In January 1968, Poland’s communist government banned Dziady, a Romantic play by Adam Mickiewicz, Poland’s national poet, from the stage of the Warsaw National Theater due to its alleged anti-Russian and anti-Soviet undertones. After its last showing on January 30, a couple of hundred students gathered to protest the government’s decision, ending with a demonstration in front of the poet’s monument. The police responded with force, beating the protesters and arresting thirty-five participants. Two students, Adam Michnik and Henryk Szlajfer, were expelled from the University of Warsaw. On March 8, students from UW organized a rally at the university in their defense, expressing their solidarity and condemning the government’s cultural policies. This protest also ended violently – the People’s Militia (Milicja Obywatelska, MO) and plainclothes Voluntary Reserves of People’s Militia (ORMO) dispersed the demonstration and brutally beat up participating students and bystanders.