The air crash at Smolensk is more than a tragedy of lives lost, and it is more than a national disaster: The death of a president with his wife and all his retinue. It is also a test of nerve, for all Poles the world over. They are asking themselves: Have we truly escaped from the nightmares of Poland’s past? Or have the demons returned to surround us once again, those giant bloodstained phantoms who came out of the forest to destroy every Polish generation for two centuries?
For 20 years, since the fall of communism, Poland has lived at peace with its neighbors and the Poles have enjoyed a rising prosperity. At last Poland was becoming the “normal country” it never was before. That old Poland lived in cycles, a hermetic history of repression, betrayal, resistance and rebellion. Everyone knew a list of dates and places — tragedies, resurrections, noble “Polish January” or piteous “Polish September” — which meant nothing to a foreigner.
So the joy of normality was that all those dates and all their haunting code could at last be forgotten.
But now this. On the way to the mass grave in Katyn forest, where Stalin murdered the military and civil elite of Poland in April 1940, the president of a free Poland dies as his Russian plane crashes into the trees a few kilometers from Katyn itself. He and his wife and the military, religious and political leaders who came with them intended to honor the Polish dead who lie in that piece of Russian earth. Now they have joined those dead men and become part of that tragedy, precisely 70 years on. A people whose collective memory has relied so much on mystical coincidence, the sense of a providence sometimes loving but often malign, will be tempted for a moment to think that Katyn will never be over, that Lech Kaczynski and his companions are not just part of the tragedy but part of the crime.
Millions of Poles, hearing this news, will have caught themselves thinking “Gibraltar!” — then made themselves suppress the thought. On 4 July 1943, General Wladyslaw Sikorski, head of the free Polish government in exile, was killed when his British plane crashed at Gibraltar. The British said it was an accident. Many Poles, then and now, didn’t and don’t believe them. They point out that the crash took place only three months after the Germans discovered the mass graves at Katyn; when Sikorski accused the Soviet Union of the crime, Stalin endangered the whole anti-Hitler alliance by breaking off relations with free Poland. Wasn’t it obvious that the British and the Soviets had a common interest in getting rid of Sikorski? And doesn’t Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hate and fear outspoken Polish leaders as much as Czar Nicholas or Stalin had done? And wasn’t that what the former Polish president, Lech Walesa, meant when he exclaimed on Saturday that “this is the second Katyn tragedy; the first time, they tried to cut our head off and now again the elite of our country has perished?”
But it’s paranoid nonsense which any Pole can be excused for entertaining for an awful moment — but which then blows away in the fresh air. Smolensk is not Gibraltar. The Russian-built plane was the president’s own, not a cunning loan from Moscow. Putin, who uneasily visited Katyn with the Polish prime minister on Wednesday, dislikes Polish aspirations but does not murder foreign heads of state.
Poland today is not cursed by destiny but by a brutal share of bad luck. This weekend it proved it was “a normal country” as the constitutional provisions for electing a new president went smoothly into action. I knew and liked some of the people who died at Smolensk on Saturday. They would not have denied that phantoms still lurk in the forest of Polish imaginations. But they wanted them to stay hidden among the trees.
To The Honorable Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜): We would like to extend our sincerest regards to you for representing Taiwan at the inauguration of US President Donald Trump on Monday. The Taiwanese-American community was delighted to see that Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan speaker not only received an invitation to attend the event, but successfully made the trip to the US. We sincerely hope that you took this rare opportunity to share Taiwan’s achievements in freedom, democracy and economic development with delegations from other countries. In recent years, Taiwan’s economic growth and world-leading technology industry have been a source of pride for Taiwanese-Americans.
Next week, the nation is to celebrate the Lunar New Year break. Unfortunately, cold winds are a-blowing, literally and figuratively. The Central Weather Administration has warned of an approaching cold air mass, while obstinate winds of chaos eddy around the Legislative Yuan. English theologian Thomas Fuller optimistically pointed out in 1650 that “it’s always darkest before the dawn.” We could paraphrase by saying the coldest days are just before the renewed hope of spring. However, one must temper any optimism about the damage being done in the legislature by the opposition Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), under
To our readers: Due to the Lunar New Year holiday, from Sunday, Jan. 26, through Sunday, Feb. 2, the Taipei Times will have a reduced format without our regular editorials and opinion pieces. From Tuesday to Saturday the paper will not be delivered to subscribers, but will be available for purchase at convenience stores. Subscribers will receive the editions they missed once normal distribution resumes on Sunday, Feb. 2. The paper returns to its usual format on Monday, Feb. 3, when our regular editorials and opinion pieces will also be resumed.
This year would mark the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the India Taipei Association (ITA) in Taipei and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Center (TECC) in New Delhi. From the vision of “Look East” in the 1990s, India’s policy has evolved into a resolute “Act East,” which complements Taiwan’s “New Southbound Policy.” In these three decades, India and Taiwan have forged a rare partnership — one rooted in shared democratic values, a commitment to openness and pluralism, and clear complementarities in trade and technology. The government of India has rolled out the red carpet for Taiwanese investors with attractive financial incentives
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