Three Years since Smolensk

Yesterday marked the third anniversary of the tragedy in Smolensk, where the President of Poland and 92 other people died in a plane crash in a fog. This is an issue that refuses to die in Poland, and the daily papers all had lead articles discussing it. The webpage of Gazeta Wyborcza even went so far as to have a live feed of various commemorations and protests. Prof. Wieczorek-Ciurowa this morning said that television coverage was likely to be wall-to-wall, and on the news channel yesterday evening, that was all the talking heads could talk about. Of course, this did not prevent the other channels from broadcasting the usual fare of Polish and American sitcoms,

There have been recent television specials about what "really" happened in Smolensk, from time to time it shows up on the news even when there isn't an anniversary going on, and so forth. Rzeczpospolita, a Polish paper, took a survey that found that 32% of Poles believe that there was a plot to bring the plane down, meaning that the crash was in fact an assassination.

The trauma of the plane crash is somewhat like that which hit the United States after 9/11, and there are a number of parallels. Much as with 9/11, there was a period during which the country united completely. Afterwards, the opposition accused the government of mishandling what came both before and after the event itself. The government responded by saying its opponents were just trying to score political points and wasn't that a shame. There was a sense that this was not just a tragedy for those who died and their families, but rather a blow to the nation itself. Numerous reports and commissions were started to investigate the tragedy, and some people are still convinced that it was all a set-up. In the 9/11 case, some are convinced that the Government did it, and in the Smolensk case that the Russians did it.

One major difference I've noticed between the United States and Poland is that in Poland a lot of resentment is directed out whereas in the United States a lot of resentment is directed in. This is not an absolutely perfect duality: class envy and political grousing is as much a part of life here as it is back home. However, whereas in the U.S. minorities complain about how other Americans have treated them, everybody complains about how The Government (as in, the apolitical entity that is The State) treats them, and the religious or atheistic complain about how America is too religious or not religious enough, in Poland people complain about how the Germans regard them, about how the Russians are bullies, about how the Prime Minister is too interested in good relations with Russia and the EU at the cost of Polish interests, and about how the Poles were chased out of Ukraine and Lithuania, for example.

In some ways, the closest parallel I can think of to the Smolensk tragedy is the Kennedy Assassination. There are conspiracy theories galore in the U.S., and a lot of people believe in them. Now imagine that the leading theory was that Oswald was a Japanese spy, the United States had had bad relations with Japan for 400 years, and that Kennedy was on his way to commemorate the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Or, alternately, that the Grassy Knoll was involved and the erstwhile Japanese assassin crouched there. The simile is not exact because the United States is not Poland. We never experienced the systematic murder of 40,000 of our best and brightest, and aside from the conspiracy theories that either pro- or anti-Castro Cubans really killed Kennedy, most conspiracy theories aren't made more plausible by the potential involvement of some other country. Considering Poland's historical relations with Russia, including years of Russian and Soviet occupation and the death of the Polish Prime Minister in Exile during World War II in a mysterious plane crash shortly after Joseph Stalin severed relations with that government, unfortunately conspiracy theories regarding Smolensk are made more plausible by possible Russian participation.

While I'm not surprised that the Smolensk tragedy is still news on the three-year anniversary, I am surprised that it is news on the 2 year, 9 month and 13 day anniversary, for example. I think this probably comes from the fact that there are still so many versions of what might have happened. The Russian Government has been decidedly unhelpful by not returning the black box of the plane to Poland, and by releasing a report that, from what I understand, said that air traffic control in Smolensk was entirely blameless and it was entirely the fault of the Polish pilots and their commanding officers. The Polish government of Donald Tusk blew it by not asking for an international commission to investigate the plane crash immediately after it occurred, something he had every right to do considering that the crash involved the death of a Head of State. And the opposition has not been at all helpful, promoting the story that it was all part of a plot to kill the President and twin brother of the current party leader.  

One thing that I've noticed that nobody is stressing (and this is a good thing) is that the tragedy was, in a way, a testament to the strength of the Polish state. Despite the fact that so many of its important people were killed, the Republic soldiered on with an apparently minimal disruption to everyday life. Three years later, life has moved on, with the TV audience getting a chance to see a thrilling 1-1 tie last night between Barcelona and Paris St. Germain in Champions League play.