From the start Michnik set himself up as a moral authority, riding on his (unquestionably magnificent) dissident past, although few now consider him as such. He was the éminence grise behind the first post-Communist government to emerge in free elections, and he continued to wield considerable influence in government throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s. His need to resort to litigation against his critics instead of responding to them is a mystery to many. 

Both in this book and elsewhere, Michnik is at pains to present the outcome of the 1989 "Round Table" talks with the Communists (semi-free elections, and a compromise with the Communists as a result of which General Jaruzelski became president of the first post-Communist government) and Poland's subsequent transition to democracy as the best option that could have been achieved, and he is proud of his role in it.

This achievement is now, according to him, threatened by "nationalism", "witch-hunts" and the forces of reaction in the form of "anti-Communist Bolsheviks" (i.e., conservatives and Catholics) whose hatred and lust for revenge know no bounds. And "fascists", of course — not a word he uses in this book, packaged as it is for Western consumption, but he throws it around freely in Poland. Last year he organised a conference about the fascist threat looming over Poland.

Very little of all this is known outside Poland. Gazeta Wyborcza is also influential with foreign correspondents; it tends to be where they get their information. As a result, that information tends to be one-sided. And since it reflects the newspaper's stance, very little is also known about the real state of affairs in Poland — and about how Michnik is really seen there. The extreme polarisation of attitudes, the accusations of "hate speech", the increasingly hysterical and violent reactions on both sides — to this atmosphere Michnik and his paper have contributed in very large measure.

The three essays in Part II contain nothing original and little of interest about either the French Revolution or Stendhal; they are hooks on which to hang thinly-veiled attacks on Michnik's opponents and inveigh against "revolution" and "cleansing". The point would have been clear enough to Polish readers when these articles first appeared — it was hard to miss, since no other was discernible — but English readers will be mystified. The gist is that revolutions tend to be bloody and executions are bad things: "behind the backs of those idealists of cruelty and apostles of terror hovered out-and-out scoundrels, who used revolutionary slogans and the guillotine to settle dirty accounts, to blackmail, and to pursue shady interests. The idealist fanatic is followed by thugs, scoundrels and hypocrites. This is the fate of every revolution." The conclusion is that revolutions should be avoided. The tacit suggestion is that we should be grateful to Adam Michnik for helping to avoid one in Poland. The money culture is bad, too; in the essay on Stendhal — a good, solid B-plus first-year student essay — Louis-Philippe's slogan "enrichissez-vous!" (quoted from a book by a man called Zahorski) is viewed with disfavour.