A Talk with Adam Michnik

...Together with hundreds of prominent Polish opposition activists, Michnik was interned at the Bialoleka Prison Camp after the imposition of martial law on December 13,1981...

...What are Solidarity's chances of winning this partially free ballot...

...Until Gorbachev took over it was widely thought that the Polish crisis was due to our country's specific conditions...

...I personally hope that evolution is possible...

...The Warsaw list was prepared by people close to Walesa, who has the support of the Pope, and a candidate for the Senate is the president of the Catholic Primate's Social Council, Professor [Wladyslaw] Findeisen...

...Both support the Solidarity platform and its candidates, and I know that Bujak will campaign with me and with others...

...surrealism...

...I prefer to see our situation as evolving in a way similar to what happened in Spain...

...Underground publications in Poland were for the last seven and a half years the living symbol of the opposition's survival...

...Husarska: What about the other union or political opposition publications...

...Michnik has edited or co-edited various underground publications, such as KOR'S Biuletyn Informacyjny, the sociopolitical quarterly Krytyka, and the literary review Zapis...

...But I think those of us who are well-known, whose names might attract many votes, should run in order to strengthen the Solidarity ticket...

...It was conscious of the fact that the sooner the elections were held the worse for us, given that we have no experience, no electoral structures...

...In the wake of the June 1976 pricehike strikes in Radom and Ursus, Michnik joined in founding the Workers' Defense Committee (KOR), a financialand legal aid group, and helped to launch the Flying University, a clandestine educational operation...

...The only thing I can say is that this system lost whatever power it had to develop, it stopped being attractive to anyone except the narrow class of nomenklatura that seeks to preserve its own privileges...

...Husarska: The dates for the elections are very close [June 4, with runoffs on June 18...

...And yet it turned out to be possible...

...Michnik: I wouldn't attach too much importance to that...

...Certainly it is where he has written countless articles and the bulk of his five books—including his path-breaking The Church, The Left, A Dialogue, smuggled out to Paris and published there in 1977...

...For instance, I've seen graffiti in the streets of Warsaw saying, 'Don't vote for Jews' or 'Don't vote for Jews-Communists' [zydokomuna...

...We must try to prevent them, but again this is the price of democracy...

...Husarska: There are indications of what I interpret as a dangerous comeback of anti-Semitism in Poland...

...We have to play fair and then watch that the other side does not falsify the results...

...We have to do everything we can to take advantage of this opening...

...Glasnost and perestroïka are crucial here because they deal with Stalinism, and now the authorities readily admit that what is going on in Poland is part of the general upheaval of the Stalinist system...

...We have an agreement allowing us to print 500,000 copies, and we will fight for more...

...Let us call it the Spanish way to democracy in Communist countries...

...Michnik's role in the March 1968 student demonstrations at Warsaw University then made him the favorite target of the ensuing vicious anti-Semitic campaign in the Polish press...

...Husarska: In June there will be elections to the restructured Polish Parliament—consisting of the Sejm, or Lower House, andarestored Senate, or Upper House...

...Husarska: You follow the Soviet press regularly and are known to be one of the keenest observers of the changes going on in the Soviet Union...

...But for my generation it is the first opportunity to elect people we really want to representative bodies—at least formally representative...

...Thefollowing September he was accused of attempting to overthrow the Polish regime and sentenced to two and a half years in jail...

...In all, he has spent better than six of the last 20 years in jail, not counting over 100 detentions...

...It was soon banned, and so angered then Party chief Wladyslaw Gomulka that he personally denounced the teenager as an enemy of Socialism...

...What is happening now in the USSR has also determined our situation, for the Soviet reforms have an international dimension...

...It is not apropos in the sense that Stalin is no more and the Soviet Union is changing both internally and in its foreign policy...

...When Solidarity emerged in 1980, he began to serve as the independent trade union's main adviser...

...The same is true of the latest developments in Hungary, by the way, although the difference is that Solidarity started under Brezhnev...

...Adam Michnik is married and the father of a two-year-old son, Antoni...

...Spain had gone through a bloody civil war, so bloody that it seemed impossible the two sides would ever sit down and talk to each other...

...This might split the vote of the opposition and lead to its defeat by people who —although not members of the party— agree to run as its 'covert candidates.' What is the position of Solidarity on this problem...

