Ghosts of the past

THE death of President Lech Kaczynski of Poland in a plane crash in Russia, reminiscent of the wartime death of General Sikorski, is a disaster fraught with consequences and historical echoes. The loss of 97 passengers on any aircraft would be a tragedy; but there are special circumstances in this instance which aggravate the agony.

This was no ordinary diplomatic journey. President Kaczynski was on his way to a commemoration service at Katyn, the site where 22,000 Polish army officers, priests, administrators and intellectuals were murdered by the NKVD on Stalin's orders. The purpose was to decapitate Polish society. By a grim parallel, something similar has now occurred, on a lesser scale. Poland's head of state, its army chief of staff along with the heads of operational forces, land forces, the air force and special forces, and the second-in-command of the navy, as well as the governor of the central bank and senior government officials, all perished. Especially poignant is the fact that members of the families of Katyn victims, on their way to pay tribute to their loved ones, also died. The emotional trauma for Poland will be severe, and the fear is that this tragedy will worsen Russian-Polish relations. Russian premier Vladimir Putin has announced he will conduct the accident investigation in person; some Poles will no doubt recall he was formerly an officer of the KGB, the terror apparatus that many decades before conducted the Katyn massacre. Eastern Europe is haunted by its implacable ghosts.