Polish historian, essayist, former MP and political commentator Adam Michnik was among the principal organizers of the illegal, democratic opposition in Poland from 1966—1989, and after the collapse of communism went on to found what has become Poland’s most influential newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. He remains an outspoken champion of freedom of the press.
“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter,” wrote the spritely 64-year-old Michnik in a recent Gazeta Wyborcza editorial critcizing Hungary’s controverial press law, quoting the third US president and principal author of the Declaration of Independence.
“I have never thought that I would have to remind [Hungarian President] Viktor Orbán of these famous words of Thomas Jefferson, one of the fathers of American democracy,” said Michnik, a Laureat of many prizes and tiles. He helped found Gazeta Wyborcza, the first free newspaper in post-totalitarian Poland, which continues the work he first began when an activist in the underground democratic opposition press.
Michnik, a member of the French Legion of Honor who named one of the 20 most influential journalists in the world by the Financial Times, on Tuesday added another prize — the Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award — to his impressive collection (including the OSCE Prize for Democracy and Journalism, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, Erasmus Prize and Prix de la Liberté from France’s PEN-Club).
The Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award is given annually to people who have dedicated their lives to public service. It was established in 2000 by the Prague Society for International Cooperation (whose honorary chair, Frederik Willem de Klark, an ex-president of South Africa, holds a Nobel Peace Prize) and the Global Panel Foundation. It is named in honor of the mother of the Prague Society president, Marc S. Ellenbogen.Previous prize winners include prominent Czechs like Václav Havel, Miloš Forman and Czech-born Madeleine Albright, as well as the Dalai Lama and Romania’s King Michael.
As institutions which actively fought Communism and the spread of totalitarianism, Global Panel and the Prague Society “see it as part of their mission” to shine a light on those courageous individuals who fight such regimes.
“Adam is a very worthy recipient of the Award. He has been one of the driving forces in Poland, protesting against the Communist rule for many years before working in the Polish parliament,” Ellenbogen said. “Now, as Editor in Chief of the most widely read newspaper in Poland, he wields considerable influence.”
On hand for the presentation of the awared at the Furstenberg Palace (Embassy of the Republic of Poland) Tuesday were Czech dignitaries and members of the diplomatic corp.
Previous prize winners include former Czech president Václav Havel — an old friend and commrade in arms of Michnik’s from their days as anti-communist dissidents; the Dalai Lama; Belarusian activist and presidential candidate Aleksandr Milinkevich; Czech-born former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright; Romania’s King Michael; and film director Miloš Forman.
The Czech connection
Under communisim, Czechoslovakian and Polish activists, including Michnik and Havel, held strategy meetings in the Krkonoše (Giant Mountains) on the border between the two states.
“We had to have the revolution because we were fed up climbing to the summit every time we wanted to meet with [democratic opposition leader] Jacek Kuroń and other Polish friends,” once joked the late Jiří Dienstbier, Czechoslovakia’s first post-communist foreign minister, according to Michnik.
“[Seems like only yesterday] we were still criminal elements, while now we met as free people who contributed to the fall of the dictatorship,” Michnik wrote in tribute to his old friend and ally.
That cross-border collaboration between led to the formation of the Polish-Czech-Slovak Solidarity Foundation in the Polish town of Wrocław in early November of 1989; Havel has credited the meetings with helping to inspire the Velvet Revolution.
Between Nov. 3–5 that year, the group held a daring international seminar — “Central Europe Culture Perplexed, Between Totalitarianism and Commercialism” in Wrocław, which was patronized by Michnik, celbrated British historian Timothy Garton Ash and Prince Karl Johan von Schwarzenberg — the current Czech foreign minister.
Passing on the torch
The Hanno R. Ellenbogen Citizenship Award comes with a Kč 150,000 cash prize, which the award recipient often passes on to a younger person who has already contributed to the development of international relations.
Havel, for instance donated the financial part of the award to Andrej Dynko, the editor-in-chief of the indepependent Belarusian newspaper ???? ???? (Our Field) while Albright donated the cash prize to Petra Procházková, a Czech journalist and humanitarian worker.
Michnik has been honored by venerable Czech institutions before: He was awarded the Cena Pelikán and received an Honoris Causa from Charles University in Prague.
