International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest

Extract

Activist Adam Michnik , veteran of 1968, later reflected to a fellow-radical, Daniel Cohn-Bendit , that “the late sixties were interesting because a few friends and I managed to function as a legal opposition group within a system that didn't admit the existence of a legal opposition. It's thanks to the University [of Warsaw] that we were able to exist.” Students debated and argued at the Club of Seekers after Contradictions and sang songs of the Russian “dissidents” Galich and Okudzava. Sometimes they sallied forth to ask difficult and embarrassing questions at meetings of their elders: about the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact or the fate of Polish soldiers at Katyn. As the Prague Spring emerged, they chanted: “Poland demands its own Dubĉek.” Imprisoned activists Jacek Kuroń and Karol Modzelewski were role models for these youthful rebels and many actions were attempted in their defense. Michnik sent copies of Kuroń and Modzelewski's 1964 “Open Letter to the Party” to Paris, where it was widely circulated by students occupying Paris universities in May 1968 . Soon after the authors' release from prison, a new issue presented itself in which the twin themes of national independence and cultural freedom were neatly entwined. Mickiewicz's classical drama Dziady (Forefathers ) was staged at the National Theater to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Russian Revolution . It is not ... log in or subscribe to read full text