Lustration in Poland

Lustration in Poland refers to the policy of limiting the participation of former communists, and especially informants of the communist secret police (from the years 1944–90), in the successor governments or even in civil service positions.

1992–1997

The first lustration bill, passed by the Polish Parliament in 1992, was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Tribunal of the Republic of Poland. Several other projects were then submitted and reviewed by a dedicated commission, resulting in a new law passed in 1996.

1997–2007

In the years 1997–2007 lustration was dealt with by the office of Public Interest Spokesperson (Rzecznik Interesu Publicznego), who analyzed lustration declarations and could initiate further proceedings, including submitting a request to the courts to initiate a legal lustration proceeding. The declarations may be seen as forms of public confessions, through which offices are exchanged for truth in a similar way as amnesty was exchanged for truth in South Africa. Owing to its resemblance with the South African truth and reconciliation process, the Polish lustration system of the period is seen as the most innovative among all lustration models in Central and Eastern Europe.

2007

On 18 December 2006 Polish law regulating Institute of National Remembrance (pol. Instytut Pamięci Narodowej - IPN) was changed and came into effect on 15 March 2007. This change gave IPN new lustration powers . The first Polish lustration laws were adopted in 1997; only since 2007 do they officially involve IPN, which has now replaced the old Polish lustration institution, the Public Interest Spokesman. According to the revised Chapter 5a of the Act of 18 December 1998 on the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Ustawa z dnia 18 grudnia 1998 r. o Instytucie Pamięci Narodowej — Komisji Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu), the Lustration bureau of the Institute of National Remembrance performs the following functions:

1. maintains the register of lustration statements;
2. analyzes lustration statements and collects information necessary for its correct assessment;
3. prepares lustration procedures;
4. notifies the respective bodies about non-performance by non-judicial bodies of obligations in accordance with this Law;
5. prepares and publishes catalogues of documents containing personal data:

a) produced by this individual (or with their participation) in connection with their activities as a secret informant

b) from the content of which it follows that the relevant individual was regarded by security services as a secret informer or operational assistant collecting information.

Lustration by IPN was to be obligatory for 53 categories of people born before August 1st, 1972 and holding positions of significant public responsibility, including lawyers, public notaries, attorneys, journalists and academic workers. However, key articles of that law were judged unconstitutional by Poland's Constitutional Court or Constitutional Tribunal of the Republic of Poland on May 11, 2007, making the role of IPN unclear and putting the whole process into question. Most importantly, the part of the law that would have required about 700,000 people in the above 53 categories to submit declarations on whether they had spied for the secret services has been thrown out.. With this key change, the role of IPN in the lustration process is at present highly unclear. Some influential opinionmakers and politicians in Poland are now declaring that, since the whole lustration process in the old format is essentially over, the secret police archives should simply be thrown open. Others oppose such a move, arguing that the release of all of the personal and confidential information contained in the files would cause unacceptable harm to innocent people.

See also

• communist crime
• lustration in other countries
• Thick line (gruba kreska)
• Instruction UOP nr 0015/92

Further reading

• Mark S. Ellis, Purging the past: The Current State of Lustration Laws in the Former Communist Bloc (pdf), Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. 59, No. 4, Accountability for International Crimes and Serious Violations of Fundamental Human Rights (Autumn, 1996), pp. 181-196], covering a dozen former Communist countries in 1996
• "Explaining Lustration in Eastern Europe: 'A Post-communist politics approach'", Szczerbiak, Aleks, Brigid Fowler and Kieran Williams. SEI Working Paper No 62.
• Lavinia Stan, "Transition, Justice and Transitional Justice in Poland," Studia Politica, Vol. 6, No. 2 (July 2006), pp. 257-284.
• Lavinia Stan, "The Politics of Memory in Poland: Lustration, File Access and Court Proceedings," Studies in Post-Communism Occasional Paper No. 10 (April 2005).
• Roman David, Lustration and Transitional Justice: Personnel Systems in the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011.