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It was May Day 1990. The Warsaw flat had been transformed for the party. Furniture was stowed away and deiform portraits of Lenin and Marx, their retouched complexions as flawless as their vision, had replaced family pictures. A single table covered with a red cloth stood against the bare white wall. Red carnations were tied with long ribbons of the Polish colours.

The guests arrived dressed as Pioneers in moss green shirts and red ties. The women wore no make-up and the men's hair was greased. No one kissed, instead they shook hands. Then sang the Internationale.

A young woman, an anaesthetist, giggled. She was hushed into silence. Humour did not befit the seriousness of the occasion. A chant followed: "Red! Red! Red!". We all took up the cry. "Red! Red! Red!"

Astonished passers-by stopped and stared from the pavement. A young man, his angular features sharp as if whittled by a knife, led the self-criticism. He appeared to speak from the heart.

"I doubted the wisdom of Lenin's analysis," he confessed.

"Shame!" admonished his peers.

"When I was at Pioneer Camp," admitted another, "I wore yellow socks instead of red." Jacek opened a volume of patriotic poetry by the Soviet 'laureate of the revolution', Vladimir Mayakowsky. His voice bristled with practised conviction.

"Say farewell forever to the past
we have turned the course of history,
as human beings and communists
we can never be bloodthirsty."

Anna took up the chant. "Say farewell for ever to the past."

"We have turned the course of history!" all cried together. We started to feel quite mad. The poem and chants, the mantras of dogma, were hypnotic. The words moved us though they were quite meaningless.

Later the parody ended. The dance on the grave of communism was an act of defiance, a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit. Someone tuned the television to Moscow's May Day parade. The angular man was arguing.

"Of course I'm frightened. Look at history: Russia always invades us and every family lost someone in Hitler's camps."

"When I was little I once caught three ants and put them into a jar," Anna said. "They started to climb out but I shook them down to the bottom. They started to climb again. Every time they tried to escape I shook the jar and down they fell. Finally, after hours, they gave up, it happened quite suddenly. I watched them for a long time but they made no more attempts to get away. The jar stayed outside for days in the rain and sun but the ants just stayed in a circle and twitched their whiskers."

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