The Polish Paradox: Transition from and to Democracy

Summary

TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE IN POLAND DURING AND AFTER WORLD WAR II

INTRODUCTION

For various reasons it is difficult to compare Polish experiences with Transitional Justice to those of other countries. First of all, Transitional Justice is usually used as a notion for mechanisms and processes which societies experience on their way from a dictatorship to a democracy. If the notion of Transitional Justice is to be used in a non-normative way, it should also be applied to forms of extraordinary justice which occur when a country goes through a transition from a democracy to a dictatorship. This is the case of Poland between 1944 and 1948. Poland emerged from the war as a very fragile multiparty democracy, occupied by the Soviet Army.

Due to pressure of the USSR and Poland's Western allies, the multiparty interim government which was ultimately formed comprised members of the (anti- Soviet) Socialists and of the Polish Peasants’ Party, whose members were subsequently coerced out of the public administration, the security sector, the local administration and finally also out of government. The most prominent representative of the non-communist anti-German resistance, Prime Minister Stanisław Mikołajczyk, decided to flee to Britain and form (once again) a government in exile, while his supporters in the country were being murdered, abducted or jailed by Polish and Soviet security organs. During the second part of the forties, the country was embroiled in a kind of internationalised civil war, during which the Soviet Union strongly supported the weaker communist movement, whereas Poland's Western allies only reluctantly gave assistance and support to the stronger part, the pro-Western non-communist parties.

Unlike the situation in most Western European countries, which had been liberated by US and British forces, power in Poland was strongly contested and the question of the country's geopolitical orientation and its future political system remained unsolved until 1948, when the pro-Soviet communist movement took power and launched the Stalinisation of all spheres of public and (to a large extent) private life.

The second reason why post-war transitional justice in Poland is difficult to compare to other countries is linked to Poland's geopolitical shift to the west, which was accompanied by massive forced migration and exchanges of population between Poland and its Eastern Soviet neighbors, the Lithuanian, Byelorussian and Ukrainian Soviet Republics.