Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Adam Michnik

1973

The events of 1968 therefore came as a shock to me. [ . . . ]

One could of course continue to claim that it was not the people but only those horrible communists, those monstrous rulers, who with their many voices roared, “We want blood!” just as they had done in the era of the Stalinist trials. But I believe that to adhere to this idea is to…

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Creator Bio

Adam Michnik

b. 1946

Adam Michnik was born in Warsaw to a communist family but would later become a leading opponent of the Polish communist regime. Michnik was removed from his position as a lecturer in history at Warsaw University in 1967 as part of an anti-Jewish purge and arrested the next year for organizing student protests. From here, his opposition to the communist apparatus in Poland developed, and he eventually took on a leadership role in the Solidarity Movement that helped topple the communist government in 1989. A member of the Sejm from 1989 to 1991, he is now well-known both as the editor of Gazeta Wyborcza and as a historian of left-wing movements in Eastern Europe.

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