AP News, May 15th, 2007
Poland's governing party presented a draft law Tuesday encouraging local authorities to remove street names and monuments that glorify communist rule.
The law will "help us close the chapter on communism, the inglorious past that we went through after World War II," said Marek Kuchcinski, the parliament leader of Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski's Law and Justice party.
Kaczynski's conservative and nationalist government is on a drive to purge public life of former communists and symbolic reminders of Poland's submission to Russia.
On Friday, Poland's highest court struck down key provisions of a new law requiring up to 700,000 public service workers be screened for past collaboration with communist-era secret police.
The draft law presented Tuesday, which Kuchcinski said could take effect in a few months, would require the state to cover the costs of removing monuments and changing names.
It makes some exceptions, such as for cemeteries, monuments honoring Soviet soldiers who died in World War II, and historically valuable buildings such as Warsaw's landmark Stalin-era Palace of Culture and Science.
Kuchcinski insisted that the proposal was directed against no one and was unrelated to tense Polish-Russian relations. Polish officials have said the proposal was also not inspired by a bitter dispute between Estonia and Russia over the relocation of a memorial to Red Army troops.
Poland's relations with Russia have become increasingly edgy in recent years as the former Warsaw Pact nation joined NATO and the European Union and, most recently, indicated willingness to host elements of a U.S. missile defense system.
