Uniformed Services Pension Amendment Acts in Poland as Part of State Politics of Memory

1. Introduction

Post-communist countries in the transition period carry a burden of dealing with the past. By politics of memory, states strive to shape common awareness about past events, and thus try to maintain their collective memory through various mechanisms. To this end, they can decide to withdraw certain privileges for persons associated with the previous system, an example of which is the reduction of retirement benefits for a specific group associated with the former system. Such mechanisms were introduced in Poland under the Uniformed Services Pensions Amendment Acts of 20092 and 20163. This paper examines sanctions taken against former officers of the security service of the Polish People’s Republic (Polish: Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL), in particular the decrease of their retirement and disability benefits, and assesses these sanctions from the perspective of transitional justice and the implementation of state politics of memory. The aim is to prove that reducing pensions by means of the Uniformed Services Pensions Amendment Acts of 2009 and 2016 is part of the legal institutionalization of memory. While the 2009 Amendment had a somewhat retrospective goal,

2. Politics of memory (as a part of transitional justice)

Transitional justice can be considered both sui generis and complex⁴. As Michał Krotoszyński indicated, this multifaceted, self-complimentary phenomenon is comprised of three main aspects: 1) legal and extra-legal mechanisms implemented to account for the past and fulfil other purposes of transitional justice; 2) the conception of justice in the context of transitional periods; and 3) political decisions to use transitional justice mechanisms which are based both on accepted formulas of justice and on conditions outside of the domain of ethics⁵. This paper focuses on the last aspect. From this perspective, the mechanisms of transitional justice are an expression of specific political decisions. In this context, transitional justice can be understood as decisions to use certain mechanisms of dealing with the past⁶. Jon Elster distinguishes two types of said decisions: 1) substantive, and 2) procedural ones:

The decisions I have identified (…) are substantive decisions that new regimes may face: whom to try, sanction, and compensate; and how to try, sanction, and compensate them. In addition, transitional justice almost invariably involves procedural decisions that deviate from the standards of “pure legal justice”⁷.

In other words, the author distinguished and examined: 1) substantive decisions relating to a range of questions, answers, and definitions of wrongdoings, especially questions concerning perpetrators, victims, and ways of dealing with them, and 2) procedural decisions relating to implementation of substantive decisions by creating a process framework to achieve goals determined by these substantive decisions⁸. In this case the goal is to shape common awareness and build a specific narrative about the past in order to integrate society. The means used in the processes include taking privileges away from persons who supported the system of unjust power, changing street names or establishing museums. The politics of memory shaped in this fashion combines institutional, symbolic and subjective dimensions, which results in an attempt to explain

the past, punish the perpetrators of violations, identify victims, and pass on the heritage shaped in this way to subsequent generations, ensuring the resulting construction of a new, democratic order based on the rule of law⁹. In view of the multitude and diversity of interpretations of the past, finding one common vision of the past within collective memory is almost impossible¹⁰, nevertheless countries strive for it. Collective memory forged this way is part of politics of memory as one of the possible mechanisms of the historical clarification model¹¹. These mechanisms are used to disclose information about the nature of the previous system (or the course of the armed conflict), as well as the role of an individual within them. In this model sanctions are not significant, although they can be applied to people who refuse to participate in the process of clarification or those who actively seek to “distort” the image of the past. These actions can have an individual or collective dimension. The former dimension serves to disclose the behaviour of individuals in the pre-transition period (vetting, disclosure of files). The latter one creates a holistic picture of the past (truth finding), so their goal is to create a complete description of the period, and individual cases are only examples of the described trends (truth commissions, remembrance institutes). In the former Eastern bloc countries (including Poland) there is an excess of history. An enormous number of documents created by the former regimes is kept in archives to this day. Yet, there are of dubious and unreliable origins. Therefore, instead of using them to create as objective a view of the past as possible, the states provide access to the archives (individual clarification)¹². Thus, access to the files becomes an equivalent of access to history. It seems that this is conducive to the instrumentalization of memory policy, because lack of an official image of history (which is exceptionally difficult to establish due to the complexity of historical processes) facilitates the use of some elements of history for political purposes. Historical clarification mechanisms and politics of memory play an extraordinary role in obtaining knowledge about the past and in making state institutions officially acknowledge that given events took place. Moreover, they send a message to victims and their families: an official adoption of their version of history by the state can be considered a confirmation of their arguments. Those mechanisms also enable the construction of an official historical narrative about past events, which to some extent also affects the construction of a specific identity of a given national community. Politics of memory, in fact, does not speak about history, but about a certain interpretation of it. History is an objective¹³ study of past events considered together, especially events during a period, in a country, or related to a topic, which events make up a certain sequence. In turn, memory is more subjective, because it is not a faithful representation of history, due to its recall from the perspective of the present¹⁴.

