The Magic Lantern

The leader of Solidarity, Wałęsa was born in 1943 and worked as an electrician at the Lenin shipyard in Gdansk, in northern Poland. He became involved in the illegal labor movement in the 1970s and led a strike at Gdansk’s Lenin shipyard in 1980. As part of these events, he participated in the formation of Solidarity and its formal recognition by the government that year.

Wałęsa was declared Time Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1981 and received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1983. As Garton Ash recounts, Wałęsa was a key participant in the Round Table talks and Poland’s free elections in 1989. Wałęsa became president of Poland in 1990 and served until 1995. He is currently a supporter of Poland’s EU membership.

Michnik was born in Warsaw in 1946, into a family of Communist intellectuals. He became a student activist and intellectual critic of the Polish Soviet regime, ultimately facing expulsion in 1968. He spent some time in prison following his expulsion and completed his academic studies in history in 1975.

Michnik became active in the Polish workers’ movement and underground newspapers, including Solidarity. He was jailed in the early 1980s after the declaration of Martial Law and was arrested again in 1985. He became an advisor to Solidarity in 1988 and participated in the Round Table talks and Polish elections in that capacity. He became the editor of Gazeta Wyborcza, a post he held until 2004, and briefly served in the Polish parliament. He has become a critic of Poland’s current conservative government and its Law and Justice Party.

Born in Kurow, Poland, Jaruzelski was deported to Siberia after the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939. He fought with the Soviets for Poland’s liberation from the Nazis, rose in prominence within the Polish army and became defense minister in 1968. Jaruzelski became Party First Secretary in 1981, effectively the head of government in Poland.

Jaruzelski declared martial law in 1981 and arrested much of Solidarity’s leadership. Martial law lasted until 1983. Jaruzelski presided over a period of profound economic crisis. The growing power of Solidarity and the leadership change in the Soviet Union allowed him to pursue a more moderate path of negotiation. Jaruzelski was a major participant in the Round Table talks, and his acceptance of the June election results was a significant turning point in the transition to democracy in Poland.

Born Karol Wojtyła in 1920 and formerly the archbishop of Krakow, Wojtyła became the first non-Italian pope in centuries when he was elected in 1978. His visit to Poland in 1979 was a catalyst for further conversations about political reform and the possibility for a freer life. Pope John Paul II vocally supported Solidarity. His election, visit to Poland, and its impacts in Polish society, are frequently considered key turning points in the history of the Cold War and the gradual end of communism in Poland.

Born in 1896, Nagy was a lifelong Communist. He served in the Austro-Hungarian Army in World War I and then in the Soviet Army after some time as a prisoner of war in Soviet territory. After repatriation, he performed underground Party work in Hungary. He spent much of the 1930s and World War II within the Soviet Union serving as an informer on Hungarian colleagues. The death of Stalin in 1953 was a major catalyst for conversations about reform in Hungary, with authoritarians and reformers at odds with one another. Nagy was a voice for reform.

 After mass unrest against the government, Nagy became prime minister in October of 1956, facing a population that openly advocated for free elections and freedom from Soviet influence. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev ordered the movement to be put down with military intervention, and Nagy was kidnapped from the Yugoslav embassy and executed in 1958. In Garton Ash’s work, Nagy serves as a potent symbol of the Hungarian national past, and the trauma of Soviet interference in the country’s government. His rehabilitation and reburial in 1989 were catalysts for reform and a new openness in national political life. 

Kádár served as Interior Minister in Hungary in the early 1950s and initially supported the revolution, but eventually broke with Nagy. He came to power after Nagy’s execution, deciding to repudiate political reform. Garton Ash calls him a murderer by likening him to Macbeth. In power, Kádár pursued some economic liberalization, but by the 1980s, he was a strong critic of liberalization within the Soviet Union, and Gorbachev urged his replacement with someone younger who would understand the need to modernize.

For Garton Ash, Kádár symbolizes the aging and amoral leadership of communist regimes. Kádár never publicly repents of his role in Nagy’s literal and political death and urges against any reconsideration of the national past. Kádár's death in 1989 signaled that Hungary is moving forward, and that communism is becoming part of its past.

Gorbachev was born in Stavropol, Russia, in 1929. A lifelong Communist inspired by de-Stalinization, Gorbachev became a rising star in the Soviet Union’s Communist Party and became its general secretary in 1985. He pursued a strategy of reform and rejuvenation, known as restructuring of the economy (perestroika), and a relative relaxation of censorship (glasnost’ or, openness). Gorbachev was partly inspired by the historical example of the Prague Spring. Gorbachev repudiated the 1968 Brezhnev Doctrine and an interventionist Soviet foreign policy in Eastern Europe. His commitment to non-intervention in the Soviet bloc enabled the peaceful development of the 1989 reform and revolution process there. He was replaced by Boris Yeltsin in 1991, following the formal collapse of the Soviet Union.

As The Magic Lantern is primarily focused on events outside the Soviet Union, Gorbachev functions as the most obvious representative of Soviet power and influence in the region. His willingness to accept and even embrace a reduced role for the USSR allowed the revolutionaries of 1989 greater freedom of action without fear of violence.

A Slovak Communist, Dubček embraced a reform agenda when he became the Czechoslovak Party leader in 1968. Calling for “socialism with a human face,” he permitted cultural and political liberalization. In August of 1968, the Soviet military entered Czechoslovakia, as an enforcement of the “Brezhnev Doctrine,” which stated that communist governments would be defended with force from the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. Dubček was forced into retirement and expelled from the Communist Party by his successor in 1969 and became a forestry official.

In The Magic Lantern, Dubček is a symbolic reminder of past tragedy and the need to restore national dignity and freedom. He remained a loyal Communist, so in some ways he appears as an artifact of a distant past, in contrast to the dynamism of the students and the Civic Forum.

Havel was born in 1936 to a wealthy family, which meant that as a young person, he had less access to education than the children of workers or peasants, who had greater privilege in the communist state. Havel worked in theaters and gained a reputation as a Czech playwright. Havel came to political activity in the late 1960s, as Czech writers increasingly protested government restrictions on their creativity. Havel returned to political activity in 1977, after a show trial of the underground rock band The Plastic People of the Universe. Havel was one of the signatories of Charter 77, a document urging the Czechoslovak regime to honor its signing of the Helsinki accords, which included a commitment to human rights and expression. His essay “The Power of the Powerless,” which depicts the everyday deceptions required to live in communist regimes, became a classic of dissident literature. It was published as underground samizdat in 1978 and was widely distributed and translated. In it, Havel declares his certainty that the public can rise up and demand an authentic life, apart from the parroting of ideology that communist regimes require.

Havel and others were imprisoned for their public stance. Havel became de facto leader of the Civic Forum and the first president of Czechoslovakia. He presided over the peaceful dissolution of the country and the transition to Slovak independence. If The Magic Lantern has a hero, Havel occupies that role, as Garton Ash celebrates his humility, intellect, and personality as a driving force of Czechoslovakia’s revolution.