Adam Michnik Quotes

I just happen to know quite a lot of what happened in Czechoslovakia between 1968 and the fall of Communism.

[We must] accelerate the reform of our political system, especially the building of a system of socialist democracy based on law …. Democracy is a worldwide trend …. If the Party doesn’t hold up the banner of democracy in our country, someone else will, and we will lose out.

Perestroika and glasnost mean more nationalism, more fascism.

Democratization was not a slogan, but the essence of Perestroika.

In Czechoslovakia in 1968, communist reformers appealed to democratic ideals that were deeply rooted in the country's pre-second world war past.

For those of us imprisoned in Poland, the Prague Spring was a harbinger of hope.

Then in 1969, I spent the spring term at Cornell University in New York. The invasion of August 1968 had already happened, but the hardline regime took several months to crack down on dissidents.

Ladies and gentlemen, communism didn't fall. It was pushed.

The American Communists had thrived as champions of domestic reform.

Few people understand the magnitude of the catastrophe that happened late in the 1980s when the Communist Party had failed to modernize the Soviet Union.

We are the party of the Czechoslovak proletariat and our general headquarters are in Moscow.

Lebanon is restless, Syria got its walking papers, Egypt is scheduling elections with more than one candidate, and even Saudi Arabia, whose rulers are perhaps more terrified of women than rulers anywhere else in the world, allowed limited municipal elections.

Almost all that has been done for the good of the people has been done since the right lost the monopoly of power, since the rights of property were discovered to be not unlimited.

The peaceful path out of totalitarianism has never been tested.

Long live socialism with a human face.

Opening China to the world has dramatically affected the movement for democracy. The process of opening up is a process whereby the government loosens its control of the people. On the other hand, simply opening the economy is not enough. Very few people are actually able to enjoy the economic reforms. The privileged classes, or those who have connections with the privileged classes, enjoy more benefits from an open policy.

… the unfortunate but inevitable connection between the word “socialism” and the unmitigated crucifixion of Civil Liberties in the East [Eastern Europe dominated by the Russian Communist Party.

Hungarian communists were the most talented. They convinced everybody that reforming the communist party was better than making a new party.

Every part of our program of perestroika - and the program as a whole, for that matter - is fully based on the principle of more socialism and more democracy.

Who would have predicted... that Dubcek, who brought the tanks in in Czechoslovakia in 1968 is now being proclaimed a hero in Czechoslovakia. Unbelievable.

China is at a different stage of development, human rights are violated here much more often. And still, we see improvements even here.

Perestroika is nothing more than refined Stalinism.

I do think the Cubans have to change some of the political structures there and allow critical voices, for their own sakes, because unless there is accountability the revolution will totally atrophy.

No reform ever came from the bottom, and it was always people who understood how the ruling class worked who turned out to be the reformers.

The Bolsheviks could not have retained power for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years, without the most rigorous and truly iron discipline in our Party.