THE LITERARY IMPACT
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OF THE AMERICAN AND FRENCH REVOLUTIONS
run for president. It is because critical intellectuals did so much to pre–
serve the values of free communication that they cannot simply resign
and leave the public sphere to the adventurers, Mafiosi, and charlatans. It
is true that this commitment to politics entails that intellectuals become
professionalized, that some of them may have to renounce the time de–
voted to aesthetic creation. But is this sacrifice any less worthwhile than
the ones intellectuals made during the old regimes?
It
is essential that intellectuals be critical of the moral derailments
jeopardizing the fledgling democracies. They are the ones who suffered
most dramatically the consequences of limitations of basic freedoms, pri–
marily freedom of information and expression, and there is no reason to
think that they will forget so easily the price they paid for these depriva–
tions. Avoiding the temptation of self-glorification, intellectuals will also
have to avoid indulging in self-induced sentiments of historical impo–
tence. While not all-powerful, liberal intellectuals in post-Communist
regimes do remain the repository of democratic hope. They are the ones
who can prevent the slide into tribalistic excesses and remind their fellow
citizens that the revolutions of 1989 were not made in order to create
new penitentiaries for free thinkers. Neither completely winners or losers,
intellectuals can help prevent the degeneration of the democratic revo–
lutions into a massive struggle for settling old scores, for the lynchings
and grotesque masquerading of mob enthusiasm. It is too early to write
the obituary of Eastern Europe's critical intelligentsia. Without its mem–
bers, the glorious revolutions of 1989 would have been less glorious.
Their abdication would seriously damage democracy's chances in a re–
gion still plagued with atavistic resentments and premodern anguishes.
Susan Sontag:
Thank you. Adam Michnik.
Adam Michnik:
From a uniquely Polish perspective, the American and
French Revolutions appear as two distinct ways of experiencing freedom.
Through this lens, the American Revolution appears to embody simply
an idea of freedom without utopia. Following Thomas Paine, it is based
upon the natural right of people to determine their own fate. It con–
sciously relinquishes the utopian vision of a perfect, conflict-free society in
favor of one based upon equal opportunity, equality before the law,
religious freedom, and the rule of law. From the American Revolution
also comes the idea of a plurality of exiles. The Revolution was fought
by people who had
tas~ed
the bitterness of humiliation and servitude.
And it brought about a republic of people who have become conscious
creators of their own destinies. We see in America the embodiment of
the principle of an open society and an open nation. We must remem-
