The Liberation of One
Spasowski, Romuald
THE LIBERATION OF ON E
Romuald Spasowski/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/$24.95
Wladyslaw Pleszczynsk i Never underestimate the power of the New York Times. A negative review by onetime Times Warsaw...
...THE LIBERATION OF ON E Romuald Spasowski/Harcourt Brace Jovanovich/$24.95 Wladyslaw Pleszczynsk i Never underestimate the power of the New York Times...
...Before they had looked down on me, superior because they were free...
...he asked in 1980 during a trip to Warsaw...
...He is also sur -prised by the West's indifference to a major reason for the Polish crisis...
...The West was not rais -ing a hue and cry...
...And so we learn that Spasowski has always acted out of the highes t motives...
...No wonder his favorite diplomatic post was India . Yet for all its suspect credibility, thi s remains an intriguing document . It is rich with anecdote (his description of Soviet bloc diplomatic life in Washing -ton is a first of sorts), and when no t self-serving Spasowski can be astute , particularly in his discussion of the roots of the current Polish crisis and the illusions of detente...
...How unfortunate that the author's sins will prevent the legitimate points he raises from getting a wide r hearing...
...When he re-turned to Washington in 1974 after a n absence of 13 years, for example, he was surprised "how the State Depart-ment had changed...
...But there are gaps here as well...
...It also appears that Spasowski is be-ing coy about ties he might have had with Mieczyslaw Moczar, the notoriou s security chief who instigated the 196 8 anti-Semitic campaign...
...But the West was not saying a word...
...He says conscience would not allow him to join the anti-Communist Home Army underground during World War II, bu t is silent about whether he made any at -tempt to join the Polish Communis t underground so that he could actually do some fighting to liberate his beloved Poland...
...We met with the same answer everywhere : It had all quietl y vanished east...
...The only backer he ever admits to is Adam Rapacki, an early favorite of the disarmament community in the West for his famous "plan" for a nuclear-free Central Europe...
...3 C' vCraGA TENNESSE E KTVN, CHANNEL 2 ~ 3CC, NEVFD7 . WTTS, 92 3 F !V~, 3TD .D"~` 1GTON, INDCN A WGTC . 1370 AM, 29C~~ CCTON, INDIAN A WAJI NE .CI.A A !ND'ANA 4740 2 TEL3PH O THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1986...
...Rurarz , who now lives in Washington, has re-mained highly visible, contributing i n a variety of public forums to what there Wladyslaw Pleszczynski is managing editor of The American Spectator...
...When not engaged in writing testimonials to himself (the favorite method is to cite some anti-Communist's remark to the effect tha t "though you're a Communist I know you're a good man"), he relies on that other standby: his professions of a deeply felt Polish patriotism and con-comitant hatred for what the German s and Russians (and even Ukrainians) have done to his country since 1939 . Spasowski invariably is either amazed or outraged that most Polish Com-munists turn out to be Kremlin stooge s and are treated as such by Moscow...
...Romuald Spasowski is of course the former Polish ambassador to the U.S . whose defection in the wake o f Jaruzelski's declaration of martial law in December 1981 gained him immedi -ate respect in this country and added to the outpouring of sympathy for th e suppressed Solidarity movement...
...Dulles had been condescending with me as a represen-tative of an oppressive regime...
...He is also at a loss to account for his meteoric rise in Communis t ranks after 1945 (he was first named ambassador to Washington in 1954 a t age 34...
...yes, he was blind at times, but so strong was his faith—not to mention his devotion to the memory of hi s father, a prewar Marxist philosophe r whom Spasowski at one point pathet-ically calls "probably the greates t Polish atheist of the century"—that he could not see the truth . The worst sin he confesses to (one his editors no doubt thought might go over big in thi s prurient age) is abandoning his wife and children for a time for a younger woman (there is unintentional irony in that this affair began shortly after Spasowski had a heart to heart meeting with John Kennedy) . But even here Spasowski winds up placing the real blame for his infidelity on the woman herself, who, as a colleague warne d him, turned out to be pushy and a social climber...
...So far as I can tell, he has never looked back, letting his action s speak for themselves . Spasowski, by contrast, disappeared from public view within days of hi s defection and spent the next three year s preparing this most predictable of tales : a Communist true believer's loss o f faith...
...Incredibly, Spasowski maintain s that when he denounced this fellow as "always [having] been guided by foreign interests," he really meant th e USSR...
...A negative review by onetime Times Warsaw correspon-dent John Darnton in the paper's Sun-day book section last March 30 has al l but jerked the rug out from under thi s once-promising book, written by what the publishers call "the highest-rankin g Communist official ever to defect to the West...
...In this connection, it's curious that Spasowski never mentions another Polish ambassador (to Japan) , Zdzislaw Rurarz, whose defection a t the time also attracted wide attention . Perhaps it's a matter of style...
...In fact , Spasowski doesn't even bring up Mocz -ar's name until discussion of event s nearly three years later...
...The "liberation of one," in this case, still has a ways to go...
...q SARKES TARZIAN INC WRCB, CHANNE...
...is in the West of an anti-Jaruzelsk i campaign...
...Where were the extraordinary sums o f money that had been loaned to Po-land...
...The most damning information i n Darnton's review concerned Spasow-ski's pulling a Waldheim about th e anti-Semitic purges in Poland in 1968 . Spasowski confesses to much wrongdo -ing in this lengthy memoir, but the events of 1968 are all but side-stepped . The most he admits of his own role is that he helped oust a deputy foreig n minister, but he neglects to mentio n that this official happened to be Jew-ish...
...Now the State Department people seemed almost too friendly, too polite...
...In short, we are to understand that Spasowski was an island of political integrity and per-sonal decency in a sea of Soviet- and secret police-controlled corruption and intrigue...
...Later, Spasowski acknowledges he was liked by Edward Gierek, not that Spasowski had much respect for this weak, de-luded party leader...
...They agreed too easily...
...I could not fatho m why...
Vol. 19 • August 1986 • No. 8
