The condemnation aimed, not to prevent the spread of nonconformist ideas among the youth -- Gomulka is too realistic for that -- but rather to nip in the bud any attempt to elaborate a platform which might serve as a program for an organized Communist Left Opposition. Such a Marxist and revolutionary program would deprive the Polish bureaucracy of any ideological defense. Hence the repressions.
The young oppositionists were punished in the hope of stopping the movement. Instead, their victimization broadened and deepened resistance among the intellectuals.
The following chain of events took place (see: "Polish Intellectuals Agitated by Kolakowski's Expulsion" by George Novack, World Outlook, December 23, 1966): The celebrated philosopher, Leszek Kolakowski, was ousted from the party for his outspoken lecture under the auspices of the Socialist Youth Union on October 21, 1966, which criticized the shortcomings of the Communist regime. He had previously protested the persecution of Kuron and Modzelewski. .
Thereupon a number of well-known authors who belonged to the CP sent a letter to the authorities along the lines of Kolakowski's criticisms and were thenselves excluded from the party.
The Warsaw University students were in the forefront of the protest actions. On March 23, one of them, Adam Michnik, who had spoken up against Kolakowski's expulsion, was suspended from his studies for a year on misconduct charges. He was one of six suspended for their part in the protest meetings. The other five have since been reinstated.
Seventy-one fellow students who came to Michnik's defense were also expelled from the university branch of the Socialist Youth Union. They were among the more than 1,000 students and 150 professors who requested the Warsaw University authorities to show leniency toward those who had spoken up at the meetings. All the protesters among the Socialist Youth Union members were subjected to heavy pressure and asked to withdraw their signatures. Few complied.
According to a notice posted by the Socialist Youth Union, Michnik was formally accused, not of defending Kolakowski, but of trying to disrupt last year's May Day parade in Warsaw by displaying "incorrect slogans." During the parade a group of students chanted a number of slogans before party leader Gomulka, protesting the disbanding of the philosophical faculty and the imprisonment of Modzelewski, a former lecturer at the university. They also demanded a return to the ideas of "October" and workers' democracy.
Even though the Polish bureaucracy can keep Modzelewski in prison, the suppression of revolutionary ideas and their proponents only serves to expose its own ideological and political nakedness and thereby makes more obvious the necessity for the antibureaucratic revolution championed by the two young Communists.
20,000 KOREAN STUDENTS PROTEST PHONY ELECTION
More than 600 students were arrested in Seoul June 15 for demonstrating against the rigged election just held by South Korean dictator Chung Hee Park. The Japan Times reported June 17 that 20,000 students took part in the demonstration.
The Asahi Evening News in Tokyo commented June 16 on the election itself that "In one location, the odd phenomenon appeared of 101 per cent of the electorate voting, while in another, evidence was reportedly found that votes for Opposition party candidates had been burned."
Asahi reported that "...the question of deployment of troops to Vietnam -- and sending even more troops is expected soon -- has also created dissension among the people."
SOLZHENITSYN APPEALS FOR AN END TO THE SOVIET CENSORSHIP
By George Saunders