罗杰·科恩：波兰的荣光文章英文标题： The Glory of Poland

dorm99

不要告诉我，残酷的历史是无法跨越的。不要告诉我，以色列人和巴勒斯坦人是绝不会实现和平的。不要告诉我，曼谷、比什凯克以及德黑兰街头的人们所梦想的自由与民主是无法成真的。不要告诉我，谎言能永远屹立不倒。问一下波兰人。他们知道。

　　【纽约讯】听闻波兰惨剧之后，我的第一个念头是，历史的轮转或许带有一种令人难以忍受的残酷性——波兰的精英两度陨落在卡廷这一被诅咒之地。（相关链接：金雁：大空难后看波兰；波兰总统坠机的启示：开放带来稳定，自由带来稳定 2010-4-14）
　　第二个念头是致电我在华沙的一位老友亚当·米奇尼克。这位曾被听命于苏联的前共产党傀儡政权囚禁过6次的知识分子，对我说过这样一番话：
　　“任何一位遭受过那种羞辱的人，在一定程度上，都想报复。我知道所有的谎言。我看到有人被杀害。但我也明白，复仇主义是永无止境的。我一直执着于这样一个愿景：波兰将爆发一场不同于法国或俄国，而是美国式的革命。这场革命应该是支持，而不是反对某种事物。一场旨在构建一部宪法，而不是寻求一个天堂的革命。一场反乌托邦的革命，因为乌托邦的后果是断头台，是古拉格群岛。”
　　米奇尼克的愿景已经结出果实。波兰总统卡钦斯基、波兰国家银行行长斯瓦沃米尔?斯克日佩克现已离世。森林雾霭中的一声巨响，夺去了正飞赴卡廷的他们，以及另外94个人的生命。但波兰的民主几乎没有受到任何惊吓。议会下院领袖已成为代理总统，直至大选。国家银行第一副行长已开始履行已故行长的职责。此刻，经常被肢解、甚至一度被从地图上抹去的波兰，平静而安宁。
　　“卡廷是波兰知识分子的葬身之所，”现已成为波兰最大报《选举报》（GazetaWyborcza）灵魂人物的米奇尼克在电话中对我说。“这是一个可怕的民族悲剧。但在悲痛之余，我却非常乐观，因为普京坚定且明智的声明已经开启了波兰与俄罗斯关系的新篇章，因为我们波兰人正在向世人显示，我们是负责任的，我们的国家是稳定的。”
　　米奇尼克所指的是俄罗斯总理普京上周发表的一番言论。普京于上周决定，他将赶赴卡廷，与波兰官员一道参加为追思二战初期被苏联杀害的数千名波兰官员而举行的纪念活动——这是俄罗斯领导人首度参与这项活动。在为俄罗斯人辩解的同时，普京强烈谴责了隐藏卡廷事件真相的“愤世嫉俗的谎言”，他说，“没有任何理由可以为一个极权主义政权所犯的这些罪行辩护”，并且声称，“我们双方都有必要作出让步，要意识到，我们不可能只活在过去。”
　　跟普京亲临那片森林，羞愧地低头追思那一幕相比，这番言论——生活在旧石器时代的俄罗斯共产党对其不屑一顾——之重要性就显得略逊一筹。看着他与波兰总理唐纳德·图斯克肩并肩站在一起，我不由得想起1984年，法国前总统密特朗与德国前总理科尔在凡尔登手拉手的场景；想起了那些庄严的和解时分——进而奇迹般地构筑起一个完整且自由的欧洲。现如今，欧洲已经东扩至乌拉尔山脉。
　　我甚至想起了德国前总理勃兰特1970年跪在华沙犹太民族纪念碑前的那一幕，这一跪堪为德国和波兰和解道路上的一大转折点，这样的和解方式甚至比二战后出现的德法联盟更让人啧啧称奇。现在，波兰和俄罗斯之间最完美的和解时刻或许已经到来。
　　现在谈论华沙和莫斯科关系的走向似乎言之过早，但如果两国领导人未能将此次悲剧转化为构建庄严纽带之契机，那将是对96位消失的灵魂的亵渎——此刻如是断言并不算过早。正如图斯克对普京所言，“说出真相，可以动员两国人民寻求和解之路。我们能否将谎言转化为和解？我们必须坚信我们能。”
　　波兰应该使每一个认为和平与和解无法实现的国家，让每一个认为必须牺牲新世代以报历史之宿怨的政府感到羞愧。竞相援引受害者地位（这是中东地区最钟爱的消遣活动）只会迫使今天的孩子加入长长的死亡名单。
　　1939年以降，几乎没有哪个国家遭受的灾难比波兰更为深重。这个国家一度被希特勒和斯大林签订的不侵犯条约瓜分，被纳粹转化为欧洲犹太人的根除中心。这是奥斯威辛和马伊达内克集中营的所在地，是数百万信基督教的波兰人和数百万波兰犹太人遇难的杀戮场，是英勇的华沙起义爆发的地方，是任由苏联人摆布的卒子。这是欧洲其他国家在后雅尔塔时代争取自由之际依然被形只影单的统一工人党统治的国度。正如伟大的波兰诗人维斯瓦娃·希姆博尔斯卡所描写的那样，这是一个“历史用整数计算骷髅数量”（卡廷的这项数字为20000）的地方。
　　如今，与邻国和平相处，政局稳定，与德国共处于欧盟框架之下的，正是这个经历过如斯灾难的波兰。也正是这个波兰，刚刚目睹了颇能代表其动荡历史的一幕发生在了一架苏联制造的飞机上。也正是这个波兰，本着法治之精神庄严地对悲剧作出了回应。
　　因此，不要告诉我，残酷的历史是无法跨越的。不要告诉我，以色列人和巴勒斯坦人是绝不会实现和平的。不要告诉我，曼谷、比什凯克以及德黑兰街头的人们所梦想的自由与民主是无法成真的。不要告诉我，谎言能永远屹立不倒。
　　问一下波兰人。他们知道。
　　罗格·科恩简介：
　　1955年8月生于伦敦。毕业于牛津大学贝利奥尔学院。自1977年起先后就职于路透社、《华尔街日报》。1990年加盟《纽约时报》，担任驻外记者及编辑，及《纽约时报》、《国际先驱论坛报》专栏作家。曾任哈佛大学“乔·阿历克斯·莫里斯（Joe Alex Morris）”荣誉讲师。两次被提名普利策新闻奖。

