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Obituary;Lech Kaczynski
逝者;萊赫·卡欽斯基
Lech Kaczynski, president of Poland, died in an air crash on April 10th, aged 60
波蘭總統萊赫·卡欽斯基4月10日墜機身亡，享年60歲
Charming in private, awkward in public, scrupulously honest and a bit out of touch, Lech Kaczynski exemplified the strengths and weaknesses of the political milieu from which he came. His formative years were the long bleak decades of Poland's communist era, first in Warsaw and then in provincial Gdansk. He and his twin brother, Jaroslaw, idolised their father, a veteran of the Polish Home Army, which fought an underground war against the German occupiers, only to be persecuted by the Soviet “liberators”. Each night at bedtime, the two boys used to sing the country's national anthem: “Poland is not yet lost, while we still live.”
萊赫·卡欽斯基私下里充滿魅力，大庭廣眾卻舉止笨拙，嚴謹正直，有點兒跟時代脫節，在他身上，體現了他所出身的政治環境的種種優缺點。這種性格成型的日子，要追溯到波蘭蕭瑟黯淡、長達數十年的共產主義時代，先是在華沙，繼而在格但斯克省。卡欽斯基與孿生兄弟雅羅斯瓦夫，無比崇拜他們的父親，一位波蘭本土軍老兵。這支軍隊曾與德國占領者進行地下斗爭，結果卻橫遭蘇聯“解放者”迫害。以往在每晚臨睡時，兩個男孩常常哼唱波蘭國歌：“我們一息尚存，波蘭就絕不會滅亡。”
As 12-year-olds the twins starred in a popular Polish fantasy film, “The Two Who Stole the Moon”, though in real life the swotty duo had little in common with the scamps they portrayed. Both became academic lawyers, Lech specialising in labour law. That proved useful during the Solidarity era, when he advised the opposition trade union's leaders in their talks with the communist boss-class. After the imposition of martial law in December 1981, he was interned for ten months.
12歲時，這對孿生兄弟主演了一部廣受歡迎的波蘭奇幻電影《偷月二人行》，然而在現實生活中，兩人勤奮刻苦，與他們扮演的小痞子迥然不同。兩人后來都成為了法學家，萊赫專攻勞動法。后來證明，團結工聯時代，卡欽斯基為反對派工會領導人與共產主義老板階層談判出謀劃策之時，他所學的法律專業派上了大用場。1981年12月戒嚴法實施后，萊赫被拘禁了10個月。
He helped negotiate the communist regime's surrender in 1989 and was one of the victors in the electoral triumph that followed. Soon after, he became security minister, developing a lasting distaste for the continuing influence of old communist spooks in public life. He resigned after falling out with his former friend, the Solidarity leader-turned-president, Lech Walesa, whom he later accused of having collaborated with the communist secret police. He was a crime-busting justice minister and then mayor of Warsaw. His legacy there is the capital's haunting museum of the 1944 uprising, crushed by occupying German forces while a nearby Soviet army kept aloof. Both his parents fought in it.
1989年，他協助談判共產主義政權移交事宜，并在隨后的選舉勝利中分得了一杯羹。不久之后，他出任安全部長，面對共產主義幽靈之前在公眾生活中留下的持續影響，漸漸產生厭惡，經久不退。在同故友、團結工會領導人出身的總統萊赫·瓦文薩鬧翻后，卡欽斯基辭職，他后來指責瓦文薩與共產黨的秘密警察合作。出任司法部長時，他嚴厲打擊犯罪，隨后成為華沙市長。他為該市留下了一座博物館，以緬懷1944年的起義，當時的占領者德國軍隊殘酷鎮壓了這次起義，而蘇聯軍隊卻在一旁袖手旁觀。他的雙親都參與了此次戰斗。
But few saw him as a likely head of state. He was the less prominent of the twins: their all-but-identical appearance (Lech had a mole on his cheek; Jaroslaw did not) belied big differences. Lech was the younger and shyer, Jaroslaw the brainier, the bossier and the mastermind of the Law and Justice party (PiS in its Polish acronym) which they founded in 2001.
不過很少有人認為他是一個適合的國家領袖。在孿生兄弟中他也毫不起眼：兩人外表幾乎一模一樣（萊赫臉頰上有個痣；而雅羅斯瓦夫沒有），這掩蓋了他們性格上的巨大差異。萊赫是弟弟，比較害羞，而雅羅斯瓦夫則更有頭腦，更獨斷專行，是兩人2001年組建的法律與公正黨（波蘭語首字母縮寫為PiS）的操縱者。
A surprise victor in 2005, Lech Kaczynski proved an uneasy president. He looked nervous at public occasions. Foreign ambassadors in Warsaw traded horror stories about protocol snafus in his chaotic chancery. His public relations were awful, consumed by suspicion of media plots against him. But content as well as form was adrift.