Politics of memory aims to build a certain collective memory of the past. Collective memory is an idea of the past of a given group developed by individuals on the basis of information from various sources, each piece of information being selected and transformed in accordance with the cultural standards and beliefs of the individual. These standards are a social product, ergo are common to members of a given community, which leads to the unification of perceptions of the past. Collective memory is not static, but variable and dynamic, which makes it a field of constant encounters and clashes¹⁵. Collective memory gains importance particularly during the post-transitional period. In post-authoritarian or post-conflict countries, a political struggle around the significance of what happened and memory as such begins. As Elizabeth Jelin indicates:

After periods of high political conflict and repression or state terrorism, there is an active political struggle around meaning; the meaning of what went on and the meaning of memory itself. In this arena, the struggle is not one of memory against oblivion or silence, but rather between opposing memories, each of them with its own silences and voids¹⁶.

This is important because of the role of memory in building the identity of both the individual and the community. What we remember determines who we are, and who we are determines what we want to remember¹⁷. In line with the above, politics of memory (or political history) can be defined as all public authorities’ activities that aim to shape a specific narrative about the past. These include historical clarification mechanisms, especially collective ones, such as administrative sanctions¹⁸, an example of which is the mechanism for reducing pensions of specific groups.

3. Transitional justice in Poland after 198919

To use Samuel Huntington’s terminology, Poland we have experienced an endogenous transition (i.e. the transition without the influence of foreign countries) in the form of transplacement²⁰. It arose as a result of the Roundtable Agreement between representatives of the undemocratic regime and the opposition (Solidarity trade union). The results of the agreement were of a momentous importance to the future political developments and final abolition of communism in Poland: in 1989 partially free elections were held and the first Solidarity government led by PM Tadeusz Mazowiecki was established. Thus, the process of decommunization began. This term can be understood

in two ways. Firstly, it may be seen as the transition from communism towards democracy, a process which consists in the elimination of legislation, institutions, methods, strategies, governance structures and personnel of the previous regime²¹. Secondly, it may be perceived as the process of the imposition of administrative sanctions to those associated with the communist system. The negotiated nature of the transition had some implications. Although it did not imply legal restrictions on the prosecution of human rights violations using criminal instruments, de facto the complicated legal status (prescription of crimes²²) and evidence problems meant that the actual number of proceedings was moderate. In the years 2000–2020 the Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation (Polish: Instytut Pamięci Narodowej – Komisja Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu, IPN) initiated 370 criminal trials against 558 people. Prosecutions initiated by IPN led to the conviction of 162 people, 39 were acquitted and 88 died during trial²³. In addition “56 cases were discontinued due to amnesty and 162 others due to expiration of the limitation periods”²⁴. Instead, many mechanisms of historical clarification have been used, such as the creation of a permanent remembrance institute (IPN), reform of various institutions, vetting, truth trials, commemorative acts, and many symbolic actions, such as changing street names, removing monuments, erecting new ones, building museums, establishing memorial days, etc. A significant role was played by dispersed sanctions²⁵ imposed due to the publication of information about persons who cooperated with the communist secret services²⁶. Thus, after the Polish 1989 transition, mechanisms belonging both to the historical clarification model and to the retribution model were used. The problem of dealing with the past seems timely in Poland, as new initiatives are still being undertaken to condemn the communist period and cut off from it. Recent ones include removing communist symbols from public space, extending the scope of vetting, and the reduction of pensions of former communist security service officers²⁷.