英文原文：


April 13, 2010
Op-Ed Columnist
The Glory of Poland
By ROGER COHEN
NEW YORK — My first thought, hearing of the Polish tragedy, was that history’s gyre can be of an unbearable cruelty, decapitating Poland’s elite twice in the same cursed place, Katyn.
My second was to call my old friend Adam Michnik in Warsaw. Michnik, an intellectual imprisoned six times by the former puppet-Soviet Communist rulers, once told me:
“Anyone who has suffered that humiliation, at some level, wants revenge. I know all the lies. I saw people being killed. But I also know that revanchism is never ending. And my obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag.”
Michnik’s obsession has yielded fruit. President Lech Kaczynski is dead. Slawomir Skrzypek, the president of the National Bank, is dead. An explosion in the fog of the forest took them and 94 others on the way to Katyn. But Poland’s democracy has scarcely skipped a beat. The leader of the lower house of Parliament has become acting president pending an election. The first deputy president of the National Bank has assumed the duties of the late president. Poland, oft dismembered, even wiped from the map, is calm and at peace.

“Katyn is the place of death of the Polish intelligentsia,” Michnik, now the soul of Poland’s successful Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper, said when I reached him by phone. “This is a terrible national tragedy. But in my sadness I am optimistic because Putin’s strong and wise declaration has opened a new phase in Polish-Russian relations, and because we Poles are showing we can be responsible and stable.”
Michnik was referring to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s words after he decided last week to join, for the first time, Polish officials commemorating the anniversary of the murder at Katyn of thousands of Polish officers by the Soviet Union at the start of World War II. Putin, while defending the Russian people, denounced the “cynical lies” that had hidden the truth of Katyn, said “there is no justification for these crimes” of a “totalitarian regime” and declared, “We should meet each other halfway, realizing that it is impossible to live only in the past.”
The declaration, dismissed by the paleolithic Russian Communist Party, mattered less than Putin’s presence, head bowed in that forest of shame. Watching him beside Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, I thought of Fran?ois Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl hand-in-hand at Verdun in 1984: of such solemn moments of reconciliation has the miracle of a Europe whole and free been built. Now that Europe extends eastward toward the Urals.
I thought even of Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970, a turning point on the road to a German-Polish reconciliation more miraculous in its way even than the dawning of the post-war German-French alliance. And now perhaps comes the most wondrous rapprochement, the Polish-Russian.
It is too early to say where Warsaw-Moscow relations are headed but not too early to say that 96 lost souls would be dishonored if Polish and Russian leaders do not make of this tragedy a solemn bond. As Tusk told Putin, “A word of truth can mobilize two peoples looking for the road to reconciliation. Are we capable of transforming a lie into reconciliation? We must believe we can.”
Poland should shame every nation that believes peace and reconciliation are impossible, every state that believes the sacrifice of new generations is needed to avenge the grievances of history. The thing about competitive victimhood, a favorite Middle Eastern pastime, is that it condemns the children of today to join the long list of the dead.
For scarcely any nation has suffered since 1939 as Poland, carved up by the Hitler-Stalin nonaggression pact, transformed by the Nazis into the epicenter of their program to annihilate European Jewry, land of Auschwitz and Majdanek, killing field for millions of Christian Poles and millions of Polish Jews, brave home to the Warsaw Uprising, Soviet pawn, lonely Solidarity-led leader of post-Yalta Europe’s fight for freedom, a place where, as one of its great poets, Wislawa Szymborska, wrote, “History counts its skeletons in round numbers” — 20,000 of them at Katyn.
It is this Poland that is now at peace with its neighbors and stable. It is this Poland that has joined Germany in the European Union. It is this Poland that has just seen the very symbols of its tumultuous history (including the Gdansk dock worker Anna Walentynowicz and former president-in-exile Ryszard Kaczorowski) go down in a Soviet-made jet and responded with dignity, according to the rule of law.
So do not tell me that cruel history cannot be overcome. Do not tell me that Israelis and Palestinians can never make peace. Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever.
Ask the Poles. They know.