Poland: Dziady's Public

When Wladyslaw Gomulka's increasingly restrictive regime recently closed down a classic play called Dziady, the official reason was "hooligan excesses" —meaning that the audience clapped loudest at the anti-Russian lines. Last week Dziady's public grew louder still. Protesting fines slapped on Warsaw University students for demonstrating against the ban, some 3,000 students paraded through the downtown campus for two days shouting slogans. The government's answer: truckloads of helmeted militiamen, who used truncheons and tear gas to try to subdue the demonstrators. To no avail. At week's end, the students took to the streets again.