Adam Michnik

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Adam Michnik (2018)

Adam Michnik [ˈadam ˈmixɲik] (born October 17, 1946 in Warsaw ) is a Polish essayist and political publicist . He is editor-in-chief of the country's largest liberal daily, Gazeta Wyborcza, and a former anti-communist dissident .

Life

People's Republic of Poland

Adam Michnik was born in Warsaw in 1946 as the son of Ozjasz Szechter and Helena Michnik. He grew up in a Jewish family . Both parents were active in the (politically insignificant) Polish communist movement before the Second World War : the father was a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine , at that time part of the Communist Party of Poland (CPP); the mother was a functionary of a communist youth organization.

Michnik himself showed social commitment very early on. In elementary school (then up to eighth grade) he was a member of the communist scout group Hufiec Walterowski ("General Walter Tribe"), which had been founded in 1957 by Jacek Kuroń , with whom he later worked in the anti-communist opposition. After a theater group associated with the Hufiec Walterowski had performed critical plays, the group was dissolved in 1961. Michnik then founded a private discussion group with other former members in which young people met who were disappointed by the reality in communist Poland.

In 1964 Michnik began studying history at the University of Warsaw . A year later he was expelled from the university for the first time after he had distributed an open letter from Jacek Kuroń and Karol Modzelewski calling for reforms of the political system in Poland. He received another reprimand in 1966 because he had organized a discussion event with the philosopher Leszek Kołakowski , who had recently been expelled from the ruling Polish United Workers' Party for criticizing the leadership .

In 1968 he was finally expelled from the University of Warsaw for good because he had been actively involved in the so-called " March events ". These were nationwide student protests that escalated into a political crisis, in the course of which numerous critical intellectuals (e.g. Zygmunt Bauman ) of Jewish origin had to leave the country in a climate of anti-Semitism . Immediately after his expulsion from university, he was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison for hooliganism .

As early as 1969 he was released early due to an amnesty , but was forbidden to continue studying at a university. This ban was only lifted in the mid-1970s, so that he was able to complete his degree in history by distance learning at the University of Poznan .

After his release from prison he worked as a welder for two years before he became the personal secretary of the opposition writer Antoni Słonimski († 1976) through the mediation of Jacek Kuroń .

After the strikes in Radom in 1976, he was again, together with Kuroń, one of the co-founders and most active members of the “ Committee for the Defense of Workers ” ( Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR ), an opposition group mainly supported by intellectuals. In addition, in 1978 he was one of the founders of the Society for Scientific Courses ( Towarzystwo Kursów Naukowych ) of the so-called Flying University .

From 1977 to 1989 he was also the editor of independent underground magazines (e.g. Krytyka ) and in the management of the largest underground publisher NOWA . From 1980 he supported the independent trade union Solidarność as a consultant . When martial law was declared in December 1981 , he was interned like numerous other well-known opposition figures. He was offered to release him if he went into exile , which he refused and justified in an open letter to General Czesław Kiszczak that had become known . He was then charged with "attempting to overthrow the socialist system" and remained until 1984 in detention because the prosecutor protracted trial. While in custody, he went on a hunger strike for several weeks to get his trial completed. In 1984 he was given an amnesty, but in 1985 he was arrested again and this time sentenced to three years in prison for participating in strike preparations in the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk , where Lech Wałęsa was active. In 1986 he was pardoned again.

Turning point and post-turning point

Adam Michnik 1991

In 1988 Michnik became a member of the semi-legal coordinating committee Wałęsas. He was actively involved in the preparations and actual negotiations of the round table (February to April 1989), during which he again met General Czesław Kiszczak, this time as a negotiating partner. The gradual participation of the opposition and the organization of partially democratic elections on June 4, 1989 were negotiated at the round table .

After the negotiations were over, Solidarność leader Lech Wałęsa commissioned Michnik to publish a nationwide election newspaper Solidarity ( Gazeta Wyborcza Solidarność ) for the election campaign of his “citizens' committee” ( Komitet Obywatelski ) . Although initially planned as a pure election campaign newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza continued to appear and today, under Michnik, it is the country's daily newspaper with the highest circulation.

Michnik himself was elected to the Sejm for the "Citizens' Committee" after the opposition won the elections and, as a member and editor of Gazeta Wyborcza , supported Tadeusz Mazowiecki as head of government and presidential candidate in 1990 . After this was defeated by Wałęsa and the "Citizens' Committee" disintegrated, Michnik withdrew from politics and no longer ran in the Sejm elections in 1991.

Instead, he concentrated on his work as a publicist and editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza , which under his leadership became the most widely read and opinion-forming daily in Poland. Agora SA , the publishing company of Gazeta Wyborcza , founded specifically for this purpose , is now one of the leading media groups in Poland. Michnik attaches great importance to neither personally owning shares in Agora nor being part of its management.

As editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza , Michnik represents an economically and socially (left-) liberal course. At the beginning of the 1990s he supported the market economy “shock therapy” of Leszek Balcerowicz and later the Polish accession to NATO and the EU . Of all political parties, Michnik was closest to the Freedom Union ( Unia Wolności ).

In addition, he advocates the policy of the “thick line” ( gruba kreska ) proposed by Tadeusz Mazowiecki at the round table . Accordingly, a dispute with the politically (not criminally) responsible of the communist regime is dispensed with in favor of social peace. With this in mind, he publicly reconciled with General Czesław Kiszczak, who was previously responsible for his imprisonment, in an interview signed “ Bury the hatchet ” ( Pożegnanie z bronią ) in 2001 .

