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It's amazing how a dramatic death can change a man's reputation, says Pawel Lisicki. Had the late President Lech Kaczynski fulfilled his mission to commemorate the Karyn massacre in Russia, instead of being killed en route in a plane crash along with his wife and 86 other dignitaries, the commentators would have had one or two things to say about it. For one thing, what was he doing there? A full memorial ceremony attended by Prime Minister Donald Tusk had been held only days earlier, and Kaczynski, they would have argued, was only going out of pique at having been upstaged by his political rival. Had he lived, he would now be campaigning for an election he was bound to lose, while being viewed with "contempt" for his petty xenophobia, his vocal antipathy to gays and his determination to dwell on the wrongs of the communist past. As it is, he is the subject of a national outpouring of grief, with huge crowds in the street, "weeping and lost in prayer". It is even accepted that he should be buried in Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, next to our greatest national leaders - a previously unthinkable idea for such a "grotesque" political figure. Of course, everyone has been shocked by the suddenness and scale of the tragedy, but the grief is also an expression of a guilty feeling that he was "unfairly reviled". He wasn't. The circumstances of Kaczynski's death, however terrible, should not make us forget his very human shortcomings (Obituaries, page 37).