open Democracy News Analysis - The Polish March: students, workers, and 1968, Neal Ascherson - Comments

Roger Manser on "The Polish March: students, workers, and 1968"

Roger Manser — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 21:19:14 +0000

I found this filled in a gap in my understanding. But there remains the whole question of the killings on the Baltic coast in 1970, which - as far as I know - remains unexplored in English. There is of course more on the 1980 deaths in Gdynia. And the article encouraged me to dig out my old copy of Kuron and Modzelewski's "A revolutionary socialist manifesto," originally published in 1964 - four years before the students' March events. Where - if anywhere - does this fit in?

Jan Kavan on "The Polish March: students, workers, and 1968"

Jan Kavan — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 17:54:04 +0000

Neal´s article is excellent. At least there are some people who understood that despite the hugely different historical experience and different lessons learned there was a common denominator between our protests in Poland and Czechoslovakia and those in Berlin, Paris, Berkeley or Chicago. We rejected all forms of authoritarianism and the repressive or manipulative nature of institutions on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In March 1968 we agreed with Rudi Dutschke in Prague to illustrate this point by organising a simultaneous demonstration in Prague and Berlin and hopefully elsewhere in favour of "march through the instiutions" towards socialist democracy and real freedom for people, including basic producers, ie workers. It did not take place only because Rudi was shortly afterwards shot by J.Bachman. Our solidarity with Polish students was unquestionable. It was no coincidence that in the 1970s exiled Czechs and Poles began to cooperate closely in London with each other but also with those Western sixtyeighters, who understood the roots of a common struggle.

John Engel on "The Polish March: students, workers, and 1968"

John Engel — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 18:16:14 +0000

Superb work. . . filling in many of the lost and important connections. A powerful testament to the role of theatre and civic faith in the pro-democracy movement. I wish there had been space for a closer treatment of what now I hope might be another essay -- the actual personal and associational connections between those who led the 1968 movements throughout the world. I think a richer vision of cultural democracy was shared than Neal suggests in his characterization of their shared socialist economic goals -- at least this was my experience/view from Chicago at the time. Finally, to speak as in an earlier post of "untrammeled state brutality" as the only means to realize economic, political, cultural, and yes, spiritual democracy, could not be more contradictory and self-defeating, as is the dismissal of these often highly idealistic students as "well-heeled" revolutionaries.

agentmancuso on "The Polish March: students, workers, and 1968"

agentmancuso — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 10:19:24 +0000

Quote:

the last thing revolutionaries like Rudi Dutschke in Berlin or Daniel Cohn-Bendit in Paris wanted was to imitate the Communist systems of east-central Europe, which they scorned as brutal dictatorships based on a Stalinist distortion of Marxism.

Maybe so, but stated intention is of little consequence compared to predictable outcome. The only possible way to establish an egalitarian socialist republic based on direct workers' control of production is through untrammeled state brutality. The inability or unwillingness of the well-heeled and well-read revolutionaries of '68 to face this fact has to bring into question either the sincerity of their much-vaunted 'good intentions' or their basic political competence.

The Polish March: students, workers, and 1968, Neal Ascherson

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:49:50 +0000

The first student uprising in 1968, year of millennial hopes and young insurrections, took place in Warsaw. But the west's media commemorations of 1968 - selective, supercilious about such idealism, and yet faintly nervous in case a new generation feels tempted into imitation - overlook Poland entirely.

Neal Ascherson is a journalist and writer. He was for many years a foreign correspondent for the (London) Observer.

Among his books are The King Incorporated: Leopold the Second and the CongoThe Struggles for Poland (Random House, 1988), Black Sea (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1996; reprinted 2007), and Stone Voices: the Search for Scotland (Granta, 2003)

Also by Neal Ascherson on openDemocracy:

"From multiculturalism to where?" (19 August 2004)

"Pope John Paul II and democracy" (1 April 2005)

"Tbilisi, Georgia: the rose revolution's rocky road" (15 July 2005)

"The victory and defeat of Solidarność" (6 September 2005)

"Poland's interregnum" (30 September 2005)

"Victory's lost sister - the wreck of the Implacable" (21 October 2005)

"A carnival of stupidity" (6 February 2006)

"Good Night, and Good Luck" (17 February 2006)

"Torture: from regress to redress" (1 March 2006)

"The case for pre-emption: Alan M Dershowitz reviewed" (18 May 2006)

"Scotophobia" (28 June 2006

"Catholic Poland's anguish" (11 January 2007)

"Ryszard Kapuscinski: from Poland to the world" (25 January 2007)

"Scotland's democratic shame"( 9 May 2007)

"Who needs a constitution?" (22 May 2007)

"Poland after PiS: handle with care" (26 October 2007For TV's history programmes and newspapers' Sunday supplements, it all happened in Paris, in Berkeley and (for the British media) in a few Vietnam demos in Grosvenor Square. And yet in Warsaw, that March, thousands of university students were battered down by police clubs and arrested, their teachers purged and exiled, in a battle for intellectual liberty against hopeless odds.

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