LECH WALESA, the iconic leader of the Solidarity labour movement that brought down Poland’s communist regime, was blessed with a lucky streak. In the early 1970s, when he was a humble electrician at the Gdansk shipyards, he bought a television set and a washing machine with money won in the lottery, his wife later recalled in her memoirs. But files released this week suggest he may have been getting extra money from a different source. The documents, spanning the years 1970 to 1976, indicate that Mr Walesa was a paid informant for the communist secret police. The allegations are not new, dating back to the early 1990s, when Mr Walesa was president. That they have returned to the spotlight says less about Mr Walesa than about how Polish politics remains divided over the meaning of the 1989 revolution.
The files were found last week at the home of a communist-era minister of the interior, after his widow tried to sell them for 90,000 zloty ($22,650). The Institute of National Remembrance, which guards Poland’s communist-era archives, released them to the press on Monday, without having them checked by a graphologist. The controversy has...Continue reading
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