The feature below is dedicated to Jerzy Wladyslaw Giedroyc (1906-2000), a noted Polish public figure, scholar, and journalist who laid the groundwork for European, equal, sincere, and strategic relationships between Ukraine and Poland. Regrettably, as varying political trends came to pass, this prominent personality, his ideas and heritage have begun to fade from public memory in Ukraine and Poland. Den/The Day has repeatedly turned to the legacy of this great Pole (until his dying day Giedroyc reiterated that there would be no free Poland without an independent Ukraine) and this time the occasion is more than appropriate, in view of what happened in Przemysl [the “March of Eaglets of Przemysl and Lviv” with anti-Ukrainian slogans on December 10]. Current events are proof that his ideas are getting even more topical than five, ten, even fifteen years ago. Obviously, the Ukrainian [political] elite is still convinced that Poland will remain the same, whereas it is changing rapidly, along with its attitude toward Ukraine. Perhaps this assumption is explained by the fact that this elite has not read Giedroyc’s works carefully enough…
For me, this year has been the Year of Jerzy Giedroyc, journalist, publisher and editor of the leading Polish-emigre literary-political journal Kultura in Maisons-Laffitte, a small town not far from Paris, while being at the head of the local Institute of Literature that actually served as the publishing house.
July 2016 marked the 110th anniversary of his birth, but the event attracted little public attention in Poland and Ukraine. That month the documentary “Jerzy Giedroyc: The Magic Power of Words” premiered (I co-authored the script and acted as presenter). Another fact that might surprise some is that I spent about half a year asking colleagues and people I knew or had met before (college teachers, scholars, politicians, journalists) about Jerzy Giedroyc. Practically no one had heard about the man. And this considering that the editor of Kultura, among other things, sought to help his readers learn more about Ukraine at a time when its independence seemed unattainable.
STUBBORN LITHUANIAN
This is how Jerzy Giedroyc described himself; he came from a poor Polish-Lithuanian aristocratic family and held the title of kniaz, or prince (he would be referred to as both the Editor and the Prince – the latter due to his moral integrity rather than noble birth).
He was born in Minsk in 1906 and would love his native city all his life. He didn’t like Warsaw where the Giedroyc family was repatriated in 1918. He was born in the Russian empire and started building a career in Poland between the world wars.
Before that, he had enrolled in a high school in Moscow (he had been sent there by his parents in the stormy year 1917), then found himself in revolutionary Petrograd – hence his fluent command of Russian. Jerzy was fond of Russian literature and his first and only wife was Russian, Tatiana Shevtsova (they eventually divorced but would be buried in one grave).
After returning to Minsk from Russia, Giedroyc studied at a high school, then at another one in Warsaw, after the family moved to Poland. In August 1920, while the Bolshevik troops suffered a shattering defeat by the Vistula, 14-year-old Jerzy served as a volunteer in the Polish version of the Signal Corps of the Warsaw General District Command.
He took a keen and lasting interest in Ukraine, so much so his closest friends and associates often thought it was excessive. He knew the language well enough and read Ukrainian texts unaided. He took up Ukrainian history in his last year at Warsaw University’s School of Law, under the able guidance of professor Myron Korduba. “Apart from me, there were only Ukrainians there who looked at me in amazement, as though I were an iron wolf,” he would recall later.
Jerzy took an active part in various youth organizations. He worked as a clerk dealing with press and parliamentary issues at the Ministry of Agriculture, and as head of the Presidium Department at the Ministry of Trade and Commerce. At the time, his working day was divided in halves. In the morning, he would work as a ministerial clerk. After hours, he would go to the office of the biweekly Bunt Mlodych (Rebellion of the Youth), renamed Polityka in 1937, both of which he edited.
It was probably at that time that he became aware of his role as an editor, even as a politician. Before and after the war, he would often said, “But I’m not an editor, just a politician who is using a periodical to popularize certain important views.” In the twilight years, when asked whether he had ever wanted to make a political career or occupy an important post, he would say, “No, never. I’ve always been fascinated by politics, but I’m a man who wants to walk his own road.”
September 1939 became Jerzy Giedroyc’s personal disaster. The state of Poland, built by the effort and energy of Josef Pilsudski, had existed for a little longer than two decades. Now, squeezed between Hitler’s and Stalin’s totalitarian regimes, it was the first victim of another world war. Its tidal wave carried Giedroyc to Romania. He worked there as a personal assistant to the Polish ambassador, and later as head of the Polish Department of the Chilean Diplomatic Mission in Bucharest. He also cooperated with the British Diplomatic Mission which dealt with Polish matters in Romania. With their help, he was evacuated to Istanbul.
