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Post by pieter on Aug 27, 2006 5:00:36 GMT -7
Jan Józef Lipski From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jan Józef Lipski (born 26 May 1926 Warsaw, died 10 September 1991 Kraków) Polish critic and literature historian, socialist politician, freemason (for a long time Master of the Copernicus Lodge). As a soldier of the Home Army (Armia Krajowa), he fought in the Warsaw Uprising. Editor of Jan Kasprowicz, Benedykt Chmielowski and Gabriela Zapolska. Between 1956 and 1957 he was an editor of the pro-reform weekly “Po prostu”; from 1957 to 1959 he was president of the Klub Krzywego Kola. In 1964 Lipski organized the Letter of the 34 (objecting the expansion of censorship in communist Poland). In 1975 he signed the Letter of 59 and in 1976 he co-funded the Workers' Defence Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotnikow); as one of the most active members of this organization he organized help for the workers who protested in June 1976 against price raisings in Radom and Ursus. In 1980, Lipski became a member of the Solidarity Union and was elected a delegate to the 1st Delegates’ Rally to represent the Masovia Region (based in Warsaw). As the only senior member of the anti-communist opposition, he re-established the Polish Socialist Party (Polska Partia Socjalistyczna), which he led from 1987. In 1989 he was elected Senator from Radom and was a member of the Obywatelski Klub Parlamentarny (Civic Parliamentary Club); he died while in office.
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Post by pieter on Aug 27, 2006 5:01:36 GMT -7
The Workers’ Defence Committee
The Workers’ Defence Committee (Komitet Obrony Robotników, KOR) was a Polish civil society group that emerged under communist rule to give aid to prisoners detained after labor strikes in 1976 and their families. KOR was a strong example of successful organizing related to specific issues relevant in the public's daily lives, a precursor and inspiration to efforts of Solidarity a few years later. This organization was the first major anti-communist civic group in Poland, borne of outrage at the government crackdown in June 1976 and with the purpose to “stimulate new centers of autonomous activity.” It raised money through sale of its underground publications, through fund-raising groups in Paris and London, and grants from Western institutions. KOR sent open letters of protest to the communist government, organizing legal and financial support for the families of the detainees. The leaders of the organization established an activities and coordination center and offered analysis on workers’ conditions within Poland, collaborating often with Western journalists on articles. The group worked with sympathetic lawyers to get better representation for the strikers and obtained medical diagnoses from doctors to present as evidence in the trials. The group smuggled in mimeograph machines to print its underground newsletter Komunikat, which had a circulation of around 20,000 by 1978. As a sort of side project of KOR, an underground publishing house called NOWA was founded using mimeograph machines owned by KOR to print works critical to the regime in addition to reproducing banned writings from thinkers outside the Warsaw Pact such as George Orwell. NOWA had its own print shops, storehouses, and distribution network, and financed itself through sales and contributions. In the fall of 1977 KOR collaborated with intellectuals in the Warsaw community to establish the Flying University, a series of lectures organized by unofficial student groups to discuss ideas about freedom that could not be debated in public. The government harassed KOR members as it did to any other hint of civil society in Poland: beating up and jailing dissidents, infiltrating and interrupting lectures, and conducting searches of dissidents’ houses. However, KOR became an inspiration for the nation when its efforts finally paid off when the Polish government declared amnesty for jailed strikers in the spring of 1977. In that year, it was renamed to Committee for Social Self-defence KOR (Komitet Samoobrony Spolecznej KOR). The organization is often forgotten in the wake of Solidarity's success in the 1980s, but KOR remained an important force in bringing down communism in Poland.
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Post by pieter on Aug 27, 2006 5:06:07 GMT -7
Another member of KOR was Jerzy Andrzejewski (August 19, 1909, Warsaw, Poland - April 19, 1983, Warsaw) who was a prolific Polish author. In 1976 he was one of the founding members of KOR.
List of works
Unavoidable Roads (1936, a collection of short stories) Mode of the Heart (1938, first novel, winner of award from the Polish Academy of Literature) The Inquisitors Ashes and Diamonds (1948, and the film version won the International Critics' Prize at the 1959 Venice Film Festival) An Effective War Gates to Paradise A Sitter for a Satyr (published in the United Kingdom as He Cometh Leaping upon the Mountain)
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Post by pieter on Aug 27, 2006 5:08:57 GMT -7
Other founding members of KOR were Stanislaw Barañczak Ludwik Cohn, Jacek Kuroñ, Edward Lipiñski, Antoni Macierewicz, Piotr Naimski, Antoni Pajdak, Józef Rybicki, Aniela Steinsbergowa, Adam Szczypiorski, fr. Jan Zieja and Wojciech Ziembiñski.
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