4. Reappointment process: institutional re-establishment

In the retribution model²⁸, sanctions are imposed on individuals who, in the pretransition period, committed acts that are negatively assessed in the new political reality. The sanctions can be perceived sensu largo, that is, as anything onerous directed against the individual, which also includes the loss of some privilege. In this case, apart from the classic criminal sanctions imposed in criminal proceedings, administrative

sanctions are also used. These include deprivation of passive suffrage, deprivation of a public position, prohibition of exercising certain public functions or, finally, reduction of retirement pension. The first vetting procedure²⁹ was applied to officers of the notorious communist secret service (Polish: Służba Bezpieczeństwa, SB³⁰). Shortly after the transition, the SB was abolished and a new Office of State Protection (Polish: Urząd Ochrony Państwa, UOP) was established. Under the UOP Act³¹, former SB officers and militia officers who had previously worked in the SB were, by operation of law, dismissed from service. Such persons, pursuant to a regulation of the Council of Ministers issued on the basis of the Act, could be re-employed in the UOP, the police, the Ministry of Home Affairs or a unit subordinate to the Ministry after obtaining a positive opinion from the selection committee, which consisted of representatives of the state, political parties and public organizations³². This vetting procedure was an example of a reappointment process: the public institution in question had been disbanded (SB), a new institution had been established (UOP) and there was a general competition for all posts. This kind of process constitutes a profound intervention both on individual and organizational level³³. All SB officers were dismissed from the service and forced to reapply to UOP if they wanted to continue working in the new public institution. During this process, they were turned into applicants and continuation of their employment was conditional upon reappointment, with the burden of proof shifted to the applicant, who had to demonstrate suitability for the vacant post. The officers underwent verification in terms of their individual capacity and integrity, moral attitude, skills, and psychophysical state. A negative opinion of the commission meant it was impossible for the person to be re-employed and involved the dispersed sanction in the form of difficulties in re-employment, even in another profession³⁴. However, obtaining a positive assessment did not guarantee employment either, because as a result of the institutional reform, the number of posts was reduced by 80%³⁵, due to change in the nature of the institution, including elimination of tasks typical for the secret political police. Moreover, people who had not performed the service could apply for employment, taking the places of previous employees as a result.

5. 2009 Uniformed Services Pensions Amendment Act

Pension rights constitute an important element of the legal and social status of officers of uniformed and special formations as well as professional soldiers. Due to the particularity of social risk, the legislator³⁶ included them in a separate pension system. Pursuant

to the 1994 Uniformed Services Pensions Act³⁷ and the 1993 Soldiers Pension Act³⁸, when the officers specified in the Acts³⁹ (especially professional soldiers, and police and state security service officers) retire, they are entitled to a retirement pension paid from the state budget. The pension is paid also if they become completely incapable for service. If they die, the pension is paid to their families. The pension assessment basis (Polish: podstawa wymiaru emerytury) is based on the officer’s last salary. Until the 2009 Uniformed Services Pensions Amendment Act came into force, the pension of the officers who were in service before 2 January 1999 was calculated as the sum of: 1) 40% of the assessment basis and 2) 2.6% of the assessment basis for each year above 15 years of service. Because both the salary and the said coefficients were higher than those of other citizens, the pension calculated this way was usually higher than in the general pension system⁴⁰. As a result of a turbulent parliamentary debate at the Polish Sejm⁴¹, an act reducing the pension of former members of the Military Council of National Salvation (Polish: Wojskowa Rada Ocalenia Narodowego, WRON) and former officers of the SB was adopted. The WRON was a kind of a military junta administering the PRL during the period of the martial law in Poland, that is, between 13 December 1981 and 22 July 1983, when the government of the Polish People’s Republic drastically restricted normal life in an attempt to throttle political opposition. In both cases (WRON members and SB officers), the said 40% coefficient was eliminated and substituted only by the coefficient for each year of service, which additionally was reduced from 2.6% to 0.7%⁴². In the case of WRON members, a new basis would be adopted for each year of service in the Polish Army after 8 May 1945, and in the case of former SB officers, for each year of

authorized by the norms of given system to carry out legislative activities; 2) “real legislator” understood as “a person who in fact takes part in the law making process”; 3) “institutional legislator” understood as “an institutional collective body endowed by the norms of a given system with the power to make legislative decisions or to participate in preparations to such decisions”; and 4) “rational legislator” understood as “the ideal type of the rational lawmaker which is characterized by the assumptions of a given model theory”. See: S. Wronkowska, The Rational Legislator as a Model for the Real Lawmaker, in: Z. Ziembiński (ed.), Polish Contributions to the Theory and Philosophy of Law, Amsterdam 1987, pp. 148–149.

