逝者;莱赫·卡钦斯基

　　Lech Kaczynski, president of Poland, died in an air crash on April 10th, aged 60

　　波兰总统莱赫·卡钦斯基4月10日坠机身亡，享年60岁

　　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.”

　　莱赫·卡钦斯基私下里充满魅力，大庭广众却举止笨拙，严谨正直，有点儿跟时代脱节，在他身上，体现了他所出身的政治环境的种种优缺点。这种性格成型的日子，要追溯到波兰萧瑟黯淡、长达数十年的共产主义时代，先是在华沙，继而在格但斯克省。卡钦斯基与孪生兄弟雅罗斯瓦夫，无比崇拜他们的父亲，一位波兰本土军老兵。这支军队曾与德国占领者进行地下斗争，结果却横遭苏联“解放者”迫害。以往在每晚临睡时，两个男孩常常哼唱波兰国歌：“我们一息尚存，波兰就绝不会灭亡。”

　　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岁时，这对孪生兄弟主演了一部广受欢迎的波兰奇幻电影《偷月二人行》，然而在现实生活中，两人勤奋刻苦，与他们扮演的小痞子迥然不同。两人后来都成为了法学家，莱赫专攻劳动法。后来证明，团结工联时代，卡钦斯基为反对派工会领导人与共产主义老板阶层谈判出谋划策之时，他所学的法律专业派上了大用场。1981年12月戒严法实施后，莱赫被拘禁了10个月。

　　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，他协助谈判共产主义政权移交事宜，并在随后的选举胜利中分得了一杯羹。不久之后，他出任安全部长，面对共产主义幽灵之前在公众生活中留下的持续影响，渐渐产生厌恶，经久不退。在同故友、团结工会领导人出身的总统莱赫·瓦文萨闹翻后，卡钦斯基辞职，他后来指责瓦文萨与共产党的秘密警察合作。出任司法部长时，他严厉打击犯罪，随后成为华沙市长。他为该市留下了一座博物馆，以缅怀1944年的起义，当时的占领者德国军队残酷镇压了这次起义，而苏联军队却在一旁袖手旁观。他的双亲都参与了此次战斗。

　　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.

　　不过很少有人认为他是一个适合的国家领袖。在孪生兄弟中他也毫不起眼：两人外表几乎一模一样（莱赫脸颊上有个痣；而雅罗斯瓦夫没有），这掩盖了他们性格上的巨大差异。莱赫是弟弟，比较害羞，而雅罗斯瓦夫则更有头脑，更独断专行，是两人2001年组建的法律与公正党（波兰语首字母缩写为PiS）的操纵者。

　　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年大选莱赫·卡钦斯基出乎意料获胜，当选总统，局促不安的秉性随之显现。他在公众场合表现紧张。一些令人惊骇的故事，在驻华沙的外国大使间交口相传，内容涉及一些外交礼仪混乱，发生在他乱成一团糟的总统官邸。他的公共关系糟透了，媒体暗地里对他猜疑不断，将之摧毁殆尽。

　　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.

　　他对经济的理解让人摸不着头脑，对外交事务的见解却仍显弱智。在当选总统前，莱赫就像他哥哥一样，显示出对外交事务缺乏兴趣。他一门外语也不会说，出访地屈指可数。他的世界观也顽固不化：美国，好人，俄罗斯与德国，坏人。那些同样深受共产帝国主义其害的国家，比如立陶宛、乌克兰与格鲁吉亚，都亟需帮助来对付俄罗斯的前克格勃体系。波兰应始终如一地支持以色列。欧盟权力过大，还俗不可耐。余下的大多数国家根本无关紧要。

　　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.

　　这些观点在许多波兰人中颇为流行。不过卡钦斯基先生却顽固坚守，不知变通，有时还酿成了灾难性的后果。在欧盟峰会上，他表现得狂妄自大，破坏性十足。亲波兰的德国总理安吉拉·默克尔一再试图与波兰建立牢固关系，却被粗暴回绝。他要德国考虑到波兰战时的人口损失，给予波兰投票权。2006年，为抗议一篇德国报纸文章侮辱他，他取消出席法国——德国——波兰三边峰会。令人茫然不解的是，他竟要求德国政府为此道歉。

　　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.

　　上述种种失态与缺乏经验，让卡钦斯基先生轻易成为讽刺的对象。他所持的社会保守观点也成为众矢之的。担任华沙市长时，他禁止同性恋游行。在信奉天主教的波兰，他的观点是主流，不过此举却令欧洲世俗舆论哗然。国内外抱有敌意的记者都以嘲弄奚落他为乐事。

　　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.

　　不过批评他的人常常注意不到他的美德，也夸大了他的缺点。他是个爱国者，却非民族主义分子。他也不顽固：他的女儿离婚后，又嫁给了波兰左翼政党“民主左翼联盟”某位活跃分子，该党根源于前共产党。卡钦斯基先生待他的新女婿和善有加，无可挑剔。

　　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.

　　他也不完全是传统意义上的右翼。其观点甚至还源于波兰战前的社会主义政党。他对大财团相当怀疑（由于他关注劳工权利，更是如此）。自由市场论者还发现他对扩大自由化与减少官僚主义的要求无动于衷，令人沮丧。

　　Honest to a fault

　　诚实过度

　　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.

　　他高度关注腐败问题，而这也是法律与公正党众多元老关注的重点。这对孪生兄弟谨小慎微地维系自己诚实正直的形象（哥哥雅罗斯瓦夫甚至没有一个银行账户），他们与波兰政治圈比比皆是、八面玲珑的密友，有着天壤之别。卡钦斯基的真正失败在于反应过头：他们发起的反腐败运动经常践踏他们企图维护的法律规则。

　　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月举行的连任竞选中，卡钦斯基先生支持率严重落后。波兰人喜欢诚实。不过，他们也亲睐能力、效率与现代性。