Zygmunt Bauman was a Polish-born sociologist and philosopher. He was driven out of the Polish People's Republic during the 1968 Polish political crisis and forced to give up his Polish citizenship. He emigrated to Israel; three years later he moved to the United Kingdom. He resided in England from 1971, where he studied at the London School of Economics and became Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, later emeritus. Bauman was a social theorist, writing on issues as diverse as modernity and the Holocaust, postmodern consumerism and liquid modernity.
Bauman in 2013
Bauman in the uniform of major of Internal Security Corps (1953)
Bauman in Wrocław, 2011
Bauman in Berlin, 2015
1968 Polish political crisis
The Polish 1968 political crisis, also known in Poland as March 1968, Students' March, or March events, was a series of major student, intellectual and other protests against the ruling Polish United Workers' Party of the Polish People's Republic. The crisis led to the suppression of student strikes by security forces in all major academic centres across the country and the subsequent repression of the Polish dissident movement. It was also accompanied by mass emigration following an antisemitic campaign waged by the minister of internal affairs, General Mieczysław Moczar, with the approval of First Secretary Władysław Gomułka of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR). The protests overlapped with the events of the Prague Spring in neighboring Czechoslovakia – raising new hopes of democratic reforms among the intelligentsia. The Czechoslovak unrest culminated in the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on 20 August 1968.
The commemorative plaque at the University of Warsaw for the students demanding freedom of speech in 1968
Władysław Gomułka with Leonid Brezhnev in Berlin on 17 April 1967
The Dziady theatrical event and its cancellation triggered student protests and violent response by the authorities
General Mieczysław Moczar initiated and led the widespread antisemitic campaign of 1968