Polish Officer in NATO, Col. Ryszard Kukliński.

Quite possible, given the nationalist slogans painted. In fact, it's easy to see why Kuklinski could be hated by a cross section of Polish society..


MediaWatch really does seem to struggle

What is it with people talking about the "Enemy Within" who are totally unable to back it up with actual names? It's exactly what rabid Kaczynski fans do - they know "The truth" but they won't actually tell us.


The amount of socialists who became distinctly Right in their social politics after 1989 is very curious, actually. It's even repeated in the vast amount of PiS supporters who want socialist policies yet who claim to be right wing. It does make me wonder if Poland had been allowed to pursue a specifically Polish type of communism (hard right wing socially, hard left wing economically), perhaps it would still be around.

If Poland's independence was at stake I'd understand that, but he basically did it for money and who knows might have done it to a free democratic Poland also.

Why he could be hated ?


Well, do you have sources to back it up ? I think that he did it for everything but monies!
Not everybody is like your father or you, you should rememberer that!


And we are .......?yes, bingo, ...discussing things and points of view.


I would say it is all depends on circumstances - nobody is a lone island.

An interesting question - did he work in any way for the USA after 1989? I suspect we won't find out the answer to that, but it could be interesting to look at potential links between him and the AWS government in Poland. As I recall - the Americans were pushing the parties into the AWS coalition - and his visit to Poland (with his sudden right-wing feelings)..hmm.

Enough there to make you wonder if he really was on the Polish side, at least.


From a left wing point of view, he could be seen as a spy and traitor who betrayed Poland for the sake of easy cash.

From a right wing point of view, he betrayed Poland as an very senior army officer - and the army was always strongly associated (not so much now, I don't think?) with the identity of Poland. He was also (obviously) a very senior communist - so enough reason to hate him from a right wing perspective.


I can only say one thing - his son suffered a mysterious accident while sailing. Sailing isn't exactly a poor man's hobby...

I'd go with that, I think he did it for money.

Having said that


Here I beg to differ, both my daughters sail and the younger fences doesn’t cost me more than about £100 per year, cheaper than most sports club. Just pay the club fees and use their opis, they provide the safety boat life jackets etc. OK when they get older it will cost but not too much.

me too. sailing was one of the main summer holiday activities at one time. plenty people are qualified to sail on the lakes.

But that's in Poland - isn't it quite the sport for the well-to-do in the US and Britain?

Well I appreciate your honesty on you saying you have no loyalty towards Poland, even though you have chose to live in Poland.

risking your own life and the lives of your familiy for some greater good is heroism pure I guess


to Hitler?? you must be joking, just look at where NSDAP won the least votes in 1933 - the catholic regions

Open a history book but read: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichskonkordat first then do a bit of reading.
Seriously this is stuff for 16 year olds, very basic knowledge.

But was it for the greater good, or was it for other reasons?

If he was simply upset with the invasion of Czechoslovakia and so on, he could easily have defected to the West and left it at that.

for what other reasons? would you risk your own life and the lives of those most loved ones for you just because you were offered a couple of million bucks?

Kukliński as a high ranking officer had access to Soviet war plans with NATO after being disenchanted with the communism and Soviet rule over eastern Europe he started thinking about the fate of Poland in case of the East-West war - and he realised Poland would become atomic wasteland - he must have thought about ways to prevent it and figured he would best achieve it giving providing all top secret Soviet plans he could lay his hands on to Americans - at this moment he knew very well that he was risking his own life and the lives of his family - but he was smart enough to avoid detection and to flee to the west just in time - had he thought only about himself he would have deftected without conspiring (he fed Americans various Soviet plans for good couple of years AFAIK)

Very true, even within ranks of a wholey sanctioned military you have the right to disobey an immoral order, indeed if you do not in the American military you will face courtmartial....we have seen this happen to some in the recent past........

Of course if an order is legal and moral one has to follow it to the letter.

But nothing the Soviet occupation forces and their Polish puppets did was legal or moral. Anyone who had the guts to oppose, subvert or sabotage them could only be regarded as a national hero. The cowards and opportunsits played ball to secure the perks and privileges such servility ensured.

I think you'll find that much of what was done was entirely legal - Communists were very big on legitimacy. Sure, some incidents weren't - but much of what they did was perfectly legal under the law of the country at the time. And there really is nothing moral about selling secrets to the enemy - secrets which could result in the destruction of your homeland.

Much of what the Americans do is hardly legal or moral (Guantanamo Bay, anyone?) - I don't hear you opposing them. But by your own words -


I'm very thankful that you've finally admitted that Adam Michnik is a national hero.


Like a good couple of million plus Poles, then?

Cowards, opportunists and other assorted selfish bastards are never in short supply. Heroes and truly committed patriots are few and far between.

ok so ....you got that point...and yes legal can be different to different cultures/governments...none of which are above shinanegins...we all know this.

