“Anyone who has suffered that humiliation, at some level, wants revenge. I know all the lies. I saw people being killed. But I also know that revanchism is never ending. And my obsession has been that we should have a revolution that does not resemble the French or Russian, but rather the American, in the sense that it be for something, not against something. A revolution for a constitution, not a paradise. An anti-utopian revolution. Because utopias lead to the guillotine and the gulag.” Adam Michnik.
Watching Putin beside Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, NYT columnist Roger Cohen thought of François Mitterrand and Helmut Kohl hand-in-hand at Verdun in 1984 and also remembered Willy Brandt on his knees in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1970. And writes: "Do not tell me that the people in the streets of Bangkok and Bishkek and Tehran dream in vain of freedom and democracy. Do not tell me that lies can stand forever. Ask the Poles. They know"
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