Adam Michnik

Božidar Jezernik

Wydawnictwo Czarne

Gułag Tity

Naga wyspa

Among the voices that speak to us from Poland today, the most important may be that of Adam Michnik. Michnik now sits in a jail belonging to the totalitarian regime, yet his first concern--and herein lies one of the keys to his thinking, and one should add, to his character--is with the quality of his own conduct, which, together with teh conduct of other victims of the present situation, will, he is sure, one day set the tone for whatever political system follows the totalitarian debacle. His essays are the most valuable guide we have to the origins of the revolution, and, more particularly, to its innovative practices.

Letters From Prison and Other Essays

Renowned Eastern European author Adam Michnik was jailed for more than six years by the communist regime in Poland for his dissident activities. He was an outspoken voice for democracy in the world divided by the Iron Curtain and has remained so to the present day. In this thoughtful and provocative work, the man the Financial Times named “one of the 20 most influential journalists in the world” strips fundamentalism of its religious component and examines it purely as a secular political phenomenon. Comparing modern-day Poland with postrevolutionary France, Michnik offers a stinging critique of the ideological “virus of fundamentalism” often shared by emerging democracies: the belief that, by using techniques of intimidating public opinion, a state governed by “sinless individuals” armed with a doctrine of the only correct means of organizing human relations can build a world without sin. Michnik employs deep historical analysis and keen political observation in his insightful five-point philosophical meditation on morality in public life, ingeniously expounding on history, religion, moral thought, and the present political climate in his native country and throughout Europe.

Morality, Revolution, and Counterrevolution

The Trouble with History

Helps explain the powerful coalition between the Catholic Church and the dissident Left in the Polish revolutionary movement, and describes the unique makeup and direction of the Polish social revolution. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

The Church and the Left

Et forsøg på at analysere begrebet "ære" i moderne polsk litteratur

(wypisy więzienne)

Z dziejów honoru w Polsce

In this new collection of essays, Adam Michnik—one of Europe’s leading dissidents—traces the post-cold-war transformation of Eastern Europe. He writes again in opposition, this time to post-communist elites and European Union bureaucrats. Composed of history, memoir, and political critique, In Search of Lost Meaning shines a spotlight on the changes in Poland and the Eastern Bloc in the post-1989 years. Michnik asks what mistakes were made and what we can learn from climactic events in Poland’s past, in its literature, and the histories of Central and Eastern Europe. He calls attention to pivotal moments in which central figures like Lech Walesa and political movements like Solidarity came into being, how these movements attempted to uproot the past, and how subsequent events have ultimately challenged Poland’s enduring ethical legacy of morality and liberalism. Reflecting on the most recent efforts to grapple with Poland’s Jewish history and residual guilt, this profoundly important book throws light not only on recent events, but also on the thinking of one of their most important protagonists.

The New Eastern Europe

In Search of Lost Meaning

W poszukiwaniu utraconego sensu

Václav Havel

Poprvé se setkali v roce 1978 na tajné schůzce na vrcholcích Krkonoš jako nepřátelé komunistického režimu. Necelých dvanáct let nato se dramatik Václav Havel stal československým a později českým prezidentem a novinář Adam Michnik šéfredaktorem největšího polského deníku Gazeta Wyborcza. Počáteční setkání dvou výjimečných osobností, které spojila myšlenka účinné a nenásilné strategie, jak demontovat autoritářské režimy ve střední Evropě, vyústilo v přátelství na celý život. Během následujících dvou porevolučních desetiletí spolu nepřetržitě vedli dialog o tom, jak ve svých zemích znovu vybudovat demokracii, vypěstovat svobodnou politickou kulturu a neztratit přitom své ideály. Rozhovory, v nichž se Havel a Michnik střetávali svými názory, odlišnou životní zkušeností i vtipem, jsou pronikavým svědectvím oné podivuhodné doby, v jejíchž důsledcích dnes žijeme. V takto ucelené podobě a česky vycházejí poprvé.

Rozhovory Adama Michnika s Václavem Havlem

Podivná doba

En busca del significado perdido : la nueva europa del este

Collects the conversations between the former president of the Czech Republic and the editor in chief of the largest daily newspaper in Poland, beginning in the 1970s and continuing as they lived through a tumultuous era in Central Europe.

Conversations Between Václav Havel and Adam Michnik

An Uncanny Era

Agnieszka Marczyk

Poland's relationship with its Jewish population has long been a subject of often agonizing debate. In September 1939, there were approximately 3.3 million Jews living in Poland, the largest population in Europe. In May 1945, between 40,000 and 60,000 remained. Most of the Nazi death camps had been located on Polish soil. The intertwined issues of wartime complicity and victimhood haunt Poland to this day, complicated by the unavoidable fact that anti-Semitism in Poland existed well before the outbreak of the Second World War, and has existed long after it. The deadly Kielce Pogrom in July 1946 appalled the world, since its victims were precisely those Jews who had miraculously survived annihilation. And while with the years physical violence against Jews diminished-if only because there were not many at whom to direct it-anti-Semitism has remained no less virulent, emerging as a force in Polish politics, religious life, and in society at large. A study undertaken in 2002 determined that one in nine Poles believed the Jews collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Christ. One in four claimed that Jews were secretly plotting to rule the world. Is anti-Semitism integral to Polish identity? Nowhere has this question been more the cause of soul-searching than in Poland itself. In this volume, Adam Michnik, one of Poland's foremost writers and intellectuals, and Agnieszka Marczyk have brought together the most significant essays of the twentieth century written by prominent Poles on Polish anti-Semitism, including by such writers and intellectuals as Czeslaw Milosz, Leszek Kolakowski, Jerzy Andrzejewski, and Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Taken from a three-volume original Polish edition, 3,000 pages in length and containing 320 entries, the essays, most of which have been translated into English here for the first time by Marczyk, resonate with Michnik's central argument-that anti-Semitism is not a given of Polish culture. It has been consistently challenged and rejected. Taken together, through their collective courage and wisdom, expressed even in moments when reason seemed lost, these essays and their authors remind readers not only of the destructive and self-destructive elements of anti-Semitism, but of the necessity of combatting it in all of its forms. Even some of the darkest parts of Polish history have produced moments of illumination.

An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Writings

Against Anti-Semitism

Adam Michnik's imprisonment by Poland's military regime in the 1980s did nothing to stop his outpouring of writings. This volume of his letters finds Michnik briefly in prison, then released. Through his writing the reader can follow the changes of the last decade in Poland

Adam Michnik

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