In our thinking about the economic changes underway in Poland, we seem overly impressed by the wealth of the United States and Western Europe, where market forces rule (though not exclusively). We tend to forget that there are other countries …
During the season of its first flowering, at the outset of this decade, Halina Bortnowska, one of the foremost theorists of Polish Solidarity, characterized the movement as an expression of the country’s “subjectivity,” by which, she went on to explain, …
The following dialogue between Abraham Brumberg and Irving Howe took place in early October 1989. Abraham Brumberg is a widely published authority on Soviet and Eastern European affairs and editor of the forthcoming Perestroika: Chronicle of a Revolution, published by …
Warsaw in early September 1988 was a city swept by an air of excitement, hope, and nervous anticipation. The government had just announced a course of action designed—or so it would seem— to set Poland on the road to economic …
Last year, in May, I had occasion to revisit Warsaw, where I had stopped in 1974 on my way back from the Soviet Union. Detente, in 1974, was at its height, yet, when I reached Warsaw after a month in …
Stanislaw Barahczak, poet and essayist, was born in 1946 in Poznan, Poland. He studied at Adam Mickieivicz University in Poznan and received a doctorate in Polish literature in 1973. He was one of the cofounders of KOR in 1976 and …
Kazimierz Brandys is a distinguished, veteran Polish writer who, for several years before the rise of Solidarity, had been prohibited from publishing in his country by the Polish government. From 1978 onward, he kept a diary of events in Warsaw, …
At the end of October 1981, I delivered a lecture at one of the higher educational institutions in southeastern Poland. When I finished, a young man rose to ask a question that had no relation to the subject of my …
I have been working in Poland as a free-lance journalist for longer than I care to recall, and certainly for longer than the brief period of Solidarity’s legal existence. I was there when martial law was imposed, and I had …
Aron Aronson, 84 years old, was dozing in his armchair, dreaming of a slice of herring. He was aware that the herring wasn’t real but it was better than dreaming of standing in line or of being hit on the …
Even in this hour of defeat when thousands of its militants are held in concentration camps, Solidarity remains the most promising social movement to have arisen in Europe since the Second World War. We live in a dispirited moment, petty …
I left Warsaw after a recent eight-day stay impressed above all with the fluidity of the situation and the lack of precedent for what is taking place. Yet about several important things I am sure. First, Poland is experiencing a …
The dramatic shift of American public opinion set off by the Iranian dilemma recalls the comparably dramatic shift set off 35 years ago, when the Yalta euphoria gave way to the Polish dilemma. Robert Dallek’s magisterial book is a recreation …
Imagine for a moment that our railway system, whose timetables all are determined by one central authority, suddenly has to cope with an influx of trains whose schedules are to be worked out jointly by passengers and railway workers. Much …
“Proletarians of all countries, unite—as long as it’s possible!”Attributed, whimsically, to Lech Walesa, Head of Solidarity And so, for the fourth time in three decades, Poland again seems to be teetering on the brink of disaster. A society, held together …