service. The new amount of benefits was determined in the form of an administrative decision of the pension authority, which could be appealed before a court. This regulation was challenged in full before the Constitutional Tribunal. In its ruling⁴³, sitting as the full panel of 15 justices, with six dissenting opinions (votum separatum), the CT adjudicated that this regulation was consistent with the Polish Constitution⁴⁴. The Tribunal found the law to be in accordance with the principle of proportionality, because despite the reduction, the pensions received by those affected by this Act were still higher than the average pension paid under the general pension system⁴⁵. In addition, the CT pointed out that the reduced privileges were unjustly acquired and their abolition was predictable and in line with the principle of social justice. The Constitutional Tribunal emphasized that the positive result of the reappointment process from 1990 could not be considered a guarantee of the invariability of rights to benefits. The CT also indicated that the 2009 Act was, in its principle, compatible with the principle of social equality, the only exception being the reduction of pensions for members of the WRON for the period until the introduction of martial law in Poland, which the Tribunal considered as arbitrary, due to lack of any features that distinguished these persons in that period from others members of the Polish People’s Army. The case eventually went to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), which in its judgment⁴⁶ found the law to be consistent with the principle of the protection of property rights enshrined in Article 1 of Protocol No. 1 to the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms⁴⁷. The Court rejected the applications of 1,628 functionaries of the former State security services as inadmissible. The ECtHR confirmed that the measures of the Polish legislator could not be considered as impairing the essence of applicants’ pension rights and were the end to unjustified privileges granted for political reasons. Persons who held those privileges could not have legitimate expectations that their privileged position would be maintained after transition to the democratic system⁴⁸.

6. 2016 Uniformed Services Pensions Amendment Act

After the former opposition party, Law and Justice (Polish: Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, PiS) had come to power, the Sejm adopted in December 2016 the second Uniformed Services Pensions Amendment Act. Its most important decision was to reduce the pension of SB officers assessment basis from 0.7% (provided for in the 2009) to 0% for each year of “service to a totalitarian state”. In comparison to the 2009 Uniformed Services Pensions Amendment Act, the legislator significantly extended the list of

persons who were subjects to the reduction, including those who had been employed in purely administrative institutions like the National Identification Number Department (Departament PESEL) or the Office for Registration of Foreigners. The years of employment in the bodies listed in the Act will not count towards the basis for calculating pensions. The final amount of pension cannot be lower than the lowest pension in the general pension system. Yet, the mere fact of service, regardless of its duration, means that the amount of the pension received cannot be higher than the average one. Moreover, the pension reduction also entails a corresponding cut in disability pension and survivor’s pension after such persons. The justification for the Act was the need to “fully abolish retirement privileges related to work in the security apparatus of the People’s Republic of Poland”, which was also the principle of the 2009 Uniformed Services Pensions Amendment Act, but according to the rulers, it did not achieve the intended goals, and its solutions were not fully effective⁴⁹. New solutions are characterized by a low degree of individualization of responsibility. It is possible to request the Minister of the Interior to exclude the application of the Act in some justified cases, including due to a short period of service before 31 July 1990 and remarkable service after 1989. As Krotoszyński shows, this option were barely adopted: by December 2019, 2,143 out of 4,869 applications had been decided and only 38 approved⁵⁰. An additional possible exclusion can be provided if the persons concerned can prove that before 1990, without the knowledge of superiors, they established cooperation with and actively supported persons or organizations working for the independence of the Polish State. However, the burden of proof is shifted to persons whose pensions are subject to the reduction, and the Minister is given extensive and discretionary powers. At this point, apart from questions about the fairness of the Uniformed Services Pensions Amendment Acts of 2009 and 2016, this process raises a number of legal doubts⁵¹. The 2016 Amendment only affected officers and excluded professional soldiers, even though they are covered by a similar pension system. Therefore, the legislator put this group in a much worse legal situation, compared to the general pension system and to those former officers who did not undergo the reappointment process in 199052. Although the law provides for the possibility of excluding the application of the provisions, the imprecise mechanism and the Minister’s discretion testify to their

uncertainty⁵³. What is more, this law is already the third time that communist secret service officers are targeted by transitional justice measures. This is doubtful from both a legal point of view, as it compromises the citizens’ trust in the state, and from a historical perspective. It ascribes to each individual in any way associated with these organizations (even only as an administrative worker) the guilt of being complicit in “the consolidation of the inhumane system of power”.

