Dissent: Dissentniks in Poland

[dropcap]K[/dropcap]rytyka Polityczna (Political Critique) is a Polish magazine whose editors and writers feel close to Dissent. For a celebration of their tenth anniversary, they invited three Dissent editors, Michael Kazin, Marshall Berman, and me, to come to Poland to meet with their friends and supporters. This is a report on those meetings.

Krytyka isn’t in fact much like Dissent, though all three of us felt politically and personally sympathetic to the people we met in Poland. It is a bigger magazine, for one thing; and its editors are much younger; and it is part of a very large and bold political/cultural project. The project includes a successful publishing house and a network of clubs and cultural centers in about a dozen Polish cities—and now in Kiev (Ukraine) too. The Krytyka people run concerts and art exhibitions as well as many, many political discussions. They are meeting a large payroll—some 200 men and women, young, energetic, committed, and wonderfully intelligent. Some of them are university students or junior faculty members; many have chosen careers in Krytyka over academic careers. Each of us traveled to four or five cities, meeting Krytyka activists and talking at tenth anniversary celebrations—and each of us had the same sense: that we were with comrades.

Read the full article on Dissent.