by Zbigniew Wojcik
The Basics of neo-communism in Central Europe
The assassination of the non-communist President of Poland, Lech Kaczyński, in the so-called “Smoleńsk catastrophe” in April 2010 was a coup d’état. The post-communist, Bronisław Komorowski, immediately took power in Poland as acting president. Five years later, in another democratic election in 2015, the Polish people elected a genuine non-communist president and prime minister. As a result of the hard lessons learned, a possible later coup by assassinating a legally elected president is virtually impossible. Moreover, statistical polls show that non-communists politically dominate Poland, so assassinating a non-communist president would not favor communists in a special democratic election. However, this does not mean that the communists have given up: they seek power through neo-communism. Leszek Misiak’s book “Losing the Church … or the Fall of Poland,” 2019, is the foundation for creating the ideological and practical tools of neo-communism in Poland.
Neo-communists try to convince citizens that communism is the best political system and just what the people need. Misiak created a neo-communist manifesto to guide this movement, aimed at post-communists and Catholics. Misiak pretends to be a believer in God and shows his Catholicism to make his manifesto convincing. He glorifies the famous Catholic leader, Cardinal Stefan Wyszyńyski, calling him the Cardinal of the Millennium.
At the same time, Misiak attacks the Polish-born Pope John Paul II. The article “Lost Shepherds: the Vatican as Narcissistic Political Lobby” by Joseph D’Hippolito explains this key distinction: Under communism in Poland, “workers protested against massive increases in food prices, from 30 % for vegetables to 110 % for high-quality meat and 150 % for rice.” At the time, Edward Gierek (at the time, Poland’s Communist leader) asked Wyszyński “… to convince the workers to return to work because the nation needs food and clothing.”
Wyszyński then publicly announced: “You have the right to strike, but you also have the duty to think about feeding and clothing your countrymen.” Pope John Paul II did not listen to the communist leaders. Quite the opposite, he acted to get rid of them. I recall his anti-communist message delivered in 1979 in Warsaw: “May your Spirit come down and renew the face of the land. This land.” Neo-Communism cannot tolerate this insubordination by a Catholic leader, the Polish Pope.
Neo-communism causes much confusion for the reader who is not well acquainted with the positions and attitudes of these two leading Polish religious leaders, and Misiak does not reveal the role and purpose of his book intended to be a political manifesto.
The Synchronization of Radical Leftist Activities in Poland and Internationally
Radical leftists in the West direct their actions towards gaining total power, using gender theory and racial discrimination as their primary weapons. Conservative movements of people who believe in God are disappearing. All this is not true in Poland, a predominantly Catholic country. Even now, the Catholic faith in Poland is undergoing a visible revival, becoming the only hope of freedom for the West in the future. Russia, where the return to Christianity is swift and straightforward after ridding the world of the Leninist revolution, is the hope of freedom for Eastern Europe and Asia and proof that people in the West can wake up from communist trends and stop succumbing to evil.
Surprisingly, the Polish pope and Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev turned the Russian people into a stable barrier against the rapidly spreading of communism in the world. Had it not been for the war between Russia and Ukraine, Eastern Europe would have been a permanent base for people’s spiritual survival. Thus, only Poland and Hungary are undoubtedly the countries cultivating the true values of humanity since Western Europe has rejected Christianity. The vital principles favoring family values and the right to life no longer supports Western civilization. While the law constantly adapts to the needs of liberals demanding unlimited abortion rights, the Decalogue remains stable for millennia.
If the neo-communists gain complete power in Poland, the last barrier in the West will fail against total liberalism with unlimited access to abortion and communism. Note that Hungary is a small country with less than ten million citizens, while Poland has almost forty million. Therefore, the weaknesses in the work of the neo-communist Misiak must be publicly exposed. The West is now defenseless against biologically harmful gender ideology, racial theory raising social tensions, growing radical leftist movements spreading communism, domination of fake-news combined with liberal education, non-Christian religions, and corrupt politicians, with all these factors working effectively and simultaneously. Deprived of authentic and widely respected political leadership, the West is giving way on all fronts without a military fight.
Neo-communists’ assessment of the significance of Poland’s transition to capitalism
The neo-communist Misiak views the defeat of communism in Poland after World War II and the peaceful transition to capitalism as a disaster, not a victory. Misiak blames the Catholic Church in Poland for all the people’s hardships during the long and arduous transition period. Even the Polish Pope John Paul II is attacked. A response is needed to these attacks because they may seem convincing if the reader does not have enough political knowledge or experience in dealing with aggressive and false accusations.