Criticism from former companions

The previously very closed Polish opposition split into several wings after 1989: u. a. a left-liberal, intellectual pro-western, for whom Michnik, Tadeusz Mazowiecki or Bronisław Geremek were symbolic figures, and on the other hand a more conservative and populist, whose extreme representatives represented clerical, nationalist and tended anti-Semitic positions. For the latter, Michnik, as an atheist and representative of western-style left-wing liberalism, is an enemy. He is often criticized for his parents' Jewish origins and communist sentiments.

Wałęsa took a middle position and therefore fell out with Michnik: The Solidarność chairman and later president supported far-reaching reforms to democracy and market economy . But he warned against pushing ahead with a hasty adaptation to the West in the field of ideology, as Michnik propagated. The majority of the population think conservatively and are deeply rooted in the traditions of the Catholic Church. Wałęsa accused Michnik of overwhelming society with his radical democratic postulates and thus dividing it.

Even former liberal companions resent Michnik's “conciliatory” attitude towards the representatives of the former communist regime. He is also sometimes accused of being too uncritical of the person and politics of the then President Aleksander Kwaśniewski . According to the critics, the Gazeta Wyborcza campaign against lustration led by Michnik , the systematic reappraisal of the communist regime, was counterproductive; it paved the way for the Law and Justice party led by Jarosław Kaczyński to win the 2005 election .

Unresolved role in the Rywin affair

Michnik fell into the twilight in connection with the so-called Rywin affair . The film producer Lew Rywin ( inter alia The Pianist , Schindler's List , Hitler Youth Salomon ) allegedly visited Michnik in 2002 on behalf of a "group in power". This, according to Rywin, would ensure that the Gazeta Wyborcza publisher could acquire a majority stake in the Polsat television station in return for a bribe of 17 million dollars . This would not have been possible under current antitrust law . After six months of hesitation, Michnik published a recording of the conversation and thus triggered a scandal that has not yet been finally cleared up. Michnik was accused of having made the process public too late and, moreover, of giving unclear information to the subsequent committee of inquiry.

Political positions and assessments

On December 11, 1983 Michnik wrote in a letter to General Kiszczak:

“In every person's life, General, there comes a difficult moment at some point in which the simple statement 'this is black and that is white' has to be paid dearly. The price can be life, paid on the hill of the citadel, behind the wires of Sachsenhausen , behind the bars of Mokotów . At such a moment, Mr. General, the greatest worry of an honest person is not knowing what price he will have to pay, but knowing whether white is still white and black is still black. "

In 2001 he wrote about his reconciliation with his previous pursuers:

“Today I try to understand the motives of the people who made decisions back then. And, besides base motives, like defending the privileges of the nomenklatura, I see others too. I don't want, God forbid, to defend the people who ordered workers to be shot. But there is no politician in France who would not give such an order as soon as the crowd set fire to the Paris City Hall. I know that France was a democracy and the People's Republic was a dictatorship. But the generals saw it differently. For them - and not only for them - the People's Republic was a normal state. I cannot ignore it. ”(In Gazeta Wyborcza , February 3, 2001)

In 2003 Michnik said that one could be for the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, "although Bush and Rumsfeld are of the same opinion". The Iraq war could be justified "although Bush and Rumsfeld also support it".

In 2015 he held talks with Alexei Navalny and published them in book form as Navalny: Dialoge . The topics of the book are the historical relations between Poland and Russia during the communist and post-communist era, the role of the Russian opposition as well as the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine. He sees the latter as “perhaps the beginning of Putin's end”. Putin is “not a 'normal' politician, but an adventurer who only understands the balance of power”. “In historical comparison, I would say that Putin is becoming more and more like Mussolini. A grotesque and dangerous dictator. "

Works (selection)

  • The Church and the Polish Left. From confrontation to dialogue. (Original title: L'Ģéglise et la gauche , translated by Kuno Füssel, afterword by Hans-Hermann Hücking and Tadeusz Marek Swiecicki). Kaiser, Munich 1980, ISBN 3-459-01275-7 .
  • (with Włodzimierz Brus and Ferenc Fehér): Poland - Symptoms and Causes of the Political Crisis. VSA, Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-87975-199-4 .
  • (Ed. With Helga Hirsch ): Polish Peace. Essays on the conception of resistance. Rotbuch, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-88022-305-X (= Rotbuch 305).
  • Letters from Prison and Other Essays. University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 1986, ISBN 0-520-05371-0 ( Studies in Societies and culture in East Central Europe 2).
  • The long farewell to communism. Rowohlt, Reinbek bei Hamburg 1992, ISBN 3-499-13072-6 (= Rororo 13072 Rororo current ).
  • with Drago Jančar : In dispute . edited by Niko Jež (original title: Disput ali kje smo, came gremo?, translated from Slovenian by Franci Zwitter jun.), Wieser, Klagenfurt / Salzburg 1992, ISBN 3-85129-074-7 .

Secondary literature

Prizes and awards (selection)

Adam Michnik has received awards from many international institutions for his journalistic and political commitment:

Honors

Web links

Commons : Adam Michnik  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhold Vetter: Poland's stubborn hero. How Lech Wałęsa outwitted the communists. Berlin, 2010. pp. 334–336.
  2. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 7, 2007, p. 13.
  3. ↑ Weltwoche edition 17/2004: Interview: «People don't want freedom»
  4. ↑ FAZ.net: Ukraine is the beginning of the end , FAZ, March 4, 2015
  5. ↑ Adam Michnik: Putin is on Mussolini's path (Russian) , October 5, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Michnik, Adam
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish essayist and political journalist and politician, member of the Sejm
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1946
PLACE OF BIRTH Warsaw