Poland between Democracy and Authoritarianism

Inaugural Marvin Fieman Annual Lecture in European and Russian Studies by Adam Michnik, Editor-in-Chief of Gazeta Wyborcza.

Adam Michnik. (Photo: Peggy McInerny/ UCLA.)

Thursday, February 8, 2018
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
10383 Bunche Hall

Adam Michnik is a distinguished Polish intellectual, dissident, journalist, and advocate for human rights and civil society.
A prominent dissident during the communist period in Poland, he spent six years as a political prisoner. In the 1970s, he was a founding member of the Committee for the Defense of Workers, and of the Flying University, an underground network that brought together intellectuals and worker activists. Michnik was a key Solidarity activist throughout the 1980s and a negotiator for the Solidarity team during the Roundtable Talks in 1989 that brought communist rule in Poland to a peaceful end. Between 1989 and 1991, he served in the Sejm, Poland's Parliament.

Michnik is the founder and editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland's first postsocialist independent daily. He is the author of many books, including Letters from Freedom: Post Cold War Realities and Perspectives (UC Press, 1998), The Church and the Left (1991), Letters from Prison and Other Essays (UC Press, 1986), and, most recently of In Search of Lost Meaning: The New Eastern Europe (2011).

This Annual Lecture in European and Russian Studies is made possible by the generous gift of Dr. Marvin Fieman.

Cost : Free and open to the public. RSVP not required for admission.

Sponsor(s): Center for European and Russian Studies, UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies