WARSAW — In Paris, West Berlin, London and Rome, the spring of 1968 was marked by student protests against the Vietnam War.

In Warsaw, too, students were protesting, but their cause was not the same as their Western counterparts. Young Poles took to the streets of Warsaw not to chant "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh" in solidarity with the Viet Cong, but rather to defend their own country's freedom and culture against a smothering communist rule.

Instead of chanting Ho's name, young Poles put flowers under the monument of Adam Mickiewicz, a 19th-century poet whose drama "Forefathers Eve," written in praise of the struggle for freedom, had recently been declared subversive and anti-Soviet, and its performance at the National Theater in Warsaw closed down.