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PARTISAN REVIEW
and of various fundamentalisms on democratic transitions, and the
moral dilemmas generated by the return of the more or less repentant
former communists
to
government. Compared
to
other writings coming
from former dissidents, Michnik's positions come closest
to
those of his
dear friend and former Solidarity advisor Jacek Kuron, those of Hun–
garian political philosopher Janos Kis, and
to
Vaclav Havel's relentless
attempt
to
reconcile morality and politics.
As a whole (and Michnik is more interested in generalizations than in
detailed analyses of concrete situations), the post-communist world
appears
to
be an immense experiment in reconstructing identities, loy–
alties, sentiments, and convictions. Nothing should be taken for granted
in such a volatile cosmos; no prediction is fully safe. A struggle is going
on, Michnik insists, between those who support pluralist (liberal) values
and those who resent them. Without in any way idealizing the post–
communist condition, Michnik rejects moral absolutism and the claims
of any entity (state, nation, or church)
to
substitute itself for the indi–
vidual's sovereignty. Liberty is self-constituted for Michnik and needs no
further justification. His liberalism is rooted in the memory of the long
decades of oppressive destruction of civic bonds and societal trust. The
eternal heretic, challenging many of his former comrades (the passages
about Lech Walesa are particularly telltale), Michnik continues
to
place
his wager on honor, openness, a nd dignity against any form of collec–
tivistic regimentation. Irena Grudzinska-Gross did a wonderful job of
selecting and editing this volume (though I confess that as a Michnik afi–
cionado I regret the absence of the masterful essay" An Embarrassing
Anniversary," published in the
New York Review of Books
on the occa–
sion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Prague Spring).
In
contrast with radicals of both camps (the former oppositionists on
the one hand, the former communists and their supporters on the other),
Michnik maintains here the unorthodox and not always very popular
thesis that velvet restorations are the inevitable consequence of the for–
mer dissidents' refusals
to
unleash post-revolutionary terror. A wise stu–
dent of both revolutionary and counter-revolutionary thought, Michnik
sees his role in post-communist Poland as that of a defender of those
values that permitted the peaceful breakthrough of
1989.
Realistic com–
promise versus idealistic catharsis is the line he sticks to, even if this
approach makes him the target of slanderous attacks from neo-funda–
mentalist quarters. Michnik's rationale is that one cannot engage in
roundtable negotiations with the communists only
to
abandon the logic
of mutual restraint at the moment "our side" triumphs. Austrian politi–
cal scientist Anton Pelinka's book
Politics of the Lesser Evil: Leadership,
