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THE WASHINGTON POST
Anne Applebaum
Op-Ed Columnist

The Archbishop's Bargain -- and Poland's
By Anne Applebaum
Tuesday, January 9, 2007; Page A15
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...7010801424.html

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"The archbishop's past collaboration was in some ways very typical. Intelligent and ambitious, he wanted to study abroad. The secret police told him that in exchange for a passport, he would have to report what he heard when he got there. He apparently agreed. Many others, offered the same deal, did not agree -- and as a result they did not study abroad, and possibly did not advance as far in their chosen professions as Wielgus did in his. Some of them are still angry about it."

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"Contrary to some Western reporting, the first Polish post-communist governments did not conduct significant investigations into the affairs of their predecessors. At the same time, laws that neatly allocated shares in privatized factories to their former managers -- thus allowing communist cadres to transform themselves into capitalist owners -- were allowed to remain in Poland, as they were in Russia, Hungary and elsewhere."

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