...Finlandization was an art of sovereign coexistence, of the Finns with Stalin...

...Husarska: Some time ago, Timothy Garton Ash of the London Spectator compared the present changes in the Soviet bloc with the fall of the Ottoman Empire and came up with the word 'ottomanization,' meaning something like 'emancipation amid decay.' Do you agree with his analogy...

...Michnik: We have to take the risk...

...There are examples in other countries...

...Today it is banal...

...As for the covert candidates, we have to present a program to the voters that is more attractive than theirs— which won't be difficult...

...Michnik: Of course, it is difficult to predict the outcome...

...Husarska: Why have Zbigniew Bujak [a legendary Solidarity leader from the Warsaw region who managed to stay underground for three and a half years after the imposition of martial law] and Wladyslaw Frasyniuk [an equally famous Solidarity leader from Wroclaw] refused to run...

...Husarska: Don't you expect that the regime will now try every possible trick to prevent Solidarity from using the rights it acquired at the round table...

...Michnik: If someone says not to vote for Jews-Communists, it is obvious he does not mean Jews but something else...

...But Finlandization happened in a particular situation: On the one hand there was an aggressive, totalitarian empire, on the other a small country...

...Let us wait for the censorship law to be liberalized...

...But Spain was a dictatorship that somehow reformeditselfwithoutrevolution.The awareness of the need for changes appeared on both sides, and this is themain thing that interests us here...

...What is their relation with the new developments in Poland...

...What we face here at the moment is a choice between a revolution with the price in bloodshed or a peaceful evolution...

...Is there time to prepare the campaign...

...I even heard it mentioned recently by a government official...

...Michnik: Well, that is the price of democracy...

...At the same meeting Bronislaw Geremek [a historian who specializes in the Middle Ages and is one of Walesa's closest advisers] finally agreed to run...

...That is a job for a prophet or a swindler...

...Husarska: Granted, but the end of the Franco era brought a change from Right-wing dictatorship to democracy, while here...

...Michnik: Yes, together with Ernest Skalski and Helena Luczywo [editor of Tygodnik Mazowsze] and a dozen other journalists we will put out this paper whose name is Gazeta Wyborcza...

...Husarska: The 35:65 arrangement in the Sejm is valid only for the coming elections...

...Michnik: Of course I expect it, but we have to see the wood behind the individual trees...

...Husarska: But Spain did not have a powerful, aggressive and totalitarian neighbor, it was not part of any empire...

...That metaphor is somewhat confusing and old-fashioned, isn't it...

...Husarska: You don't mean 'Finlandization...

...Michnik: The relation is very direct...

...While thus earning his MA in history he was hired as aprivate secretary by one of Poland's foremost contemporary poets, the late A ntoni Slonimski (who used to call him "my First Secretary, " since he never had a secretary before...

...Husarska: At the Citizens' Committee meeting one delegate raised the point that several Solidarity candidates are at the same time members of Catholic groups of some sort, and that once in Parliament they might create their separate club...

...By entering the negotiations the government accepted that Solidarity's presence on the public scene is a necessary stage in the political development of our country, and this acceptance should not be underestimated...

...Michnik: Anna, don't you sometimes get confused where is the Left and where is the Right...

...You just came from a hectic meeting of Solidarity's National Citizens' Committee, where the 261 candidates were designated and an election platform was approved...

...Why trust them this time...

...If such a list can be called Jews-Communists, then this is Gombrowicz [i.e...

...AFTER THE ROUND TABLE-II ATalk with Adam Michnik By Nana Husarska Warsaw "AMONG the voices that speak to us from Poland today, the most important may be that of Adam Michnik," writes Jonathan Schell in the Introduction to Letters from Prison and Other Essays, the only book by the brilliant Polish historian, political theorist and nonviolent activist to appear thus far in the United States (University of California Press, 1986...

...They feel there is a greater need for them now in the union than in the Parliament...

...Will subsequent elections be really democratic...

...Healsofrequently contributes to the Paris-based Polish quarterly Zeszyty Literackie...

...Other organizations, political parties and groupings, such as the Right-wing Confederation for Independent Poland and the pacifistoriented Freedom and Peace movement, want to present their own candidates...

...Husarska: Opposition in Poland is now much more diversified than it was a few years ago and certainly not limited to Solidarity...

