The long-awaited trial of Jacek Kuron and Karol Modzelewski opened in Warsaw on January 3. The two revolutionary Marxist student leaders were accused of playing the leading role in the March 1968 student demonstrations in Poland and of having received material aid from the world Trotskyist movement.
Kuron and Modzelewski are the principal defendants in the mass trial of students arrested after the student demonstrations which shook the Gomulka regime and gave powerful encouragement to the development of the "Czechoslovak spring."
The specific charges, according to a Reuters dispatch of January 5, were as follows: (1) that they received a duplicating machine and stencils from the Fourth International, allegedly sent from Belgium in a box of medical supplies; (2) that they formed an organization for the purpose of instigating demonstrations; and (3) that the March demonstrations were planned in Modzelewski's home.
This is the second time that the two revolutionary socialists have been placed on trial because of their political opposition to Gomulka's bureaucracy. In July 1965 Kuron was sentenced to three years and Modzelewski to three and one-half years in prison for distributing an "Open Letter" in reply to their expulsion from the Communist party and its youth organization. Released a year before their sentences were up, they were arrested once again in the purge that followed the March demonstratiins and have been held in jail since then.
In their "Open Letter" the two student leaders called for the overthrow of the bureaucracy in Poland, the establishment of a government based on democratically elected workers councils, and the adoption of a revolutionary internationalist perspective. In many points, the appeal paralleled positions long advocated by the world Trotskyist movement.*
Notes
* The text of the "Open Letter, " together with related documents, is available in Revolutionary Marxist Students in Poland Speak Out (1964-1968), Merit Publishers, 873 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10003. $1.25.