He then left for Palestine. There he joined the Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade. He took part in the Libyan campaign and headed the Department of Military Press and Publications of the Bureau of Propaganda of the 2nd Polish Corps (including units organized by General Wladyslaw Anders, using Polish ex-prisoners and/or deportees from Soviet Russia). Eventually, he found himself in the Middle East where he published a prayer book in Ukrainian for the Eastern Orthodox Ukrainian soldiers of General Anders’ army.
Promoted to second lieutenant in January 1944, Jerzy Giedroyc followed the army on its way from Egypt to Italy. He worked for the Armored Troops Training Center in Gallipoli. In August 1944, his parents died during the Warsaw Uprising.
DIRECTOR AND EDITOR
In 1945, he was appointed as Director of the European Department at the Ministry of Information of the Polish Government in London. In October 1946, he became Director of the Instytut Literacki (Literary Institute) in Rome, a publishing house for demobilized servicemen. After Anders’ army was disbanded, its servicemen scattered across the world and there were no readers for the institute’s publications. It was then Jerzy Giedroyc, et al., decided to start publishing the monthly Kultura, along with a copyrighted book series.
To implement their project, they needed help from like-minded enthusiasts. Then the past war played its role. While in the Middle East, Giedroyc had met with Jozef Czapski and Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski, made friends with Juliusz Mieroszewski (who would become Kultura’s leading journalist) and with Zofia Hertz and her husband, Zygmunt. Before WW II, as editor, he had cooperated with journalists such as brothers Adolf, Aleksander, and Innocenty Bochenski, Cheslaw Milosz, and Stefan Kisielewski. Jerzy’s brother Henryk also joined the Kultura. Mostly by correspondence (his legacy boasts 150,000 letters), contacts were established with a broad range of authors/contributors, thus building a team, an “external” editorial office manned by people living in various parts of the world. It was thus the periodical Kultura became what it would remain until the last day.
The first issue came off the presses in June 1947, and in October the editorial office moved to Maisons-Laffitte not far from Paris. Giedroyc found the money to repay the Institute’s debts to the army. Now the Institute was free from the official Polish emigre circles and could count on the journal’s subscribers and sponsors to keep it in business (finding sponsors for each issue took quite an effort). They started publishing Zeszyty Historyczne (Historical Journals) that brought Poles back their true national history with lists of references and full texts thereof. This was followed by the Library series including features by journalists and literary works by authors from various countries. Kultura existed until 2000 and served as an important factor of European cultural and political life.
Polish writer and journalist Bogumila Berdychowska says that Kultura became the most significant periodical of the Eastern European emigre community in the West. It carried works by future Nobel Prize winners like Cheslaw Milosz and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.
UKRAINIAN SENTIMENTS
In the early 1950s Jerzy Giedroyc turned from Polonocentrism to the context of Polish existence, Polish historical, cultural, and political space. In his own words, the Editor wanted the world to see the best representatives of the neighboring peoples. Kultura started carrying features dedicated to Ukraine, launching a broad scale campaign aimed at overcoming misconceptions in the relations between Poland and Ukraine.
Giedroyc’s attitude was that the relationships with the peoples living next door had to be revised by first revising one’s own views that may be convenient for oneself, one’s own image (this is especially topical today). Second, there should be no monologue. Dialogue, an ability to hear what the other one has to say is more important than one nation’s self-affirmation at the expense of others.
There should be a permanent and frank Poland-Ukraine dialogue concerning mutual history, without hurting each other’s feelings, without intellectual destruction. Jerzy Giedroyc did his utmost to convince liberally minded Ukrainian intellectuals (e.g., Yurii Sheveliov, Leonid Mosendz, Yevhen Malaniuk, Ivan Kedryn-Rudnytsky, Ivan Koshelivets, Yurii Lavrinenko, Borys Levytsky, Ivan Lysiak-Rudnytsky) to cooperate with Kultura. In most such cases, Bohdan Osadchuk was very helpful. He wrote for Kultura and consulted Giedroyc in debates with Ukraine emigres.
I remember Mr. Osadchuk explaining exactly what Jerzy Giedroyc dared undertake. Most Polish and Ukrainian emigres came from conflict territories: Halychyna and Volyn. Worse so, the Poles believed that the Third World War was a matter of time, that the territories Poland had lost after the 1945 Yalta Conference (when Poland was divided by the Allies to please the Stalin regime) would be returned. He was caustically sarcastic on that futurologist subject, saying there would be no war. This is something we should remember.
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Political life continues in Poland and Ukraine. It keeps bringing surprises. I will not comment on this. I will just remind the reader that we in the 21st century do not seem to have learned Jerzy Giedroyc’s lessons. Without this knowledge our countries will never be free.