7. Reducing pensions as part of politics of memory

Therefore, two issues should be distinguished. Firstly, is decreasing pension benefits of Uniformed Services officers acceptable? Secondly, if the answer is affirmative, should the methods used to reduce these pensions be considered admissible in a democratic state ruled by law? It seems that the mere reduction of benefits is permissible from the perspective of the rule of law, however, it should be subject to detailed regulation regarding the principles and the trial itself, to guarantee protection of these persons’ procedural rights. Reducing pensions has, in fact, two goals: the retrospective one and the prospective one. The retrospective goal is about administering historical justice by penalizing a specific group of people using various mechanisms (in this case administrative sanctions). In the prospective aspect, this is an element of institutionalizing memory and building a specific political narrative. The legislator indicated that the main purpose of the laws in question was to “restore historical justice”. This emphasizes the retrospective nature of these laws: to some extent, they aim to bring redress to victims. This is one of the transitional justice mechanisms used during the transformation period or immediately after it, but in relation to a specific group: the former members of uniformed services. However, the content of the regulation itself, as well as the entire narrative accompanying its introduction, indicates that the acts reducing pensions are an exemplification of the legal institutionalization of collective memory. The group, which has already been subject to transitional justice measures in the form of vetting, is facing ever more sanctions due to the promotion of a specific narrative about the past. The purpose of these regulations is not to discharge the tasks posed by transitional justice, but rather to instrumen talize its mechanisms. The legislator uses them to conduct political dispute and arouse heightened social emotions, which are to increase support for the solutions themselves and, consequently, for those who introduced them. What supports this argument is the fact that the reduction of pension was introduced many years (20 and 27 years respectively) after the political transformation. Employing the mechanisms of transitional justice many years after the transition indicates the need to consolidate the political system and to create a specific narrative on the political scene. Thus, they are to a lesser extent a result of the actual need for reckoning expressed by organized groups of victims. The fact that multiple transitional justice mechanism have been used against the same group also breaches the citizens’ trust in the state. The year 1990 brought sanctions

against former SB employees in the form of dismissal and subsequent verification as part of the re-employment procedure. All those who were negatively vetted were prevented from returning to work and often met with a dispersed sanction as well. One can agree that both clarification and retribution already took place at that time. Nineteen years after the verification related the disbandment of the SB, administrative sanctions were applied in the form of a reduction of pension for this group. This was certainly an element of the legal institutionalization of collective memory and it had its roots in the context of transitional justice. However, as the legislator resorts to this type of sanction again (26 years after the said verification) by introducing the 2016 Act, one can assume that one of its primary goals was to create a specific narrative about the past. Both acts raise a number of doubts. Former officers, positively verified and reemployed in reappointment process in a democratic state, retiring after the 1994 Uniformed Services Pensions Act came into force, acquired the right to pension based on the provisions of the Act already established by the authorities of the Republic of Poland. Lowering pensions using the new provisions shows a kind of collectivization of responsibility supported by a “presumption of guilt”⁵⁴, because the burden of proof was shifted from the state to the citizen who had to prove his or her innocence in order to restore the previous level of pension. The simplifications contained in both Amendments, as well as a specific narrative in the media often led to unjust stigmatization⁵⁵. The charges brought collectively against the whole group “have a strong moral, emotional and legal condemnation”⁵⁶, which influences the fact that in the mass media the law was referred to as an act of dezubekizacja⁵⁷, defined as an element of decommunization in Poland, aimed at depriving former SB officers of any privileges. However, one should ask whether this type of statement by the legislator is consist ent with reality. The members of government also referred as ubek⁵⁸ to those who did not play any active role in consolidating the “inhumane system of power”⁵⁹. The Act treats as synonymous two different concepts: officer of uniformed services and officer as a person working in state administration⁶⁰. In turn, the notion of “consolidating the inhumane system of power” can be applied to people employed in the political police, but not necessarily to those whose function was not of an operational nature. Would it be fair, then, to treat such people in the same way as those who really served to consolidate the system, e.g. during Stalinism? Undoubtedly, the argument for using administrative sanctions in general is to protect state institutions from people who are not loyal to the new order. This is done to

