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Polish activist Jacek Kuroń (1934-2004) helped to transform the political landscape of Poland. He was expelled from the communist party, arrested and incarcerated. He was also instrumental in setting up Workers' Defence Committee (KOR) and became a Minister of Labour and Social Policy. [Listeners: Jacek Petrycki, Marcel Łoziński; date recorded: 1987]
TRANSCRIPT: At that time, I was advancing up the career ladder very quickly, and within a short time, I'd been made head of the propaganda division in the ZMP committee for Warsaw. I was 19 years old. Somewhere in the beginning, soon after sorting work in the committee for Warsaw, I'd applied for membership of the Party, but then they asked me what I was reading. I told them I was reading '1920' by Piłsudski, because that's what I was reading then. So I was told that I shouldn't be reading that because I ought to be reading the history of the WKP(b). I told them I'd already read that to which they said, 'You can never read it enough.' I found that very funny. I found it funny because in Piłsudski's '1920', half the book is Piłsudski's, and the other half is a reprint of Tuchaczewski's 'March across the Vistula'. The collision of this fact with the fact that I was forbidden to read this and that's why I wasn't being accepted into the Party formed a part of my reflection that something wasn't right here, but it was only a very faint notion I have to say. Life here had - this poverty, this growing tension, this organisational failure - was much, much more important. I mean I was drawing closer to the conclusion that in practice, it was simply wrong.
