KEY POINTS:
It is more than 17 years since the communist regimes of eastern and central Europe disappeared one by one into the history books, but their totalitarian rule left a paper legacy that remains toxic to this day.
Stanislaw Wielgus is the latest figure to be trapped by the
poisonous past. Installed as Archbishop of Warsaw, Wielgus lasted only two days in the job before quitting on Sunday just ahead of his investiture. He was beset by press publication of secret documents showing he had agreed to collaborate with Poland's dreaded former secret police, the Sluzba Bespieczenstwa.
From the former border between East and West Germany to the Russian frontier, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, the Soviet Union's former satellites are wrestling with what to do with the mountains of files generated by the army of spies and snoopers who underpinned communist rule.
Their dilemma is this: should one allow open access to these files, to let light to be shed on the past, even at the cost of score-settling with colleagues, neighbours, even relatives who were informers? Or should one forgive and forget, and turn the page?
Germany leads the "open access" route. After unification, Germany passed a law in 1991 that protected the files of the Staatssicherheitsdienst (Stasi) secret police from destruction and allowed any citizen to inspect his or her personal Stasi files. More than 2 million people have already done so.
In November, the German Parliament passed a law ordering a five-year extension in checks on high-level officials to see if they worked for the Stasi.
In Germany's wake came the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which published the names of collaborators in 2003 and 2004, and Hungary, which allowed individuals access to their own files from 2003.
Other countries, though, are only now opening up secret police files and airing the past of those in senior public positions or requiring such people to show their background is clean.
It was only in 2005 that all of the archives of Romania's notorious Securitate were opened to the public, although the dossiers of the country's controversial post-revolution president, Ilon Iliescu, have mysteriously disappeared. It took Bulgaria until last month to follow suit with files compiled by its Darzhavna Sigurnot.
It was just in November that Poland passed a law, due to take effect next month, to open up secret files on diplomats, Government ministers and politicians that previously were accessible only to journalists and politicians.
In Albania and Russia there has never been a law to give public access to police files.
This foot-dragging results from the way that the revolutions unfolded in these countries. Swelling protests progressively forced the communist regimes from power. Profiting from the chaos and the delay, many bigwigs were able to destroy incriminating files before reinventing themselves in the post-revolution economy or politics.
Afterwards, in countries reeling from the collapse of their economies and basking in the success of regime change, there was little traction for demands for a purge.
As a result, secret files in these countries have until now been left to moulder in storerooms or allowed to dribble out uncontrolled. In turn, this has fuelled mistrust and accusations that the papers are being leaked for political vengeance or personal gain.
"Germany was the exception," says Guenter Bormann, in charge of the legal affairs office at the Department for Stasi Affairs, which is handling the Stasi archives.
"It was the only Eastern Bloc country that, as soon as the [Berlin] Wall came down, was able to close down all the police, all the intelligence services, because it was West Germany that took things over."
At the time of the regime's collapse, the Stasi had 91,000 employees and 300,000 informants - about one in every 50 East Germans.
The Stasi files comprise around two billion documents, providing a grim reading about life in which anyone suspected of "decadence" or dissent was filmed or photographed, and had his or her mail and phone conversations intercepted. Friends and family would be bullied into snooping, and a promising career or university education would be denied to those who refused.
Eastern German dissident Vera Wollenberger discovered that, for 10 years, her husband had given the Stasi the tiniest details about their married life.
These details sound so distant, even bizarre, for many young eastern Germans today that the country is to launch a "Stasi course" at school.
In a pilot project to be launched in the state of Saxony next year, children aged 12-15 will meet victims of the Stasi and see edited versions of secret police reports - the goal being to let them gain insights into the lives of their parents and grandparents so they can better appreciate democracy.