Misiak makes the Church responsible for the massive robbery and destruction of Polish national assets after the Round Table (p. 84). The fact is that the communists robbed both the Church and Poland’s citizens after World War II. Misiak’s primary accusation was that approximately 70% of Church property was returned to the Church. In comparison, no more than 10% of private property was returned after the Round Table, suggesting that the Polish Catholic Church received its property back as bribes to support the Round Table. Nevertheless, Misiak failed to account for the fact that the confiscation of Church property was well documented. Many factors caused damage in Poland after the Round Table agreements. I know of a case of a modern Cable Factory in Ożarów (near Warsaw) sold for next to nothing to an entity abroad and then destroyed to its very foundations. Before the sale, the cable factory was handed over to its workers, which should not have happened because the plant was built with the money of all Poles. Subsequently, the workers who came into possession of this national property committed theft. They sold the shares that they received en masse for the purchase of alcohol, resulting from a conspiracy by post-communist politicians led by President Kwaśniewski. The buyer, a foreign entity, got rid of the competition of this modern factory in Poland by dismantling it and selling it all as useless parts. The Polish Catholic Church did not participate in this dirty transaction. At that time, communist justice in Poland was fully functional and is still so.
Communist officials love only their power; the people’s wealth under their rule is always the last thing they pay attention to, despite the worthless promises they usually make. The workers of the Ożarów factory wrote a letter to post-communist President Kwaśniewski asking him to stop the destruction of the factory. However, he refused to save the people from the misery of mass unemployment. On the other hand, people living under communism were not completely unprepared to own a factory or understand the value of the workplace. However, it is also true that simple workers should never have owned a factory or had responsibility for it.
Freedom of elections and a bloodless transition to capitalism are all that Poles living under communism could have obtained and maintained. Unfortunately, most people are not prepared to be capitalists, to own and run factories. Staying under Soviet-style communism was also not an option for Central Europe: food was rationed in Poland, and communist officials had no moral authority due to their total control through terror. Under the Soviet occupation, people had no political options due to Poland’s lack of free elections. Only once did the weakness of the Soviet bloc appear for constructive and bloodless change – when Saint John Paul II ruled from the Vatican: an opportunity arose, and the chance was taken.
The fact is that democracy that allows free elections is gaining more and more support in postwar Poland, despite many efforts by the post-communists to return to complete totalitarian rule. Several years after the communists accepted the Round Table agreement allowing free elections, they began to realize that they had permanently lost their dictatorship. The neo-communists are now looking for ways to regain their power by weakening the forces keeping them from total control of Poland. They have discovered that the Catholic Church in Poland and its faithful are their primary opponents. So they addressed this issue in Misiak’s book.
The neo-communists now understand that the way to regain power is to reduce people’s trust in the clergy and undo the Round Table agreement. The neo-communist Misiak now reduces the importance of the Round Table agreement for a fully democratic electoral process in Poland. Instead, Misiak introduces and exaggerates the far-reaching liberalism spreading after the Round Table. Misiak fails to see that liberalism is taught in liberal schools still dominated by communists who remained because of the peaceful transition to capitalism. Instead, Misiak blames the Catholic Church for liberalism. He argues that there would have been no liberal catastrophe had it not been for the Round Table, and there would have been no Round Table had it not been for the support of the Catholic Church’s clergy to reach an agreement.
Misiak ignores the winning of Poles’ freedom during the Round Table. Neo-communism cannot weigh freedom differently: freedom is not worth mentioning because communism is wholly opposed to democracy. The author quotes (p.29) and is guided throughout his book by Gregory Orwell’s saying: “the most perfect form of lying is silence.” The author knew what he was doing.
Controlling Poland’s transformation into capitalism
The neo-communist states: “There is no excuse for condoning the looting of the country and the destruction of the nation” (p. 203). However, Poland’s transition to capitalism from under Soviet rule took place under the control of communists (including Jaruzelski, Wałęsa, Kwaśniewski, but mainly Jaruzelski). The transition was not accomplished by the Catholic Church, as neo-communist Misiak suggests by using the word “acquiescence,” even though the clergy supported the nation spiritually through the hardships of change. In the first chapter, “Instead of an Introduction” [Zamiast wprowadzenia], he blames the Catholic Church in Poland for supporting the Round Table.
