Jaroslaw Kaczynski

Jaroslaw Kaczynski has been the dominant figure in Polish politics for two decades while holding formal office for only part of it, and his twin brother was killed in the plane crash that has shaped his politics since. The brothers were child film actors, both took doctorates in law, and both worked for Solidarity in the 1980s; they founded Law and Justice in 2001. The party won in 2005 with Lech as president and Jaroslaw as prime minister from 2006, the only period in which the two offices were held by identical twins. He lost power in 2007 and did not take a ministry again until 2020, governing instead as party leader from the back benches while others held the premiership, an arrangement everyone in Poland understood and no constitution described. In April 2010 Lech and ninety-five others died when their aircraft crashed at Smolensk on the way to a commemoration of the Katyn massacre; the Polish and Russian investigations both found pilot error in fog, and Jaroslaw has pressed the case for an attack ever since, exhuming bodies and commissioning further inquiries that found nothing. Law and Justice returned to power in 2015 and governed for eight years, expanding child benefit and the pension system while restructuring the courts and public media in ways that brought sustained conflict with the European Commission over judicial independence and cost Poland access to recovery funds. Abortion was restricted almost to a total ban by the Constitutional Tribunal in 2020, producing the largest protests since 1989. He lost the 2023 election to a coalition under Donald Tusk. He has never married and lives with cats in a modest house in Warsaw. The brothers appeared together in a 1962 film adaptation of a childrens book about two boys who steal the moon. Their mother lived to see Lech elected president and died in 2013.

• Lived: 1949 CE – ?
• Nationality: Polish
• Roles: politician