A vicious controversy has just erupted in Poland over the “Round Table.” The “Round Table” refers both to the literal circular table and the historic discussions held around it in early 1989, when some parts of the Polish opposition met with the ruling Communists to discuss the country’s future. Out of these talks came the partially free June 1989 elections; two-thirds of the lower house seats were reserved for Communists, while the restored Senate had fully competitive elections. The outcome? The Reds lost every seat in both houses open to free competition, except for one.

I recall being in Rome at the time, dealing with a visa issue at the communist Polish Embassy. An official, evasive and arrogant, refused to answer my question clearly. When I pointed out the contradiction in his statements, he looked at me smugly and said, in Polish, “you’re joking!” I replied, also in Polish, “No, but after last week’s voting, everybody knows your government is the biggest joke on the entire European continent!” Two months later, that joke was in the process of eviction.

The Round Table has always been controversial. Its critics — including myself — argue that it was a tactical arrangement designed primarily to protect the Communists, not to foster national unity. Its defenders claim it symbolized “compromise” and “dialogue,” presenting Poles as peacefully transitioning to democracy.

Critics contend the Round Table was an insurance policy for the Communists: they agreed to “share” power in exchange for immunity and the retention of privileges, including access to public life. This partly explains why post-Communist privatization often left a bitter taste and arguably contributed, at least in the post-USSR space, to the emergence of oligarchs. Ex-Communists had the resources to acquire state assets at fire-sale prices. The old joke went: What’s the difference between a Communist and an ex-Communist? The former says “capital” and spits; the latter says “capital” and stuffs it in his pockets.

The deeper question is what the Round Table says about the regime in Warsaw from 1944–1989. I, and most Poles in the diaspora, have always contended it was a regime imposed and sustained by Russia. Its only support within Poland came from the nomenklatura — the beneficiaries who profited from being Communists. The June 1989 ballot confirmed this: in a truly free election, the Red Emperors had no clothes.

Why revisit this now?

The Round Table was not just an event; it was a piece of furniture. That very table had been preserved in the Presidential Palace until conservative President Karol Nawrocki, newly elected and sharing my skepticism of the Round Table, ordered its removal. The Left erupted in collective outrage, particularly under the so-called centrist Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s government. Most revealing was the response of Włodzimierz Czarzasty, Poland’s equivalent of the U.S. Speaker of the House. Czarzasty only became Speaker November 18, arguably as part of a Faustian bargain in Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s allegedly “centrist” coalition. Czarzasty joined the Communist Party in 1983, during martial law under General Wojciech Jaruzelskovich (I deliberately Russify that apparatchik’s surname), when the economy was collapsing and everyone knew the only legitimacy his government had were the Soviet tanks ultimately to back it up. In 1983 one plausibly joined the Communist Party for one of two reasons: you believed its nonsense or you were an opportunist looking to latch on to power. Neither motive is particularly complimentary. Czarzasty was also believed by many to be implicated in the “Rywin Affair.” In 2002, a fixer approached publisher Adam Michnik, saying a media anti-monopoly law could be changed by “a group holding power” for a bribe. Although he (and the leftist Parliament report) denied it, Czarzasty was thought by some to be part of that “group.”

In defense of the Round Table, Czarzasty argued that without it, conservative Presidents such as Lech Kaczyński, Andrzej Duda, or Karol Nawrocki could not have come to power. Pause for a moment. What he is really saying is that democracy in Poland was possible only because the Russian-backed Communists consented to share power. That somebody in a democratic government can justify the existence of that government on such terms should be sobering, and not in a good sense.

To me, the Round Table should be seen as a tactical device — a way to remove the Reds before bringing them to justice for their half-century of crimes. Its shelf life should have ended December 26, 1991, the day after the hammer-and-sickle came down in Moscow and the Round Table’s beneficiaries had nowhere to flee to and hide. Pretending that the Warsaw regime from 1944-1989 was genuinely Polish was dishonest. Pretending that reconciliation required abandoning accountability for half a century of oppression was a politically convenient illusion — a dictatorship of relativism masquerading as principled Christianity.

The really interesting part of the story is that President Nawrocki proposes to move the Round Table from the Presidential Palace to the Museum of Polish History. Not a bad idea, unless you believe the political order (and its beneficiaries) that Table represents has to be kept in peoples’ eyes by being in the Palace. Symbolically, it also means General Jaruzelski had as much a “right” to the Presidential Palace as its current, democratically-elected incumbent. In any event, moving the Table to a museum is a much better idea of what to do with historical artifacts than what the Communist Party did in 1989 to its secret files: a big bonfire!

I am currently reviewing The Cross and the Flag: Papal Diplomacy and John Paul II’s Struggle against the Tyranny of the Possible by Fr. John Tanyi Lebuis (here). By “tyranny of the possible” Lebuis means the constrained thinking that assumed the Soviet Union was permanent, the division of Europe immutable, and diplomacy required accommodation. John Paul II refused such narrow thinking. He understood that the clay feet of communism needed to be kicked down, not propped up. Thanks to his broader perspective, Central Europe is whole and free.

That “tyranny of the possible” still haunts political debates today. It arguably hovers, for example, in the background of the Parolin deal with China. In Poland, it has resurfaced in the Round Table controversy: the notion that only compromises with a corrupt, decomposing Communist regime could deliver freedom. Poles should know better.