RIGHT TO AUGUST

I am fighting against the defamation of civic associations.

As the Nobel laureate noted, ‘something is wrong with the world’. Nor is the world of public discourse at its best. Timothy Synder, in The Road to Slavery, pointed out a dangerous trend. It consists of diverting attention from a weighty issue that could be dangerous for those in power by forcing a load-bearing, shocking accusation on opponents, citizens protesting against the actions of those in power. So what if it is devoid of any evidence, even refutable in a relatively easy way: it effectively diverts attention from the fundamental axis of the dispute. It did not take a few years for this tendency to come to Poland. The defence against such formulated defamations was the primary task that a nationwide civic association set before my Friends and I myself.

The Pomeranian activists of the association joined the organisation of the social celebrations of the anniversary of the August Agreements, concluded by the government side and the NSZZ Solidarność on 31 August 1980. A trade union now in operation, referring to the traditions of that Solidarity, and even claiming exclusivity in this respect, was also invited to participate in the celebrations. In response, an angry stance was formulated, one containing a number of invectives against the invitees. The association was accused of forcing people with a shameful past into the role of its prominent, exposed and active members. This was allegedly due to their alleged involvement in the operations of the repressive apparatus during the communist period. Representatives of the union rejected the invitation, not wanting to participate in the celebrations of the anniversary of August ’80 with people with such a shameful past. The allegations presented in the union leadership’s stance were almost a mirror image of the public media’s narrative, accusing numerous representatives of civic communities of alleged links with the pre-1989 repression apparatus.

In view of the association’s failure to comply with the demands contained in the writ of summons, we filed a lawsuit demanding the protection of the association’s personal rights. We pointed out that the dissemination of the lie that many of the members of the civic association were persons entangled in the communist system would expose it to the unauthorised accusation of a contradiction between its declared objectives and the alleged biographies of its members. We pointed out that, contrary to the allegations, not only did none of the association’s leaders have any unworthy behaviour on their conscience before 1989, but on the contrary: a number of them were active in “Solidarity” and the opposition during the communist period and were interned during martial law. We demanded a specific apology and the payment of compensation to a social cause. During the public hearing, the opponent demanded that the claim be dismissed, despite admitting that a significant part of the association’s leadership had an opposition and solidarity past, not a ‘party’ and ‘secret police’ past. The opponent concentrated on attempts to ‘dilute’ the content of the disputed communication by pointing out that it was not entirely clear who the publicly formulated allegations concerned. He also reserved for the authors of the lying statement the alleged right to make a binding interpretation of “what the poet meant”. With great pleasure, as an amateur historian, I was able to refute the (rather bold) claims that the term “secret police officer” supposedly meant every person wearing a uniform in the People’s Republic of Poland (including conscripted soldiers), while the term “nomenklatura” meant almost all people who did not actively oppose the People’s Republic of Poland.

Consequently, neither the court of first instance nor the court of appeal shared the position of the defendant trade union, emphasising the need to interpret the public statements challenged in the trial from the point of view of their “statistical” recipient, and not taking into account the more or less successful explanations of their authors aimed at proving that they meant something different from what they wrote. In view of the importance of responsibility for words and the negative overtones of the defamatory statements made – without the shadow of a shadow of a proof – the action was upheld, ordering the publication of an apology. In view of the culpable nature of the defamation and the lack of “remorse” on the part of the defendant, monetary compensation was awarded to a social cause. In the general assessment, the dispute was fully successful for the association.

The real satisfaction, however, was in thanking those alleged ‘secret police’ members of the association who, by virtue of their life path, have their own commendable biographies in the pages of the ‘Solidarity Encyclopaedia’ published by the Institute of National Remembrance. This is in contrast to a number of current activists of the respondent association: forty years overdue “fighters against communism” and unfortunate authors of a lying communiqué.