Adam MICHNIK, editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza and one of those “guilty” of the collapse of communism in Poland, told Kyiv students about the way his country has been shaking off the Soviet legacy in the past twenty years.
The 20th anniversary of the victory over communism, which our Polish neighbors can celebrate noisily and joyously, should one of so many occasions for Ukrainians to reflect on what has been happening to this country in the past two decades. Why has a supposedly democratic road brought us not to the EU or NATO but to another crisis, when we do not have a minister of finance and that of foreign affairs, the interior minister has been dismissed, and one of the Security Service deputy heads is wanted by the law? What did we do wrong? This question arises after an open lecture delivered by Adam Michnik. (Not only was the lecture open in form but also the lecturer was open-minded and free of opportunism.) Mr. Michnik has already gone down in the history of Poland as a prominent public figure, a fighter against communism, a dissident, a journalist, the founder and editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s first free post-communist newspaper which was founded (as was Polish democracy) 20 years ago but still remains the most circulated and influential publication in that country. We, Ukrainians, should note that this newspaper has been continuously supporting the cause of a European Ukraine. Symbolically, Michnik was a participant in the first congress of the Popular Movement of Ukraine (Rukh) in September 1989, where he, as Kyiv Mohyla Academy President Viacheslav Briukhovetsky recalls, cried out: “Long live a free, democratic and just Ukraine!” Mr. Briukhovetsky quotes these words in his foreword to the Ukrainian edition of In Search of Freedom, Mr. Michnik’s book of essays on history and politics, printed by the Kyiv-based Dukh i Litera publishing house. The author himself says in the introduction for the Ukrainian reader: “Meeting the Ukrainian reader has a special dimension for me. Ukraine and its struggle for freedom has been the object of admiration and concern for many of us. I was happy later when the Polish government with Jan Krzysztof Bielecki at the head was the first to recognize independent Ukraine in the summer of 1991. I was happy that Polish society offered unflagging support to the Orange Revolution and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski played an essential role in Ukraine’s struggle against election rigging.”
Incidentally, it is not the first meeting of Adam Michnik with Ukrainian readers. Our newspaper is especially pleased to welcome Mr. Michnik in Kyiv, for he authored the foreword to the book Wars and Peace, or Ukrainians and Poles: Brothers-Enemies, Neighbors of The Day Library series, which was published in the Ukrainian and Polish languages.
In one of his recent Den publications (“The Unread Lessons of Poland,” December 20, 2008), the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine and our regular contributor Yurii Shcherbak made an attempt to sum up the two previous decades from the viewpoint of both Poland and Ukraine – how the Poles used this time period and how the Ukrainians failed to take advantage of it. Let some of the following fragments from Michnik’s lecture be not only the logical continuation of a debate on the lost chances but also a powerful signal about inexhaustible prospects for the Ukrainian state.
Adam Michnik’s lecture at Kyiv Mohyla Academy’s Antonovych Library was oeganized by this institution’s Center for Polish and European Studies. The appearance of the Gazeta Wyborcza editor continued the cycle of open lectures, “The Legacy of 1989: a View from 2009,” in memory of Bronislaw Geremek, which focus on reconsidering the events that occurred in Eastern Europe on the eve of the 1990s.
Adam Michnik creates, first of all, the impression of a true European: he is lively, energetic, uninhibited in behavior and speaking; he is as much ironic as he is wise. He exhibits this behavior no matter whether he communicates with students or top officials.
The editor began his lecture with the events that occurred 20 years ago, when he, in spite of his colleagues’ warnings, decided to travel to Kyiv for the first Rukh congress. One of those who cautioned him against following the first steps of Ukrainian democracy was Lech Wal sa. The Solidarity leader told Michnik that he must have gone mad. The journalist said: “Yes, I might, but can you imagine that Poland is part of the Soviet Union and Ukraine is free?”
In Mr. Michnik’s opinion, what occurred in Poland after 1989 can be described as four paradoxes. The first is the Solidarity party and its strength of ten million people. The second paradox is the clout of the Polish Catholic Church, which is linked to both old and modern history. It is, among other things, the tradition of resisting communism, all the more so that the Roman Catholic Church was headed at the time by the ethnic Pole John Paul II. The third paradox was the countryside and strength of the Polish peasantry. The situation in Poland was unique for Central and Eastern Europe: collectivization had been performed on a very limited scale. Most of the land belonged to farmers, which helped them wield a great deal of clout. When the centrally-administered economy ceased to exist, this strength turned into veritable weakness because the countryside put up stubborn resistance to modernization. Finally, the fourth paradox was the freedom of expression. Before the downfall of communism, absence of the freedom of expression was one of the crucial problems. But when censorship was gone, this raised the problem of informational licentiousness and cacophony, when the gutter press and tabloids began to hold sway. This is a problem that any democracy, especially a young one, finds hard to tackle.
Michnik emphasized several times with great pleasure that the past 20 years had been the time of the greatest success for Poland over the last three centuries. This does mean, however, that the Poles managed to solve all the problems. The editor considers it the main drawback that the Poles have not yet succeeded in building a rule-of-law state. “We have not been pondering this in a purposeful and systemic way,” he asserts. The second shortcoming is failure to stamp out corruption. And, finally, the third problem is misconceptions about history. It particularly consists in a still deep-rooted Polish myslennism, i.e., inability to see what was bad in history and what guilt the Poles bear for other peoples. Michnik briefly calls the problem a “victim complex.”
In addition to old challenges and threats, Poland is facing new ones. It is, first of all, “Putinism” which can be traced in Mr. Michnik’s country in the policies of the Law and Justice party. Another challenge, also named after an odious politician, is “Berlusconism” which is reflected in the inviability of Polish democratic institutions.
The “isms” that Michnik mentioned are creating problems not only in Poland but also, or even to a greater extent, in Ukraine, although the list of our “isms” seems to be much longer so far. We can also clearly see the fourth paradox, the freedom of expression, when this democratic bounty is falling hostage to ignorance and irresponsibility.
When Adam Michnik speaks about the past two decades of progress against the background of a three-century-long “dry spell,” we positively envy him. Not only because we have failed to achieve this kind of progress but also because the Poles must have learned to look at their modern history, casting a glance not only into the previous decade but also into the depth of centuries. Naturally, this kind of “submersion” requires a reliable guide. Poland has Adam Michnik for this.
