They had added a song to their repertoire: a cover of the Clash’s “Know Your Rights” in which Zhadan included the 20 lessons of my book in the lyrics. In June 2017, just before I left for that trip to Poland, I went to New York see his band. So much was in that head, so much talent, so much to say: and he had refused to bow it. When he refused, attackers broke his skull. Zhadan joined a group of locals who tried to defend city buildings. At the time, Russian soldiers, mercenaries and nationalists were pouring across the Ukrainian border, creating the appearance of civil unrest in east Ukrainian cities such as Kharkiv, where he lives. In 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine, he took to the internet to work against Russian propaganda. Serhiy Zhadan is an extraordinary Ukrainian creator of culture: novelist, poet and singer in a ska band. 10 (“believe in truth”) were inspired by my contemporaries. In Poland the book was read aloud in protests throughout the country. But to my surprise it also reached back into Eastern Europe. It did reach Americans, which was gratifying. It was meant to help Americans recognize patterns of oppression in time to act. I wrote “On Tyranny” in response to the American presidential election of 2016, informed by what I have learned from the European past about how democracies fall and how individuals can respond. That July was the last time I saw my doctoral advisor Jerzy Jedlicki, a Holocaust survivor who was interned in a camp in communist Poland. I am a historian of Eastern Europe who has written about Nazism and Stalinism and who was educated by people who experienced and were repressed by communism. It was a long, strange journey for those words. I had a dreamy sense that the words were familiar: a protester, I realized, was reading aloud from a Polish translation of my book “On Tyranny: Lessons From the Twentieth Century,” which had been published a few months earlier. Now in the dark, we walked hand in hand through the trees toward a voice I heard projected by microphone. The route was long, and I had just about given up when a bicycle taxi appeared and gave us a ride, for free, to the edge of the woods around the palace. A protest march was underway in defense of an independent judiciary, so we joined it.Īs the march proceeded down a long boulevard toward the presidential palace, I put my daughter, then 5, on my shoulders. It was July 20, 2017, and my family had just arrived in Warsaw.
Regimes use your data as bullets.It was one of those uncanny nights when everything blurs and then clarifies. Protect your confidentiality and maintain your data to protect freedom.Those bonded by common goals, as opposed to religion or politics, are more likely to be successful.Discusses social inequities to keep your community a community.Reading books is an easy way to stay informed because they offer more details.Stay informed about the current climate to avoid becoming blinded by propaganda.Stop regimes from oppressing its foes by refusing to go along with it.Do not justify or brush off hazardous dialect and imagery.If A military presence that is not certified by the state is something to be concerned about.