Adam Michnik 2022 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Warsaw on 17th October 1946, Adam Michnik studied History at university in the Polish capital until he was expelled in 1968 due to his participation in protests. He eventually graduated in 1975 with a distance degree in History from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań. Imprisoned several times since the 1960s, he was one of the founders of the Workers’ Defence Committee (KOR movement) and a member of the Solidarity union since its creation in 1980. From 1977 onwards, he worked as an editor for several independent magazines and formed part of the editorial team of the Niezależna Oficyna Wydawnicza (NOWA), one of the most prominent independent publishing houses of the Polish opposition. In the so-called “revolutionary year” of 1989, he became a member of parliament and founded the independent newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, of which he remains editor-in-chief.

Adam Michnik with some of his colleagues in the Gazeta Wyborcza newsroom

Michnik is one of the best known and most prominent defenders of human rights in Poland and is considered one of the key figures in the recovery of democracy in the country, as well as an outstanding journalist. From the pages of Gazeta Wyborcza –currently one of the most widely distributed newspapers in Central Europe–, he has always defended dialogue over and above all kinds of divisions between the most diverse cultures, races, ideologies, societies and ethnic groups. He was also a strong advocate for his country’s entry into the European Union.

Michnik spent six years in prison under the Polish communist regime and was one of the promoters of national reconciliation, taking the Spanish model of the Moncloa Pacts as an example. In 1989, three years after his last stay in prison, he took up political office as a member of Poland’s first non-communist lower house.

He is the author of several books on political and historical issues and essays translated into various languages, such as Letters from Prison and Other Essays (1986), The Church and the Left (1992), Letters from Freedom: Post-Cold War Realities and Perspectives (1998) and In Search of Lost Meaning: The New Eastern Europe (2011). He has also interviewed a large number of public figures from around the world. His articles have been published in European newspapers and magazines such as Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Liberation and El País, and in the American periodicals The Washington Post and The New York Review of Books. In 2018, he was one of the thirty intellectuals who signed the Europe in Flames manifesto on the threat of populism. He is a member of the Reporters Without Borders Emeritus Board. An authority on Russian politics, he has closely followed and commented in different articles on the invasion of Ukraine this year, being highly critical of Vladimir Putin’s decisions and acts.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Holder of honorary degrees from several universities, he is Commander of Chile’s Order of Bernardo O’Higgins and has received the Officer’s Cross of Merit from the Republic of Hungary, the Order of Grand Prince Giedymin of Lithuania, Germany’s Grand Cross of Merit, the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise from Ukraine and the French Legion of Honour, among other distinctions. He has likewise received numerous international prizes and awards, including the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award (1986) and the Francisco Cerecedo Award for Journalism (Spain, 1999). In 2000, the International Press Institute (IPI) included Michnik in its list of 50 Press Freedom Heroes. He was conferred with the Goethe Medal from the German institute of the same name in 2011, the Freedom Prize of the Lithuanian Parliament in 2015, the Ortega y Gasset Award from the newspaper El País in 2016, the Italian International Primo Levi Award in 2018 and, that same year, the Gilel Storch Award, awarded by Judisk Kultur, the Swedish organization promoting Jewish culture.

MINUTES OF THE JURY

At its meeting in Oviedo, the Jury for the 2022 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities, composed of Luis María Anson Oliart, Gabriela Cañas Pita de la Vega, Adela Cortina Orts, Estrella de Diego Otero, Miguel Falomir Faus, Taciana Fisac Badell, Santiago González Suárez, Álex Grijelmo García, Miguel Ángel Liso Tejada, Helena López de Hierro d’Aubarède, Enrique Pascual Pons, José Manuel Pérez Tornero, Carmen Riera i Guilera, Fernando Rodríguez Lafuente and María Sefidari Huici, chaired by Víctor García de la Concha and with Alberto Anaut González acting as secretary, has decided to confer the 2022 Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities on Adam Michnik for his dedication to journalism and his influence on the recovery and defence of democracy in Poland.

Michnik’s struggle for human rights and dialogue led to his imprisonment under the Polish communist regime, yet he did not give up his firm opposition to dictatorship or his pursuit of reconciliation among his fellow citizens. Michnik, whose conception of Europe helped establish democratic values in his country, is also today a symbol of freedom of expression and humanism, as well as an ethical role model of resistance against authoritarian threats.

Oviedo, 11th May 2022

List of Princess of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities Laureates

Credits

Translation: Paul Barnes

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