Confronting the Past: Justice or Revenge?

Adam Michnik has been editor-in-chief of the Polish daily newspaper since its founding in 1989. Previously he spent a total of six years in prison for his opposition to Poland’s communist regime, and he was part of the Solidarity team during the Roundtable negotiations that brought that regime to an end in 1989.

Václav Havel, a playwright and one of Europe’s most prominent moral and intellectual figures, was a leading dissident during the period of communist rule. He was elected as the first president of postcommunist Czechoslovakia, and later served as president of the Czech Republic from 1993 to 2003. From April to June of 2005, he occupied the Kluge Chair for Modern Culture at the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.