...Michnik: No, thereisnot enough time and the government knew this when it set the dates and would not budge on them at the round table...

...Although these elections will not make it democratic, they offer a chance for the society to control the governing of the country through its independent representatives...

...Michnik: I want to believe that they will...

...At the round-table negotiations, in which you participated, the government agreed to submit 161 oftheSejm's 460 seats [35 per cent] and all 100 Senate seats to free competition...

...While still in high school he created an informal discussion club called "Seekers of Contradictions...

...Almost the entire editorial board of the main union underground weekly, Tygodnik Mazowsze, is moving to the new official union daily...

...When I first suggested it [in an essay entitled 'The New Evolutionism,' written 12 years ago], it was shocking...

...Husarska: But in the past, more often than not, the authorities have broken the agreements they signed with the opposition—for example, those at the Gdansk shipyard in 1980 [creating Solidarity, which was then outlawed 16 months later...

...Now this system can either reform itself to the point of becoming something else or it will have to step down and make room for another system...

...No, I don't think the Finlandization metaphor suits today's conditions...

...For over 40 years the government in Poland was undemocratic and uncontrolled...

...Expelledfrom school and condemned to three years in prison, he was released a year and a half later under a general amnesty but required to take a job as a welder in a lightbulb factory...

...Lech Walesa left the matter up to the individual union leaders, while suggesting that it would be desirable for them to participate...

...Husarska: You yourself will be a candidate for the Sejm from the Katowice district (in Silesia...

...Anna Husarska, a frequent contributor to The New Leader, is a Polishborn free-lance translator and journalist...

...In a recent issue of the weekly Przeglad Tygodniowy there was an interview with the Hungarian Politburo member Imre Pozsgay, who uses the very same analogy with Spain...

...Friends quip that Adas does his most "creative work" during his incarcerations...

...Does this represent a danger in your view...

...Michnik: They explained their decision at the Citizens' Committee meeting, and we have to respect it...

...Michnik: I do not feel that I am fit to be a Parliament member...

...They have established important new values, and we should avoid doing anything that could be interpreted as the liquidation of these values...

...He has been named editor-in-chief...

...He himself has wryly observed how prison inspires a writing discipline that is difficult to maintain outside amid the tumult of meetings, greeting visitors and answering the telephone...

...Husarska: I do, touch...

...But we have to do the impossible...

...Husarska: The legalization of Solidarity has in a way undercut the raison d'être of the clandestine publishing industry...

...Our talk began late one night after a human rights gathering at a hotel here...

...Idonotwantto speculate on ho w Stalinist Communism will crumble...

...Should they now come above ground...

...His disarming honesty, his providing the framework for uniting liberal intellectuals, Catholics and workers in opposition to the tyranny of the Communist regime, and his uncommon ability as a writer to "combine gravity of purpose and lightness of style" have indeed been critical to shaping the stormy events of the last decade that have produced this hot Polish Spring...

...Michnik: It is still used...

...In 1973 he was granted permission to complete his studies on condition that he enter the extension program for workers at the University of Poznan...

...He was arrested again in 1985, along with the Solidarity leaders Wladyslaw Frasyniuk and Bogdan Lis, and received another three-year prison term that was cut short by an amnesty...

...It was concluded a few days later, on a bench outside the Institute of Psychology, where plans were being made for Solidarity's new above-ground daily, Gazeta Wyborcza (Election Gazette...

...For me what matters is that it was a dictatorship, that the Spaniards fought for the human rights the dictatorship denied them...

...If you want to call it anti-Semitism, then it is an antiSemitism so special that it does not refer to Jews...

...One thing is obvious: This system is doomed...

...Born in 1946 in Warsaw, Adas, as his close associates refer to him, very early revealed himself a maverick...

...Michnik: In my opinion not all should abandon the clandestine network...

...We cannot forbid other opposition groups from putting up their candidates, but we will not withdraw ours either...

...Michnik: We need a united team, so it would be a pity if such divisions were to appear...

...Michnik: True, you are right, I have to admit that there is a difference...

...The round-table talks were obtained without the threat of strikes...

...Michnik: Garton Ash is the most outstanding observer of the political scene in Eastern Europe and his formula is very brilliant, but the analogy is not a direct one...

...I believe that in Poland it will also turn out to be possible...