All the fairy tales that are fit to print

My comment on Roger Boyes’ article Don’t be surprised at Poles returning home in The Times, 15 October 2019.


Being The Times’ correspondent in Warsaw in the 1980s, Roger Boyes failed to ask critical questions and notice some of the most obvious things. And now he continues to build on those mistakes.

Let me remind him and others in the media that both Kaczynski and Orban come from families privileged under Communism. Kaczynski’s father was a Communist party member. His mother had a job at the Institute of Literary Studies in Warsaw, which was reserved for the most trusted and privileged few. In their early years, Jaroslaw Kaczynski and his twin brother Lech played in a film for children. This is a firm stamp of approval for the reliability and trustworthiness of the Kaczynski family in the eyes of the Communist dictatorship. The Kaczynski brothers were later trained by the Communists for their political roles in the fake opposition to Communism.

Roger Boyes was reporting from the 1980s Warsaw that the Solidarity movement was an authentic one and and opposed to Communism. It wasn’t on both counts.

Fast forward to 2019 and Boyes writes “Leaders like Kaczynski (who actually pulls the strings from the back benches)”. I am sorry, but this is not true. This is a fake story. A former Communist apprentice, who would be fully emancipated now into running the show of his own? That’s a real joke.

All the fairy tales that are fit to print.