When communism fell, Mihnjik did not give in to euphoria (although he was able to write that hell burned inside himself) and almost immediately he began to warn that, no matter how natural it is, it is not enough to be an anti-communist, but anti-communism, as a negative dimension, must also be joined by a positive part. That positive part was clearly defined freedom and democracy as a political condition of freedom
......
The story of Adam Michnjik could begin in 1980, with the "Solidarity" movement, which, in response to social injustice, fiercely opposes the Polish communist nomenclature, and then the story would branch back, towards Michnjik's childhood and his youth (born in 1946), that is, forward and would follow the years of struggle against the regime, the fall of communism, the building of Polish democracy, his parliamentary episode, and the creation of one of the best European newspaper, Newspapers are boring.. So, in 1980, the Polish "Solidarity" imposed itself as a force that threatened the communist regime, and when the fellow Polish communists, pressed from Mokwa, realized that the devil had played the trick, General Wojciech Jaruzelski and the army took over power, apparently broke "Solidarity" (they savagely and seriously damaged it, but did not break it) and buried the hints of freedom with thick layers of violence. Jaruzelski brought enormous suffering to the Poles, especially to those who resisted. From today's perspective, it is easy and probably wrong to say that there were signs that indicated that communism - at least in Poland - had begun seriously, and it was especially difficult to see those signs from the inside, from a locked-down Poland where, for those who resisted, it could be considered a success if they kept their lives alive, and a luxury if they did not end up in prison as political prisoners. Adam Mihnjik could not count on that luxury - to remain free - even when, in the seventies of the last century, he refused the generous offer of his communist comrades to leave Poland. He stayed in Poland, fought for freedom, the services monitored him and made his life miserable, the communists persecuted him, and he spent nearly eight years in prison, as an enemy of order, including countless 48-hour detentions. It is not easy to follow what is happening behind the thick prison walls - in his letters from prison Mihnjik shows that this is clear to him - but he makes up for the lack of direct contact with reality with logic, education and a devilishly lucid interpretation of the facts that come to him on a spoon. Whenever he was free - where freedom in the communist regime was an extremely problematic concept (Mihnjik prefers the word "slavery") - again and again, persistent as a tick, persistent as an autoimmune disease of the communist order, he continued to fight for that freedom that the communists considered inadmissible: freedom of thought and speech, freedom of assembly, freedom for each individual to decide on his own life (and not for the state or leader to do so). Even if he thought about armed struggle, he resisted the temptation to leave a trace of that possibility in his writings, probably judging that such a thing was impossible in the communist regime, or at least doomed to certain failure. Mihnjik fought with constant study, constant writing and what today is easily called activism. He ended up in prison because of his opinion, his speech, his writing, and his active and public struggle against the regime.
FALL OF COMMUNISM
It was therefore difficult to conclude that communism was in crisis in those years, and then in 1989, General Jaruzelski handed over power without shedding blood. Mihnjik admits that, despite the strong resistance offered by the Poles, especially through "Solidarity", it was a kind of surprise, as, let's add, it seemed to us that the demolition of the Berlin Wall (here as a metaphor) happened suddenly. We can, of course, speak from the height of the 21st century about clear hints and causes of the fall of communism and we will most likely be right, but in those years it did not seem like that. Who could have imagined that the all-powerful East German secret police "Stasi", a criminal organization brought to perfection, would disintegrate in just a few days, who could have guessed that Vaclav Havel and his company (of several hundred thousand citizens, admittedly) would one day descend from Letna Park in Prague and take over power without violence, as it was surreal to watch, on live television, how - this time with victims - the Ceausescu regime disintegrated in Romania (while Adam Puslojić, who acts as a paratrooper, broadcasts what is happening live from the screen of Romanian television). Of course, only Serbia successfully resisted the call of freedom and infected the deadly bacteria of nationalism in the form of the future butcher Slobodan Milosevic, but that is not the topic of this text.
We are talking about Adam Michnjik.
