Walesa collaborated with communists, says Polish president

President Lech Kaczynski thinks that his predecessor Lech Walesa was the secret 1970s communist collaborator "Bolek".

During an interview for Polsat private TV station, last night, Kaczynski said that a forthcoming book on Walesa shows the truth about a period in Walesa's life, which he himself knows without having to read about it.

The book, penned by Slawomir Cenckiewicz and Piotr Gontarczyk, two historians from the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN), is said to contain details of formerly unknown documents concerning Walesa's alleged contacts with the Communist secret services in the 1970s.

"This is not a faultless biography, of course. It is obvious that in the 80s Walesa was undoubtedly the nation's leader, which is not to say that writing the truth about him should now be filtered. A democratic society has the right to be served uncensored information, even if the truth is hard to bear,” concluded Kaczynski.

Walesa featured as "Bolek" in 1992 on the so-called Macierewicz's List of secret collaborators with the Communist regime in Poland. In 2002 it was ruled that the former president was not, in fact, a secret agent for the communists.

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