Misiak also points out that the Catholic Church does not allow total liberalism because it does not support or teach it. Misiak rightly criticizes the movie “Kler” for promoting a falsified view of Catholic priests in Poland. Misiak’s role is to teach and propagate neo-communist ideas about the Round Table, an essential gathering of various authorities that sealed the peaceful defeat of communism in Poland. You cannot refute the apparent truth about the leading positive role of the clergy and the Catholic faith of the Polish nation. Neo-communism in Poland does not reveal the leading role of liberal education under Soviet rule in destroying the morality and faith of the nation, as is happening in the West and on a world scale. The neo-communist keeps these methods of the liberals under wraps.
The communists had the political power and authority to enable Poland’s transition to capitalism; therefore, they had to be allowed to take what they wanted and agree to free democratic elections. As a result, they robbed the country to some extent, though not entirely, because the transition was without bloodshed. Freedom does not come for free. Misiak was unaware of the details being played out behind the scenes, unseen but powerful, specifically the involvement of US intelligence. During my 1986/87 interviews with the CIA in Kansas, I proposed this passage: individual influential communists would take what they wanted and what they could in exchange for agreeing to free democratic elections in Poland (see my book: “Slaying the Soviet Beast…”).
The clergy’s cooperation with the communists
During the Soviet occupation of Poland, some bishops and archbishops collaborated with the communist regime. For example, when I started working at the Academy of Sciences in Poland, after graduating from the Warsaw Polytechnic, I was assigned to an interview with Bishop Dąbrowski. The professor’s secretary signed me up for the meeting and informed me that the high Church official was expecting me. I was shocked to see a very luxurious office located on the most expensive street in Warsaw. I instinctively understood that a bishop should have a desk in an official Catholic-owned building headquarters, not necessarily on a representative avenue.
“This is not a dedicated Catholic bishop,” I realized, and I decided to behave more like a progressive young man. I realized that the bishop wanted to know my attitude toward the communist government as a Catholic. It was a brief political and religious interview with an official I had not seen before to decide whether I could work in a government institute, and I passed the test. Yes, the political services of high-ranking priests to the communist government in Poland were a fact of life. A flashy provocation should have elicited the expected reaction from a young man who disliked communism, but the incitement failed. Bishop Dąbrowski was gentle in his attempt to test my political stance; the few words I said were enough for him to decide that I was a politically innocent young man.
Communist security services often blackmailed the clergy into cooperation. Leading communist Julia Brystiger, known as “Bloody Luna,” instituted large-scale infiltration of Catholic seminaries in Poland by communist agents. Homosexuals were frequent victims. The communist security services murdered many priests after finding evidence that they were a threat to communism (e.g., Zych, Suchowolec, Niedzielak, Palimąka, Kij, Kowalczyk, listed by Misiak). The neo-communist blames the clergy – the victims, not the communist security services – the oppressors.
The neo-communist strongly opposes the killing of patriotic clergy such as St. Jerzy Popiełuszko. However, if communism is to rule a “socialist” country, how to prevent the horrific killing of priests and patriots? An impossible task under totalitarian rule, and our neo-communist promises wonderful communism like the one in Poland after 1956, assuming that the killing of priests and patriots by tyrants will be forbidden. But how? Historically, communists have always been full of promises and have always ended up with totalitarian orders; Misiak promises such a form of communism in Poland after 1956, which is a terrible promise. The neo-communist supports his point of view with a critique of the freedom that resulted from the Round Table agreement.
Secret communist collaborators were allowed to work on both sides
Neo-Communist Misiak is furious with the bishops who collaborated with the communist dictators because these Church authorities contributed to the Round Table deliberations and contract. An agreement had to be reached. The neo-communist writes about Poland being enslaved and deprived of property after the Round Table, but this is not true: it was the Soviets who enslaved Poland before perestroika. Only under capitalism did people start working for their businesses. The communist authorities felt politically safe by having secret collaborators, thanks to whom they had total control in Poland.
They felt safe when they had collaborators among the priests who could practice the faith in the country. So they trusted their collaborator-priests also during the Round Table negotiations. The bishops-collaborators helped bring about the agreement with the communists who gave freedom to the Poles; in this way, they worked effectively on both sides. The question is: Were the collaborator-bishops genuine and fully trusted by the communist bureaucracy?
The communists infiltrated the clergy in Poland and were present in all Church organizations. Bishop Dąbrowski is an example. The communists exploited all weaknesses, especially individual clergy guilty of sins among them, such as homosexuality. Now the neo-communist Misiak perversely blames the clergy for homosexuality. Since the Round Table was a disaster for the communists, our neo-communist attacks the Catholic Church in Poland for participating in the negotiations and approving the bloodless agreement. The neo-communist cannot see that Poland has achieved sovereignty.