Humanity, moral responsibility to your fellow man is the law i refer to.


true here too,
yet those who are weaker will 'go-along' to survive and we can't fault them...life is precious, even to a peasant like me ;)
Though i'm sure that most of you have noticed i'm a rather headstrong ole gal.... ;) Just reinforces my ancestry...most Polish women i've known here are...quick to correct and rarely compliment ;)

This happens with liberals, communists and "minorities".
They are cosmopolitans whose main purpose is their own greed and sucking the system dry.

Legal? The Nuremberg Laws (envisaging the destruciton of Jewry) were legal. That ugly toad of a slimeball Jerzy Urban openly told newsmen. 'There are no poltical prisoners in Poland, only people who have broken the law and been convicted on concrete charges.' (This during martial law!) You can make any kind of law, but can that be termed legal?

Re Guantanamo, in view of the nearly 3,000 innocent lives wantonly snuffed out (7/11) by camel-jockey terrorist scum (not to mention Madrid and London), Guantanamo (even with waterboarding and other 'attractions') is a Sunday school picnic. Bleeding-heart liberals would do well to focus more on victims than victimisers. How is it that they rarely if ever mention the estimated 160,000 Christians murdered each year world-wide for their faith?!

How nice of you to lie yet again about what I said.


You seem to be confusing me with you: I'm the one who pays well into six figures (in zloty) of taxes every year and makes no use of the Polish health care, education, benefits or justice systems; you are the one who claims benefits from the state in the amount of, well, you tell us, how much do you claim in state benefits per year?


Interesting that you try to blame people in Gitmo for crimes committed years after they were locked up there.

The Guantánamo detetnion facility was opened after 7/11. It was created by pro-Polish George W. Bush in 2002.
Every penal system makes mistakes -- in civilian prisons in civilised countries occasionally an innocent person is framed and incarcerated. Presumably there may be a few innocent Arabs there too (although they are most likely terrorist sympathisers). But in view of the enormity of the 7/11 genocide (they killed people only becasue they were Americans), let's not overdo the bleeding heart nonsense.

The ignorance contained in that sentence is mind-numbing even by the standards of your posts about Poland.


Go and look up the meaning of the word 'genocide': your usage of it cheapens the word.


They are all innocent, until they are proven guilty. Of the 779 originally locked up there, 169 are still there and another six have been convicted or plead guilty in order to be released, the remainder (with the exception of a few who died there) have all been released as innocent men.

Such as the ducks' father?

again true, there are many who are lost simply because of their faith...9/11 was about national identity though and more than Americans died there.
Bush may have been pro-Poland...but he still opted to send over 4thousand of our children to their deathbed. War is NOT A GAME
When we will all grow up and see that War does not solve these issues.
My apologies to the worlds youth that your elders have no regard for your future, i should think that those of us who have seen War would strive to NOT REPEAT IT!!!

oh. I'm fed up with such accusations! I know a lot of people, who knew family Kaczynski! One of my friends lived from childhood in the town house, where Kaczynskis lived [by the way, Rajmund Kaczynski was one of the people who rebuilt this building after the war and was given flat in award - just like my father in Lublin]. He was liked very much by his neighbours.

I was working 10 years at the Warsaw Technical University and spoke with the people, who remembered Rajmund - and have only good to say.
I knew Jarek's boss from library of Instytut Badań Literackich of PAofSc. He said Jarek was very hard working and intelligent. I'm 61 years old, so I remember, how it was to live in commies' Poland - and it's easy for foreigner and member of Polonia to accuse people of treason, because they didn't really understand how it was then... And I know a lot of people from Agora, and - let me say - they often write one thing, and think another....

My collegue from daily was Maleszka's wife - she told me a lot about Agora morals...

You mean out of charity from the PRL state?

Nothing to do with having betrayed his AK colleagues by joining the PZPR, of course. They were absolutely desperate for legitimacy after the 3xTAK referendum - and ex-AK men joining the PZPR would have helped immensely.


Rajmund being a traitor wouldn't be such a big deal (plenty of people were, after all) - but when you get the duck trying to proclaim himself as some sort of major anti-Communist when his privileged lifestyle was all as a result of his father's treasonous Communist activities - then, well, are you surprised people ridicule them?

he WASN'T a member of PZPR!

Delphi - "I think you'll find that much of what was done was entirely legal - Communists were very big on legitimacy."

And why are those acts in law still legal now? Because in Poland, as opposed to the Czech Republic where the democratic state passed legislation ruling the Communist state to have been an illegal entity devoid of legal capacity, the deal was that the Commies were half-good guys who needed a helping hand in the future.

BINGO!

But why did the Polish "democratic" opposition deal so sweetly with the Communists?

Who set up the underground press? The Commies. Who ran the opposition? The Commies - such as Adam Michnik. Father Commie, mother Commie, brother a Stalinist mass murderer, called General Kiszczak honourable, was always very pally with leading Commies, travelled round Europe without restrictions and stayed in consular accommodation ... but he wasn't a plant!