Adam Michnik - A Life in Opposition

What is it about?

Adam Michnik has been called ’courageous and uncompromising’, ’the real heir to Polish Social democracy’, ’a formidable. courageous and prolific revolutionary spirit’. Timothy Garton Ash has praised his irony ’modulated by a fine sense of moral responsibility and a keen political intelligence’. Czeslaw Milosz, who counts Michnik as a friend, has spoken of his talent as a ’combination of energy in motion, of moral purity and high intellectual qualities, a combination against the nature of public committments’. Norman Davies, on the other hand, has described Michnik as holding ’eccentric left-wing or Marxist opinions’. Radio Free Europe’s Zdzislaw Najder has accused Michnik of monopolizing virtue by claiming democracy, decency, morality, openness, tolerance and personal liberties for the left, while attempting to remove communism from the history of the left. Jozef Mackiewicz dismissed Michnik, Jacek Kuroni and Leszek Kolakowski as ’Soviets, only even more dangerous, because they appeal to democratic ideals’.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

This article traces the life of Adam Michnik - probably the key figure in Polish opposition to communism and one of the architects of Poland's democracy. For Michnik and the rest of the tiny, fragmented and politically powerless lay-left the problems in post-communist Poland, as in communist Poland, are to find an identity which is socially acceptable, a commonly accepted political language, a political space in which to operate and allies with whom to work.

Perspectives