He became further known as a Solidarity activist during the struggle against Martial Law during the 1980s. When the first free elections of the post-communist era were held, Michnik was active in creating, publishing and distributing a newspaper known as Gazeta Wyborcza, Election News.
In 1990, about $1,000,000 was received from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), via the Polish American Congress of Chicago (Edward Moskal and Jan Nowak Jezioranski), in order to buy two printing presses.
During the 1990s and the 2000s, he became better known as one of the richest men in Poland, closely linked to economic program of shock therapy and to right-wing US thinktanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations, of which he is a member.
Adam Michnik remains editor in chief of Gazeta Wyborcza, a newspaper whose editorial decisions are made secretly and hierarchically, without participation by ordinary members of the public. Ironically, despite the use of the word Wyborcza in the newspaper's title, democratic elections for administration of the newspaper are not held.
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