LETTER FROM EASTERN EUROPE
Ronald Radosh
SUNSHINE AT NOON
The event itself would have been next to unthinkable
one year ago, before the historic Roundtable Agreement reached
by
the Polish government with Solidarity. Now, in early May,
David Horowitz, Peter Collier, Jim Denton, Jeffrey Herf, Joshua
Muravchik, and myself are in Poland for an Eastern European
small-scale version of the Second Thoughts Conference (held in
Washington, D.C. in October of 1987). Cosponsored by the
National Forum Foundation and various Solidarity chapters in
Cracow, Poland, we met at the historic Jagiellonian University,
where a large audience of students and Polish intellectuals heard
papers on such topics as "The Soviet Empire and Western Europe:
U.
S. Policy Alternatives" and "The Death of the Socialist Future
and the Collapse of the Communist Empire." Arriving in time for
May Day, we witnessed thousands of Solidarity members-in
what looked like a cross section of Cracow's population-march–
ing in the pouring rain from the Nowa Huta steel mill to the fa–
mous arked church that was used by Solidarity for protection
during the time of severe repression.
Meeting Polish intellectuals was at first confusing. We in
the West are most familiar with the views of such former dissi–
dents , now oppositionists, as Jacek Kuron and Adam Michnik,
whose terrain is that of the familiar social-democratic tradition.
The views of the Cracow intellectuals came as somewhat of a
shock. Here we met Pawel Kloczowski, an editor of the legal op–
position quarterly
Res Publica,
the current issue of which featured
an evaluation of the works of Hannah Arendt, an article on the
meaning of 1968, and an essay by Leszek Kolakowski. The edi–
tors still have to submit material in this publication to the censor.
For this reason, the intellectuals also produce Arka-published