2005年大選萊赫·卡欽斯基出乎意料獲勝，當選總統，局促不安的秉性隨之顯現。他在公眾場合表現緊張。一些令人驚駭的故事，在駐華沙的外國大使間交口相傳，內容涉及一些外交禮儀混亂，發生在他亂成一團糟的總統官邸。他的公共關系糟透了，媒體暗地里對他猜疑不斷，將之摧毀殆盡。
His grasp of economics was hazy, but that of foreign affairs was weaker still. Before his election Lech (like his brother) displayed scant interest in them. He spoke no foreign languages and had travelled little. His worldview was fixed: America, good, Russia and Germany, bad. Fellow-victims of communist imperialism, such as Lithuania, Ukraine and Georgia, needed help against the ex-KGB regime in Russia. Poland should always support Israel. The EU was overmighty and too secular. Most other countries did not matter at all.
他對經濟的理解讓人摸不著頭腦，對外交事務的見解卻仍顯弱智。在當選總統前，萊赫就像他哥哥一樣，顯示出對外交事務缺乏興趣。他一門外語也不會說，出訪地屈指可數。他的世界觀也頑固不化：美國，好人，俄羅斯與德國，壞人。那些同樣深受共產帝國主義其害的國家，比如立陶宛、烏克蘭與格魯吉亞，都亟需幫助來對付俄羅斯的前克格勃體系。波蘭應始終如一地支持以色列。歐盟權力過大，還俗不可耐。余下的大多數國家根本無關緊要。
Those views were popular among many Poles. But Mr Kaczynski pursued them clumsily, sometimes disastrously so. His performances at European summits were petulant and destructive. Repeated attempts by Angela Merkel, the polonophile German chancellor, to build a strong relationship with Poland were rebuffed. He told Germany to give Poland voting rights to reflect her wartime population losses. He cancelled his attendance at a trilateral French-German-Polish summit in 2006 in protest at an insulting German newspaper article. Bemusingly, he demanded a government apology.
這些觀點在許多波蘭人中頗為流行。不過卡欽斯基先生卻頑固堅守，不知變通，有時還釀成了災難性的后果。在歐盟峰會上，他表現得狂妄自大，破壞性十足。親波蘭的德國總理安吉拉·默克爾一再試圖與波蘭建立牢固關系，卻被粗暴回絕。他要德國考慮到波蘭戰時的人口損失，給予波蘭投票權。2006年，為抗議一篇德國報紙文章侮辱他，他取消出席法國——德國——波蘭三邊峰會。令人茫然不解的是，他竟要求德國政府為此道歉。
Such gaffes and inexperience made Mr Kaczynski easy to lampoon. So did his socially conservative views. As mayor he banned gay parades in Warsaw. His stance was mainstream in Catholic Poland but shocked secular European opinion. Hostile journalists at home and abroad enjoyed ridiculing him.
上述種種失態與缺乏經驗，讓卡欽斯基先生輕易成為諷刺的對象。他所持的社會保守觀點也成為眾矢之的。擔任華沙市長時，他禁止同性戀游行。在信奉天主教的波蘭，他的觀點是主流，不過此舉卻令歐洲世俗輿論嘩然。國內外抱有敵意的記者都以嘲弄奚落他為樂事。
But his critics often missed his virtues and overstated his faults. He was a patriot, but not a nationalist. He was no bigot: his daughter divorced, and then married someone active in Poland's left-wing party, the SLD, which has its roots in the former communist party. Mr Kaczynski treated his new son-in-law with impeccable kindness.
不過批評他的人常常注意不到他的美德，也夸大了他的缺點。他是個愛國者，卻非民族主義分子。他也不頑固：他的女兒離婚后，又嫁給了波蘭左翼政黨“民主左翼聯盟”某位活躍分子，該黨根源于前共產黨。卡欽斯基先生待他的新女婿和善有加，無可挑剔。
Nor was he simply right-wing in the traditional sense. If anything, his views were those of Poland's pre-war Socialist party. He was rather sceptical of big business (not least because of his concern for workers' rights). Free-marketeers found him frustratingly unsympathetic to demands for more liberalisation and less bureaucracy.
他也不完全是傳統意義上的右翼。其觀點甚至還源于波蘭戰前的社會主義政黨。他對大財團相當懷疑（由于他關注勞工權利，更是如此）。自由市場論者還發現他對擴大自由化與減少官僚主義的要求無動于衷，令人沮喪。
Honest to a fault
誠實過度
His great concern, and that of many founding members of PiS, was corruption. Scrupulously honest themselves (his brother Jaroslaw does not even have a bank account) the twins could hardly have been more different from the sleek cronies who populate large parts of the Polish political spectrum. The Kaczynskis' real failure was overzealousness: their anti-corruption crusade too often trampled over the rule of law that they wanted to uphold.
他高度關注腐敗問題，而這也是法律與公正黨眾多元老關注的重點。這對孿生兄弟謹小慎微地維系自己誠實正直的形象（哥哥雅羅斯瓦夫甚至沒有一個銀行賬戶），他們與波蘭政治圈比比皆是、八面玲瓏的密友，有著天壤之別。卡欽斯基的真正失敗在于反應過頭：他們發起的反腐敗運動經常踐踏他們企圖維護的法律規則。
Mr Kaczynski was trailing badly in the re-election race due in October. Poles like honesty. But they like competence, effectiveness and modernity, too.
在原定于10月舉行的連任競選中，卡欽斯基先生支持率嚴重落后。波蘭人喜歡誠實。不過，他們也親睞能力、效率與現代性。
