Scholar Interviews
Questions
- Vladimir Tismaneanu: What source do you use in your classroom to help students understand the events of 1989?
- Vladimir Tismaneanu: How do you teach the letters found in Adam Michnik's book?
- Vladimir Tismaneanu: How do you teach Adam Michnik's book in the classroom?
- Vladimir Tismaneanu: How do you help your students interpret the passage you read about an independent, self-governing union?
- Bradley Abrams: How do you help students make sense of 1989?
- Bradley Abrams: What sources do you use to teach 1989?
- Bradley Abrams: What else is significant about the Declaration of the Creation of Charter 77?
- Bradley Abrams: How did the regime respond to Charter 77?
- Bradley Abrams: Why is the 28th of January remarkable?
- Bradley Abrams: How do you put the anti-Charter into context for students?
- Padraic Kenney: What is remarkable about the poem and the leaflet together?
- Padraic Kenney: How should students interpret the poem?
- Padraic Kenney: What is significant about the poem?
- Padraic Kenney: Does this poem help explain the strike?
- Padraic Kenney: How do you analyze the leaflet?
- Padraic Kenney: What is significant about the leaflet?
- Padraic Kenney: What sources help us understand the strikes?
- Maria Bucur: Is there a particular source that is important to study?
- Maria Bucur: How do students study 1989 in your classroom?
- Maria Bucur: What is difficult to understand about the "Common European Home" speech?
- Maria Bucur: What is important about Ceausescu's last speech?
- Maria Bucur: How do you help students understand Ceausescu's last speech?
- Maria Bucur: What is unique about viewing Ceausescu's last speech?
- Bradley Abrams: How do you use the Charter Declaration and the anti-Charter together with students?
Padraic Kenney: What is significant about the leaflet?
Transcription
This is not the kind of source you expect to see at a strike, certainly not a Solidarity strike. The Solidarity model of strikes was you occupy the factory, you sleep there, you have all your meals there. A priest comes in and takes confession and holds masses maybe several times a day. And there’s a kind of a sacred space around the gate where flowers are put, where banners are hung up, where pictures of the Virgin Mary are hung up. And maybe there are crosses and things like that and people are passing food back and forth.
And much of that was going on there as well, but now we see there’s another angle that’s coming in where here are these anarchists who are involved in the strike and are bringing a completely different style to the strike, both a different way of acting and a different set of demands, too.
I would say that one of the things that happens at this moment is that, the Communist authorities had an idea that they had sort of pacified the country. You’ll always have strikes but you can deal with it. I don’t want to say that they’re now frightened by these anarchists, but it does suggest a kind of a bridging of gaps that might lead to new, unpredictable protest movements. Once the anarchists and the workers get together, who knows what’s going to happen?