| Since
it first appeared in 1978, the Polish quarterly Krytyka (Critique)
has been a showcase for some of the best writing on politics, sociology,
cultural criticism, economics, and history from Poland. Founded by
a group of oppositional activists that included Adam Michnik and Jacek
Kuron, the journal began as an underground outlet for critical political
thinking in the period prior to Solidarity. It survived the communist
crackdown on Solidarity in 1981 to become the leading source of democratic
thought in the new Poland. Today Krytyka is published ''above ground''
and continues to be the most consistent voice for a modern, democratic,
and open Poland.
The twenty articles in this volume were chosen by Michael Bernhard,
Henryk Szlajfer, and Jan Kofman, the present editor-in-chief of
Krytyka. Covering the underground and post-underground years, they
introduce the reader to the full range of topics and political views
presented by the journal. Taken together these articles provide
an excellent overview of the last fifteen turbulent years of Polish
history.
Contributors are Marek Beylin, Ryszard Bugaj, Anna Bojarska, Krzysztof
Jasiewicz, Stanislaw Krajewski, Marcin Kula, Jacek Kuron, Joanna
Kurczewska, Adam Michnik, Edmund Mokrzycki, Piotr Ogrodzinski, Jerzy
Osiatynski, Jerzy Surdykowski, Andrzej Werner, Wlodzimierz Wesolowski,
Jan Winiecki, Krzysztof Wolicki, and Jozef Zycinski. |
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Michael
Bernhard is Associate Professor of Political Science at Penn
State University. He is the author of The Origins of Democratization
in Poland: Workers, Intellectuals, and Oppositional Politics, 1976-1980 (Columbia, 1993) and co-translator of The Establishment of
Communist Rule in Poland, 1943-1948 (California, 1991).
Henryk Szlajfer is an economist and sociologist
and a researcher at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish
Academy of Sciences. The author of a number of books and articles
on comparative economic history, he is a professor at the G. C.
Marshall European Center for Security Studies in Germany. |
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