The Church and the Left

Polish newspaper editor Michnik, a theorist of the Solidarity movements and a major player in the 1989 negotiations that ended Communist rule, here illuminates the rationale for the country's leftist intelligentsia's alliance with the staunchly conservative Roman Catholic Church. In incisive essays that assume familiarity with the Polish scene, he argues that the Church's resistance to Stalinist control constituted a strong defense of human liberties, and discusses how the regime of Communist leader Wladyslaw Gomulka turned first against the secular left, then against the Church. Calling for a dialogue between the left and Christianity, Michnik warns against a resurgent, all-embracing, fundamentalist Church. Written in 1976 and published in Poland in 1981, this book includes a 1979 essay on John Paul II's first pilgrimage as pope to his native Poland, and a 1987 essay in which Michnik warns against provincial nationalism and (in an about-face) counsels liberals to maintain their distance from the Church. Ost is the author of Solidarity and the Politics of Anti-Politics. (Mar.)