Adam Michnik, lifelong human rights activist and editor-in-chief of Poland's first independent daily newspaper, described how post-communist nations have "a problem with history" in a lecture yesterday in Aaron Burr Hall.
Translated by University history professor Jan Gross, who introduced him as "one of the few heroes of revolution that has no skeletons in his closet," Michnik spoke of the problems all newly-formed democracies face when confronting their past. The lecture was sponsored by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS).
"Freedom in Russia, Poland and everywhere else is always characterized by plurality of opinion," Michnik said, adding that today's radical anticommunism violates that basic tenet of liberty.
The desire to simplify Poland's history and indiscriminately criminalize members of the communist regime ironically mimics the principles of the Bolshevik revolution, he explained. "Today, communism has produced as its antithesis not pluralism but anticommunist monologue," he said.
Michnik added that he was astonished after discovering that modern historians of the communist era give greater weight to official pronouncements of the secret police than to interviews of those oppressed by it.
Calling that kind of historical analysis the "postmortem triumph of the KGB," Michnik said those documents were most certainly not assembled to portray the truth and that history should never be determined on the basis of official government statements.
Michnik also explained his belief that relativism is inherent to history. No single source, he said, will ever be able to provide a complete or accurate version of a nation's past.
This relativism, he said, is also the reason he does not favor blanket criminalization of those involved with the former communist government.
Because many people joined the communist party either to resist the Nazi occupation or because it was the only means to secure a meaningful position in society, secrets should not be revealed and judgments should not be applied, Michnik said.
"We remember how certain names would be erased from history books and how certain faces disappeared from historical pictures," Michnik said, adding that he fears a system akin to McCarthyism in the United States could emerge in Eastern Europe. "I do not have the strength to throw the stone at someone who was weaker than me [and gave into communism]," Michnik said.
He compared the potential evils of this revenge mentality with the abuses he endured as a journalist and proponent for a free Poland.
First incarcerated at age 18, he spent six years in jail for subversive activity, including calls for freedom in his writing. In the 1980s, Michnik rose to a position of prominence in the Solidarity movement that eventually led Poland to become the first nation to dismantle its communist system and become a democracy.
In 1989, he helped create Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's first independent newspaper and currently one of the nation's bestselling dailies. He has been its editor-in-chief since its inception.
Responding to a question from PIIRS director Miguel Centeno about whether his sense of relativism also applied to journalism, Michnik replied with a resounding no.
"In the present, we should know the truth and demand all truth, because it's today," Michnik said. "Today, I want to and can do something about it."
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