Polish dissident Adam Michnik wins prestigious Spanish award

The Princess of Asturias Foundation announced on Wednesday that Polish intellectual and dissident Adam Michnik has been awarded its prize for communication and humanities.

Michnik, 75, was one of the leading thinkers and most outspoken critics of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe during the Cold War era. While once a firm communist, his opposition grew after the anti-Jewish purges of Poland’s communist regime.

Throughout his life, he was imprisoned several times but has never ceased speaking out in favor of democracy and against autocratic rule.

“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,” said the jury of Spain's one of the prestigious awards.

Today, Michnik, a journalist and historian, remains the editor-in-chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, the Polish newspaper that he founded.

He is also a committed opponent of the current Polish government, which he said built “its identity around hatred toward refugees,” and has reported on Poland’s pushback of Middle Eastern refugees along the Belarusian border.

His attention has also shifted to Ukraine and Russia since the war broke out in February.

Speaking to the New Yorker in April, Michnik said Russian President Vladimir Putin “is leading Russia toward a catastrophe … a trap with no idea of getting out.”

During his time as a reporter, he met Putin twice. The first time, he had good impressions, but by the second time, he described him as a “gangster.”

While upset by Putin’s attack on Ukraine, he also believes a Russian defeat could spark democratic change in the country.

“I am sure that Ukraine will become for Putin what Afghanistan became for (Leonid) Brezhnev,” Michnik said in a recent interview with Radio Free Europe, referring to the former Soviet leader who ordered the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, believing the country could be dominated in a matter of weeks.

The Princess of Asturias Awards are often likened to the Nobel Prize of the Spanish-speaking world.

Last year, Turkish-German scientists Ozlem Tureci and Ugur Sahin won an award for their work developing the COVID-19 vaccine.