protect democracy, sovereignty, and the rights of individuals (prospective goal), as well as to satisfy the sense of social justice. Reducing pensions relates primarily to the last factor: it can hardly be said to protect democracy. However, another question arises – were people employed in the services in the last years (after 1986) of the Polish People’s Republic capable of perpetuating the inhumane system of power, when it was falling into decline and numerous reforms were carried out? The legislator did not answer the above questions, which is why those acts contain so many simplifications and elements that can be associated with politics of memory, and not the desire to settle accounts or to administer historical justice. Therefore, the law aims primarily to create a coherent narrative and to serve the interests of its creators. After the political transformation in Poland, the view that the PRL was a communist- -totalitarian state throughout the whole period of its existence became the one true view of the country’s past. Symbolically, after transition, authorities turned to the period before World War II, reducing the period of the PRL to a kind of a black hole in the history of the state and nation, without debating whether the PRL was in all its aspects a communist state⁶¹. In fact, negation of the previous system was made the foundation of democracy building⁶². This negation is also visible in both Acts, which create collective memory through the use of terms such as “communism” or “totalitarian state”. The associations with these terms are much more negative than for example with “socialism” or even “authoritarianism”. The use of such pejorative emotional language supports the argument that the aim of the law is to obtain social approval and to create a specific vision of the past. The careful choice of words leads to the perpetuation of subjective historical dogmas in society, shaping a vision of history not entirely proven⁶³ and largely subordinated to the political narrative of the given group⁶⁴. Subsequently, the law causes society to move away from history in favour of memory, from shaping factual awareness in favour of disputes over preferred narratives. As a result the belief about the demonic nature of the PRL is spreading. The conviction is also growing that people connected with the previous system are pursuing foreign interests and that if anyone has ever been a “communist”, they do not cease to be one even when they fully accept the new system and serve its construction or functioning. Therefore, a zero-one narrative of the past is imposed, without considering the complexity of history. As a result, in political discourse, anti-communism becomes a crucial factor when it comes to the Polish identity, sometimes more important than the principles of liberal democracy. Thus, the legal means for reducing officers’ pensions and the arguments which justify them create certain myths in the name of the nation’s integrity, while rejecting other

competing historical traditions. The politics of memory in this formula aims to unite the nation not so much by a common history as by common views on the past. To this end, accountability mechanisms are used, which, as can be seen, show great potential in the field of community formation and utility in political struggle. Thus, the reduction of officers’ pensions can be seen as an instrument of a change of the country’s political status, its political basis, and its axiological and symbolic universe. The above-mentioned laws have become tools for heritage creation and memory control. In this case, the legal institutionalization of memory means the formalization of social transformations and is the result of a desire to stabilize and preserve a particular order. Based on national and anti-communist foundations, the laws “bringing justice” to specific groups associated with the previous system play a key role in creating a dominant ideological message, and thus, the collective memory of society. Decommunization becomes a reason for legitimizing government policies, a sure sign of ideological continuity, or even a visualization of the myth of a given group.

8. Conclusions

In the course of political changes that followed the fall of communism in Poland, ideological reassessments were made, which triggered the process of reviewing social beliefs and ideas about the past. Currently the state uses many forms of institutionalization of memory, which permeates all spheres of cultural reality and becomes the axis of many practices, the medium of social imaginations, and often a catalyst of change. Collective memory is used as a reservoir of social order and a factor of its stability, justifying the retroactive orientation of identity policy and affirming a specific vision of the past. In shaping collective memory, authorities use various methods, including legislation. From this perspective, the Acts discussed above are a means of shaping a specific historical awareness, constituting a legal institutionalization of memory. This can lead to an instrumental treatment of history and to using it to pursue specific political interests. History can become a tool in the form of moral stories about the past, serving to shape a specific vision of past events through the selection of historical facts. This leads to a kind of selectivity and flattening of historical events for the needs of current political discourse. Such a phenomenon can be seen in the Uniformed Services Pensions Amendment Acts of 2009 and 2016, as presented in this paper. They are used to shape specific and explicit views about the past system and people associated with it, while using this discourse as an element of political dispute. Whether using law in this manner is moral, must be left to individual evaluation.