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Polish journalist to discuss 'Dictatorship's Past,' March 14
Posted March 9, 2006; 08:46 p.m.
Polish journalist and activist Adam Michnik will deliver a lecture
titled "A Dictatorship's Past: The Cleansing of Collective Memory" at
4:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 14, in 219 Burr Hall.
The lecture will focus on the difficulties of dealing with the past in
societies with newly established democratic regimes. Michnik will
examine transitions to pluralism and democracy in Germany after World
War II, in various Latin American countries in the 1980s and 1990s, in
post-apartheid South Africa and in post-communist East-Central Europe.
Michnik was a leading figure in the struggle for freedom of speech and
democratization in Eastern Europe in the 1960s and was imprisoned for
six years in communist Poland. Since 1989, he has been editor-in-chief
of Gazeta Wyborcza, which was the first free daily newspaper in
post-communist East-Central Europe. Michnik was one of the founders of
the Workers' Defense Committee in Poland and a leading member of the
Solidarity trade union movement.
The lecture is sponsored by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies. It is designated as the 2005-06 Cyril Black Memorial Lecture and the annual PIIRS Distinguished Lecture.