The clergy which collaborated with the communists, so welcome in the communist times, is particularly attacked by the neo-communist because they turned out to be traitors to communism during the Round Table negotiations. The Round Table agreement was conceived as an agreement between communists and their fully trusted collaborators that effectively turned against communism. During the Round Table talks, the communists and collaborators were given the task of distributing government property among themselves without bloodshed or excessive vandalism. In the heat of the robbery, they lost their former grip on power and total control.
Episcopal support for the Round Table
Our neo-communist does not wonder why the entire Episcopate supported the Round Table, not only selected clergy, homosexuals, and collaborators. The neo-communist focuses on the Church, homosexuals, and collaborators as if they constituted the whole Episcopate. However, the clergy in Poland also includes Saint Jerzy Popiełuszko and other patriotic priests who fought against communism.
The book supports Cardinal Wyszyński by suggesting that Catholics in Poland support communism when a great religious leader rules the country along with communist leaders. Then the religious leader exercises spiritual power over the people, but under the complete supervision of the communists. If the author had only revealed his neo-communist view without providing a picture of the religious life of the Polish people, the average Catholic reader would have immediately stopped being interested in the book. Instead, the book offers a mixture of his terrible neo-communist propaganda with information about the unquestionable moral and religious authority of Cardinal Wyszyński, a Catholic leader, hoping that his diabolical rhetoric will convince the reader.
The neo-communist writes about “the nation’s betrayal by the Church delegates at the Round Table” (p. 24). Nevertheless, this was not a betrayal; the Church bought freedom for the Poles. The numerous victims among the clergy testify to the ultimate determination and power of the communists and that they would win any direct fight within Poland. Everyone knew that Father Jerzy Popiełuszko was brutally tortured six days before communist security forces finally killed him. The communist hero, Lech Wałęsa, took over his position in “Solidarity”. Of course, it was clear to everyone involved in the Round Table talks that “Solidarity,” the most vigorous opposition movement in communist Poland, had been tricked into being caught under the total control of communist security (e.g., by Lech Wałęsa).
The first true “Solidarity” quickly dispersed or emigrated, and the second “Solidarity” was largely infiltrated by communist security agents, resulting in it becoming inactive under Wałęsa’s administration. Misiak identifies two waves of “Solidarity” (p.80). How could Church delegates betray a nation fighting to guarantee freedom for Poles? Note: the primary winner and guarantor of the Round Table promises were most likely not the Church but the invisible US intelligence services. Misiak largely ignores this powerful authority, lists the unproven sins of the clergy, and is silent about the Poles gaining their freedom. The communists intended to murder the clergy opposition in Poland by ordering the torture and murder of Father Popiełuszko. Communist authorities in Poland began to feel the pressure of Gorbachev’s perestroika, the Vatican, and US intelligence, understanding that they had to deal with forces much larger than the clergy. The neo-communist Misiak misses the point of the political solution to the problem.
The Lisbon Treaty
Misiak is correct in his objection to the Lisbon Treaty that the EU does not refer to Christianity as the root of European culture (p. 33). The Lisbon Treaty is a surrender to non-European cultures and religions attacking Europe with many forms of immigration. Poland and Hungary remain the last bastions of Christianity in Central Europe, which the neo-communist is silent about.
A barrier to the development of communist Poland
A neo-communist directly praises the communist system in Poland after 1956 (p. 36), claiming that Polish technology flourished under Soviet occupation. I am a computer and software specialist with a Ph.D. in computer science, having several research papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals. Poland purchased semiconductor technology from the Soviet Union that was antiquated. Most science, technology, and manufacturing are now based on computers. Poland lacked semiconductor and computer technology. Therefore, the late 1980s was the right time to get rid of the Soviets and join the West. A minicomputer was built in Poland as a research tool and system in due time, an achievement indeed (the K-202 invented by Jacek Karpiński, which would compete with the PDP-11).
However, the communist bureaucrats did not know what to do with it: there would have to be production technologies in Poland that required computers, and there were none. Furthermore, vice versa: the lack of computers in the Soviet bloc was a barrier to the development of science and technology, and the Soviet economy had no incentives due to central planning. Moreover, the K-202 was made of expensive semiconductors produced in the West because the Soviet bloc’s semiconductors were too primitive. Semiconductor technology was an insurmountable barrier in the Soviet bloc, as evidenced by the fact that Karpiński did not produce many K-202 systems, although he had tremendous support in Poland. He worked for the communists as a spy on US territory.
