Adam Michnik

Adam Michnik (1946) is a Polish journalist and writer based in Warsaw, and visiting professor at Princeton University. He is the founder and editor of the daily Gazeta Wyborcza. His publications in English include Letters from Freedom: Post-Cold War Realities and Perspectives,); Church and the Left, and Letters from Prison and Other Essays.

Let’s Not Fall For This Trick

Photo: Tomasz Wiech / Agencja Gazeta This is the main issue today. As we mark the 24th anniversary of Gazeta Wyborcza we ask the question that keeps cropping up in Polish debates.  Right from the start, our paper has aimed to serve a democratic, tolerant and European Poland. So where does this question come from? The answer seems simple. Fascism of the 1930s no longer exists because the context has changed: there is no Hitler’s Germany, Mussolini’s Italy, Stalin’s Soviet Russia, no civil war in Spain, no ONR[1] that tried to impose a numerus clausus on universities. What does fascism […]

Dear Misha

Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Photo: Sergey Ponomarev / AP   Dear Mikhail Borisovich, dear Misha, I have made several attempts to write this letter but each new version landed in the bin. It is difficult to write an open letter to someone who is under lock and key. I have asked many Russians – politicians and journalists, writers and scholars, businessmen and artists – about your trials, and they’’ve all said the same thing: these are political trials, an act of revenge against Khodorkovsky. Only one Russian gave a different answer – Putin. I have written about it in Novaya Gazeta. Putin […]

Exposing Poland to Ridicule

Is Jarosław Kaczyński an agent of Russia’’s secret services? – a distinguished British commentator asked sarcastically. It took me quite a while to explain that he’’s not an agent, merely an obstinate man fixated on his fantasies. Nowadays people talk of the “‘Smolensk lie”’, claiming the truth about the perpetrators of the disaster, in which Polish President Lech Kaczyński lost his life, has been covered up. [Prime Minister] Donald Tusk put it very well in the Sejm the other day. As for me, what I can’t get out of my head is the “‘Katyn lie”’, the Soviet regime’s cover-up of […]

22 rokov / Stĺpček

Roku 1989 komunisti prehrali voľby v Poľsku. Volebný zákon zaručil vládnemu táboru väčšinu v Sejme, a tak skutočnou skúškou spoločenskej podpory boli voľby do Senátu. Tu boli výsledky jednoznačné: 99 percent kresiel pripadlo kandidátom Solidarity. V týchto voľbách spoločnosť ukázala, že chce slobodu a zmenu systému. Komunistická moc sa nesnažila zneplatniť výsledok volieb. Tým sa rozhodlo o pokojnom charaktere demokratickej transformácie v Poľsku. Prvý raz v dejinách sa vládnuci komunisti rozhodli skoncovať s doktrínou, ktorá hlásala, „nikdy sa nevzdáme moci“. Tieto úžasné udalosti sa však nedostali na titulné stránky novín na celom svete. Poľskú senzáciu vytlačili hrôzostrašné informácie o masakre mládeže, ktorá sa už niekoľko […]

Perohryz / Stĺpček

Knihy Maria Vargasa Llosu, ako Pantaleón a jeho ženská rota – nádherný, ironický príbeh o absurdite militarizmu našich čias, alebo Mesto a psy – obraz ponurej reality peruánskeho mesta, a nakoniec román o diktatúre Trujilla a jej dramatickom konci, mi navždy utkveli v pamäti. Je to autor mnohých vynikajúcich knižiek, ktorými si dobyl srdcia čitateľov a literárnej kritiky. Mario Vargas Llosa prešiel cestu, podobnú mnohým intelektuálom zo Strednej a Východnej Európy – ako som sa mal možnosť presvedčiť v osobných rozhovoroch s ním – počínajúc škandálom, ktorý vyvolal roku 1990 v Mexiku, keď na veľkej medzinárodnej konferencii nazval systém tamojšej vlády […]

Confessions of an anti-Soviet russophile

One ought to know and talk about what goes on in Russia. That is why I went to the Valdai Club meeting and to Yaroslav, even though I was worried that my trip would end up as a photo-op with President Putin. In spite of warnings I decided to attend the September meeting of the Valdai Club and the Forum in Yaroslav.  The participants of both meetings included domestic and foreign Russia experts, journalists and politicians, as well as top Russian government officials, with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin attending the former and President Dmitry Medvedev the latter.   By participating, […]

A Great Tragedy has Befallen Poland

This is the greatest tragedy that has befallen our country since General Władysław Sikorski perished in an air crash. We share the pain of the nearest and dearest of the President and his wife, as well as of the nearest and dearest of all the victims of this appalling tragedy. Our grief must be communal, non-partisan and non-political. Our joint responsibility for Poland, too, must be non-partisan and non-political. Poland must remain stable and secure. Lech Kaczyński has left an indelible mark on Polish history. Historians will take stock of his achievements. Today is not the time for making nuanced judgements. […]

Renouncing Humanity

June 4, 1989 was an important day in the history of communism. It was the first time a communist party in power, having agreed to submit to an election contest, suffered a crushing defeat and accepted the loss. Yet it was not this event that made front-page news in the world’’s newspapers. The event that did was the Tiananmen Square massacre in the centre of Beijing, where the communist regime annihilated the Chinese students’’ movement for freedom. That is why June 4 now stands for two ways communist dictatorships responded to a major crisis, choosing the path of democracy or […]

What was the nationality of the stuffed teddy bear?

Le Monde is one of the world’’s most important dailies and that is why its review of Andrzej Wajda’’s film Katyń has astonished me and prompted the following thoughts. The French critic writes that Wajda places the burden of responsibility for the pillage and destruction of Poland and the Poles equally on the Nazis and the Soviets. For the French critic historical facts of the period from September 1939 to July 1941 are lies and an abuse of history. What shocking ignorance! The territory of the Polish state was divided between two totalitarian powers which, at the time, were allies. […]

Akej národnosti je plyšový medvedík? / Polemika

Le Monde je jedným z najvýznamnejších denníkov na svete a preto ma recenzia filmu Andrzeja Wajdu Katyń (aj tu), ktorá vyšla na jeho stránkach ohúrila a viedla k  nasledujúcim úvahám. Francúzsky kritik píše, že Wajda kladie rovnakú mieru zodpovednosti za olúpenie a zničenie Poľska a Poliakov na nacistov ako na Sovietov. Francúzsky kritik pokladá historické fakty obdobia od septembra 1939 do júla 1941 za klamstvo a zneužitie dejín. Toto ignorantstvo je šokujúce! Územie poľského štátu olúpili dve totalitné veľmoci, ktoré boli v tom čase spojencami. V oboch častiach okupovaného Poľska vládol teror na porovnateľnej úrovni; obaja okupanti Poliakov väznili a […]