were for decades complicit in the lie. I will never forget attending the ceremony to unveil a memorial in a west London cemetery in 1976. The obelisk bore the stark inscription "Katyn 1940" – and the date said it all. The British government sent no representative and forbade serving officers to appear in uniform. Russian guilt had not been proved "to Her Majesty\'s Government\'s satisfaction" a Foreign Office spokesman weaselled, to Britain\'s lasting shame.
Compare this with the last few days. Although it has lost so many leading figures, the Republic of Poland has continued to function with constitutional dignity and efficiency. Though the chiefs of all its armed services were (ill-advisedly) all on the one plane, their deputies have taken over – and there is no obvious threat to the country\'s security. The Poles are mourning another national tragedy as only they know how, with those flickering forests of flowers and candles, with the flags, the church services, the old hymns. In the past, under foreign occupation, when they struck up the patriotic hymn God, Who Protects Poland, they would sing "Return to us, O Lord, a free fatherland". Now they all sing, without hesitation, "Bless, O Lord, the free fatherland". For no one doubts that Poland is today a free fatherland.
Even more remarkable is the contrast between the international reaction then and now. This time round, the British party leaders fall over each other to join the US president and the chancellor of a democratic Germany in sending messages of condolence. The first Katyn catastrope was concealed for decades by the night and fog of totalitarian lies; the second was immediately the lead item in news bulletins around the world. Most extraordinary has been the reaction of the former KGB officer Vladimir Putin, who has gone to exceptional lengths to demonstrate Russian sympathy, repeatedly visiting the crash site, announcing a national day of mourning today, and ordering Andrzej Wajda\'s film Katyn (which spares you nothing of the cruelty of the KGB\'s forerunners) to be shown on primetime Russian TV.
In 1943, confessing that "in cowardly fashion" he had turned his head away from the scene at Katyn, the head of the British Foreign Office wondered in an internal memorandum "how, if Russian guilt is established, can we expect Poles to live amicably side by side with Russians for generations to come? I fear there is no answer to that question." But history may even now be producing a most unexpected answer, out of a second Katyn disaster.
Let us, however, have no illusions: it is Poland, with the spirit of all those Poles who have died at Katyn – then and now – which has won itself that answer, and the wider international recognition of its loss, through its own exertions to secure its place as a free fatherland, anchored in Europe and a wider community of democracies. History helps those who help themselves.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]mmer-polish-gloom-second-katyn
