Political developments in Czechoslovakia subject of special issue (no. 253) of Kultura, with contributions from Juliusz Mieroszewski, Gustaw Herling-Grudziński, Bogdan Osadczuk, Józef Czapski, and Edward Raczyński, as well as a chronicle of the events of 1967–8 and contributions from behind the Iron Curtain. Czech- and Slovak-language issues are also published under the respective titles Mimorádne cislo and Zvlástni cislo.
POLAND
Beginning of the so-called March Events – student demonstrations are dispersed by force, an official anti-Semitic campaign is initiated, students and members of the intelligentsia are repressed. Exodus of Polish intellectuals, among them Leszek Kołakowski, Krzysztof Pomian, Leopold Unger, Witold Wirpsza, and Jerzy Pomianowski, most of whom seek an association with Kultura.
At a gathering of communist party activists Gomułka states: “There is a very close political and ideological affinity between the Mieroszewski line and the slogans and concepts proclaimed by the instigators of the last events”. In the May issue of Kultura (no. 247) Mieroszewski responds: “That is essentially true. But it must be added that the ʻlast eventsʼ are by no means the ʻlastʼ”. In the main communist newspaper Trybuna Ludu (The People’s Tribune) Gomułka offered his appraisal: “The Paris Kultura, financed by the CIA, pursues a perfidious reactionary line that mirrors current power politics”; in Głos Szczeciński (Szczecin Voice) Klaudiusz Hrabyk noted: “While Mieroszewski of the Paris Kultura pens reform proposals for Poland with one hand, with the other he beckons a bevy of mercenary slanderers and vile defamers who seek to drag Poland through a quagmire of lies, insults, amoral muck, and ideological nihilism”; and a book by party activist Witold Filler The Theory and Practice of the Paris Kulturais published.
WORLD
Warsaw Pact armies crush Prague Spring. Tet Offensive on Saigon. Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy are assassinated. Wave of student protests in Europe and the United States.
