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The Labyrinth of Polish Opposition
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12920 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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5 / 1987 |
2,087 Words |
| Author
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Janusz Bugajski
Janusz Bugajski is a research associate at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. He is
coauthoring a forthcoming book, East European Fault Lines:
Dissent, Opposition, and Social Activism. |
LETTERS FROM PRISON AND OTHER ESSAYS
Adam Michnik
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987
350 pp., $25.00
Poland boasts a long tradition of political prison literature, stretching back to the nineteenth-century partitions. Opposition activist Adam Michnik made several contributions recently to this genre in the form of observations, analyses, and reflective essays. A selection of his work has now appeared in English, splendidly translated by Maya Latynski.
Michnik, a thirty-nine-year-old historian released from prison in August 1986 for the second time since martial law, is a prominent political strategist and activist whose ideas have evolved significantly since his turbulent student days in the late 1960s. Initially influenced by party rebels Jacek Kuron, Karol Koczelewski, and the rhetoric of revolution, and imbued with socialist egalitarian ideals, Michnik and his peers adapted themselves adroitly to the logjam of Polish communism in the 1970s. The crushing of workers' protests in 1970 and 1976 made it crystal clear that the regime would not countenance genuine proletarian power or the sudden devolution of the party's "leading role." Michnik, Kuron, and others consequently developed a gradualist approach to loosen the communist stranglehold and established the Workers Defense Committee (KOR) to forge closer contacts between intellectuals and workers. This evolved into a more general campaign for "social self-defense." A revolution by osmosis was proposed, whereby the public would defend basic interests, negotiate compromises, and gradually reclaim various spheres of civil life appropriated by the state. As Michnik's essays testify, KOR scored some limited successes in the late 1970s but proved unable to affect the masses or persuade the government to grant any concessions.
Nationwide workers' strikes in the summer of 1980, which took the opposition by surprise almost as much as the regime, provided many dissidents with a viable platform to test their theories and push for lasting reforms. Though KOR and the other pressure groups contributed to shaping union objectives, Solidarity gained a momentum of its own, fueled by years of repression and growing dissatisfaction with official mismanagement. A major role of the political opposition became the avoidance of violent confrontation between state and society. As Michnik continues to underline in his essays, when warning party
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