I know of a gigantic old artificial silk factory in Chodaków, now Sochaczew, which poisoned hundreds of workers for decades. Of course, no one wanted to buy that factory after the Round Table because of the careless poisonous technology cultivated by the communist system.
Misiak’s attempt to return to Soviet communism in Poland is a bad venture. Misiak also praises the communists for eradicating illiteracy in Poland, but the truth is that a four-grade elementary education functioned in Poland before World War II.
The neo-Communist’s great hostility toward Pope John Paul II
Misiak confronted the Polish pope with his statement: “The Holy Spirit to this day has not descended on our land, has not renewed it” (p. 191). To prepare the reader for this message, the neo-communist wrote earlier that Poland “…is turning into a financial, economic ruin…” after the Round Table under the European Union (pp. 19, 82).
Not true; I remember that food was rationed in Poland before my trip to the US in 1986. I had to hunt for each everyday product daily and stand in long lines. The average citizen could not afford to buy a car. Now, Poles can buy everything in stores, and the streets are filled with cars. The facts prove that after the words of John Paul II in 1979 in Warsaw, our land experienced a fundamental renewal. After the communists permanently separated me from my family in Poland, I prayed to the Holy Spirit for wisdom. American intelligence could do anything and promised to reunite my family in exchange, I understood, for strategic information during the height of the Cold War (see the book by Zbigniew Wojcik, “Slaying the Soviet Beast…”[Zabijanie sowieckiej bestii..”]).
Could the CIA have ignored strategic knowledge gained from me? The communists and then the neo-communists were unaware of how such information could exist at that time. Strategic information about how they could lose absolute power required the involvement of Pope John Paul II. The neo-communist knew of the presence of CIA officers in the Vatican during this time (p. 183). A miracle was necessary to reunite my family separated by the Cold War, but the “renewal of the land” had to be done by the people, and the goal set by the Polish Pope in 1979 in Warsaw was achieved. Polish patriotic priests are no longer murdered by communist security forces, which is significant evidence that our land has been renewed.
The chapter “The Roots of Evil” [“Korzenie zła”] is a critique of the Second Vatican Council. The author disagrees with the tendency to treat all religions equally. According to Misiak, Protestants are too liberal. The author sees the Muslim invasion of Europe as a consequence of Vatican II. In particular, he argues that treating the Muslim religion as equal to the Catholic and Protestant religions is doomed to fail.
Nothing constructive exists in the book except neo-communist propaganda
The neo-communist book lists biased complaints about the situation in Poland after the Round Table, much of which is presented without any substantiation. Moreover, while the observations made are true, the author makes no effort to point to the real sources of the problems that would help solve them. For example, Misiak notes that too many Poles became liberal after the Round Table agreement. A true observation. However, Misiak blames the Round Table for this issue and the clergy who supported the negotiations, not the liberal education that remained in the hands of the communists during the long post-communist period.
I had to stop reading the neo-communist book
The neo-communist strongly promotes Archbishop Wielgus, describing him as the best choice for the position of Metropolitan of Warsaw. Wielgus has admitted that he spied for the communist security services and resigned from office. He initially denied the accusations. The neo-communist supports the clergy’s collaboration with communist security services, even though the Vatican has announced embarrassment over Wielgus. This was a clear signal for me to stop studying this book, being about in the middle of it. Should I trust the Vatican or Misiak?
After reading several chapters of this book, it became clear that the author is a radical neo-communist proposing a return to Soviet communism in Central Europe. Being aware of the author’s neo-communist point of view, the book no longer seems attractive. However, it is worth knowing that communism in Central Europe is not over. It is fighting for a comeback with the help of neo-communist propaganda. This struggle will intensify because of the overwhelming trends toward unchecked total liberalism and modern communism in the West. Therefore, people should be aware of current political trends and methods.
Bibliography:
1. https://www.remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/4113-lost-shepherds-vatican-as-narcissistic-political-lobby . Joseph D’Hippolito, “LOST SHEPHERDS: the Vatican as Narcissistic Political Lobby,” September 28, 2018.
2. https://www.archbalt.org/archbishop-resignation-prompts-embarrassment/
3. Zbigniew Wojcik, “Slaying the Soviet Beast: A True Story about How the Cold War was Won. What Next?” Liberty Hill, 2019.
4. Leszek Misiak, “Tracimy kościół czyli zawał Polski”, Oficyna Aurora, 2019