READ AGAIN
It is an interesting, somewhat misleading, but also justified feeling that Adam Mihnjik is a well-known figure in this area. We actually have only one translated book of his texts and conversations - here it should be said that these are the conversations he had with Kolakovsky and Havel, so he asked questions - which was edited and translated by Biserka Rajčić in the disgusting year of 1995. But Mihnjik lived in Yugoslavia, he made friends both in Belgrade and Zagreb, he knew very well the conditions in pre-war Yugoslavia, and the causes of the disintegration of that country, he was an honored guest of the newly founded Democratic Forum (David Albahari, Milorad Belančić, Drinka Gojković, Alpar Lošonc, Ivan Vejvoda, Laslo Vegel, Biserka Rajčić, Leon Kojen, Živan Lazović and others, and Pavle Ćosić and the signatories of these lines who, as students, before the elections in 1990, we used to put campaign leaflets in mailboxes... we won 4000 votes, approximately, against Milosevic's XNUMX votes). We will find some of that in this book, and Michnjik's analyzes of the breakup of Yugoslavia are characterized by precision, prudence and a clean style, i.e. precisely those qualities that, along with his consistency and unwavering passion for freedom, make Michnjik such a great figure on the Central and Eastern European political and cultural scene. The impression that this Polish intellectual, journalist, editor, writer, what not, is very present in these areas is also contributed to by frequent translations of his texts in newspapers, or commensurately frequent interviews. But when we read a book of his texts, essays and interviews thirty years after its publication, it is difficult to escape the impression that, in fact, we do not know enough about Michnjik, or, more precisely, that what we do know, we do not know well enough. We are not talking about facts here. We have the facts and they are easy to find. We are talking about the unpacked layers of meaning in Mihnjik's texts, which could tell not a small number of attentive readers a lot about many political-historical dilemmas - be they real or manufactured - as well as the current moment in Serbia (and perhaps its future).
COMMON SENSE AND CONSEQUENCES
With some right, philosophy declared common sense to be its enemy, because common sense is characterized by sharp contrasts (something is or is not) and a tendency to simplify. Adam Mihnjik is a writer who firmly adheres to common sense (his counterpart in this language could be Teofil Pančić) as a condition without which there is no quality opinion. At the same time, however, common sense serves Mihnjik as a kind of springboard: thinking is not exhausted in common sense, because reality is much more complex (which, let's add, Teofil Pančić also knew). That's why he will write with his characteristic lapidary (we're paraphrasing) that communism was a brilliant ideological invention because he managed to reduce the complexity of the world to a few simple formulas, and then create hell on simple and understandable assumptions. That is why common sense followed him to the place and to the moment in which a thinking being must necessarily face the complexity of the world, i.e. simple divisions into black and white, right and wrong, good and evil, are simply not enough. This and such a procedure made him perhaps the most astute analyst of communism, and no less astute observer of democracy. A certain impatience pervaded the opponents of communism, and they saw unadulterated evil in communism. And they were right, of course. But that moral, sometimes moralistic attitude, in which mere anti-communism is enough to be on the right side, did not help to understand communism in its depravity. Moral supremacy is insufficient if it is not accompanied by an analytical apparatus that is able to penetrate into the communist mechanisms of conquest and, especially, of maintaining power. Mihnjik differed from other writers in that he did not show nervousness and that he managed to maintain that distance towards communism that allowed him to understand it more deeply and to understand it better. With that, he could offer better and more precise antidotes than those who stormed the communist bunkers out of revolt, helplessness or anger. The signatory of these lines will offer his own (young) example: writers like Aleksandr Zinoviev, Česlav Miloš, the essayist Vaclav Havel, and not even Michník himself were interesting enough in his youth because they complicated too much what was clear at first glance, instead of unequivocally opposing the indisputable evil (as if Michník's prisons were not enough proof, as if the only valid proof of orthodoxy was self-immolation). But behind that youthful determination was nothing but a moral (moralistic?) attitude that communism identified as an irrevocable evil. There was no analysis, much less an attempt to understand the mechanism that kept evil alive (after all, what is there to understand: the truth of communism is the GULAG?). And Mihnjik analyzed patiently, persistently, devotedly, in a terrible place and with passion a man who fights for freedom, again and again. After all, the signatory of these lines did not know enough and did not know that he did not know: Mihnjik was a leftist in communism and an unwavering opponent of fascism, Nazism, nationalism, every right-wing pathology of the government, which, let's add, remains to this day. His letters from the heart of hell itself, from Polish prisons, are distinguishedopinion, and not mere slogans and mere goodwill. And then, when communism fell, Mihnjik did not give in to euphoria (although he was able to write that hell burned inside himself) and almost immediately began to warn that, no matter how natural it was, it is not enough to be an anti-communist, but anti-communism, as a negative dimension, must also be joined by a positive part. That positive part was clearly defined freedom and democracy as a political condition of freedom. And, he added - and he does not stop repeating this to this day - there is no respite for the citizen in the defense of freedom. There is no greater danger than the illusion that freedom, once won, is guaranteed. After all, isn't the First Serbian Republic ("October 5th") and its fall before Vučić's phalanx a perfect proof of how right Mihnjik is?
To that extent, Serbia today and here needs observers (and workers, of course) like Mihnjik. On the one hand, those who analyze the degenerate and degenerative system of Aleksandar Vučić from a distance (Mihnjik wrote many times that communism is a degenerate cosmopolitan idea), but their analysis is not limited to anti-Vučić sentiments, but focuses on the idea of freedom as a political (not abstract, not metaphysical) quantity. That is why it is just as important to read Michnik today as it was to read him thirty years ago.
