Education
Famous KOR leader. While attending primary school, he was an active member of Walter’s Troop in Polish Scouting Association (ZHP), which was led by Jacek Kuroń. During secondary school, the Walter’s Troop was banned, and he began to participate at meetings of Klub Krzywego Koła (Club of the Crooked Circle). After its closing in 1962, with the encouragement from Jan Józef Lipski and under Adam Schaff’s protection, he founded a discussion group, "Contradiction Hunters Club" (Klub Poszukiwaczy Sprzeczności) and became associated with the left wing student oppositionist group, the Komandosi. Disappointed with life in the People's Republic of Poland, young people were discussing ways to change it. They read and analyzed the classical texts of leftist thinkers.
In 1964 he began studying history at Warsaw University. A year later he was suspended because he disseminated an open letter to the members of Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR) among his school mates. Its authors, Jacek Kuroń and Karol Modzelewski appealed for a beginning of reforms which would repair the political system in Poland. In 1965, the PZPR forbade his texts to be printed. In 1966 he was suspended for the second time for organizing a discussion meeting with Leszek Kołakowski, who was expelled from the PZPR several weeks earlier, for criticizing its leaders. Since that time he wrote under a pseudonym to several newspapers, for example: “Życie Gospodarcze”, Więź”, “Literatura”.
In March 1968 he was expelled from the University for his activities during 1968 Polish political crisis. The crisis was ignited by the ban of Kazimierz Dejmek's adaptation of Adam Mickiewicz’s “Dziady” (Forefathers' Eve) in the National Theatre. The play contained many anti-Russian allusions, which were greeted with enthusiastic applause by the audience. Michnik and another student, Henryk Szlajfer, recounted the sitation to a correspondent of Le Monde, "whose report was then carried on Radio Free Europe". Both Michnik and Szlajfer were expelled from the university. Upon their expulsion, students organized demonstrations, which were brutally suppressed by the riot police and "worker-squads".
Władysław Gomułka used Michnik's Jewish background to wage an anti-Semitic capaign, blaming the Jews for the crisis. Michnik was arrested and sentenced to three years imprisonment for “acts of hooliganism”.
In 1969, he was released from prison under an amnesty, but he was forbidden to continue his studies. Not until the middle of the 1970s was he allowed to continue his studies of history, which he finished at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.
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