Poland's governing national conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) announced Tuesday it has tabled legislation in parliament to rid the country of communist era symbols and ban them, according to dpa. The move would make it easier "to mark an end of the communist era and come to terms with an inglorious past", PiS parliamentary leader Marek Kuchcinski told reporters in Warsaw. The legislation would provide not only for streets, public squares and buildings to be renamed, but also for people to be stripped of medals, awards and diplomas which once bolstered communist ideology. He stressed - mindful of recent unrest in Estonia - that the legislation would not apply to Soviet-era war war graves, although statues and other emblems would go. Russia has protested against the proposed law, with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently speaking of an attempt "to rewrite history." Poland removed monuments to Lenin and Marx already shortly after the peaceful transfer of power from the communists in 1989, and PiS has made the reckoning with Poland's communist past part of its political programme. The PiS not only plans to make laws to remove references to communist heroes from street names even in remote areas, it also intends to reduce the pensions of former secret service officials and party functionaries to a minimum. In Estonia in April there was mass rioting by Russian inhabitants following the relocation of a Soviet World War II memorial and the remains of 12 soldiers buried underneath it from central Tallinn to a war cemetery. Estonians see the monument as a symbol of a 45-year occupation by the Soviet Union, but Moscow calls it a tribute to Russians' sacrifice in the victory over Nazi Germany. One Russian citizen died of knife wounds in the disturbances and dozens of people were injured in the rioting in the Estonian capital.
