Interviews with Andrzej Celinski

I studied sociology at the University of Warsaw. My diploma is signed by Professor Stefan Nowak, a world-renowned sociologist. He lectured on numerous occasions at Stanford, at Yale, a truly outstanding sociologist, now also deceased for a number of years. But after my first year of college in 1968, I was removed from University, because of my participation in something called the March Events. This was a kind of rebellion by the cultured circles of the country, against censorship, against restrictions on freedom. So I was thrown out of college in my first year.

Incidentally as the only first-year student to be thrown out then. And I studied for a short time at the Catholic University of Lublin (KUL), which was the only place in Poland at the time. It was a private university and, interestingly, the only Catholic college operating in the Eastern Bloc. So in no other country of the so-called people’s democracies of Europe was there any Catholic university, nor any private schools, really. It was the only private Catholic university in the Soviet bloc. But I only studied there for a brief time, because after one year my right of enrollment at the University of Warsaw was returned to me. So I graduated from university.

I was also lucky in a way because of one of the professors of sociology who occupied position number three in my professorial ranking. Nowak was first, Szacki was 2nd, and Adam Podgórecki was third, specializing in sociology of law. And even while I was still in enrolled, so relatively early, he offered me a sort of informal assistantship at the university. This is significant in that is a kind of position at the university in the social sciences, which required approval from the provincial committee of the Communist Party.

Having been a student active in the March Events, I had no chance at all of getting that kind of approval, to get hired at the University. But then because I was a student and initially got some kind of technical position, then we were able to, my professor was able to skirt these restrictions. He was very right-wing in his outlook, I would say even nationalistic, he was an absolute anti-Communist. So then I got this job and for a while I was able to work, and relatively soon the authorities got wind that I was where I was. And so I was thrown out of University, already as an employee, in the year of 1977, effectively. Because I had put up quite a long fight, I was a unionist, and I had legal protection in that regard.

It was the same university chancellor who had thrown me out in 1968. A Mr. Zygmunt Rybicki, law professor. So he was the one that I sat and faced. So then afterwards, I returned to the University in 1981 – no, 1980, after the August strikes [at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk]. So that would be it as far as my early youth is concerned.

Andrzej Celinski was born on February 26, 1950, in Warsaw, Poland. Celinski graduated from the University of Warsaw with a degree in social sciences. After graduation, he became actively involved in several opposition movements including the Workers’ Defense Committee and Solidarity.

Celinski began organizing protests against Poland’s communist regime at an early age. As a teenager in 1966, he rallied thousands of people gathered for a High Holy Mass at Saint John’s Cathedral for a peaceful, anti-government march to the Communist Party headquarters in Warsaw. Celinski joined the 1968 and 1970 protests that were suppressed by the government.

Following the 1980 Lenin Shipyard strike in Gdansk, Celinski was tapped as an expert advisor to the Founding Committee of Solidarity, the first independent trade union in the communist bloc. Soon after, the members of the committee recognized his ability for organization and appointed him the secretary of the board of the Founding Committee. In this position, Celinski was tasked with structuring and organizing the body’s meetings. When authorities declared martial law and officially banned Solidarity in December 1981, Celinski was arrested for his activism and spent a year in prison.

After the fall of communism in Poland, Celinski was elected as a senator from Solidarity and served from 1989 to 1993. Celinski was then elected to parliament where he served for over a decade, including a stint as minister of culture from 2001 to 2002 in Prime Minister Leszek Miller’sgovernment.

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndrzejCeliski1 

Poland is a central European country bordered by the Baltic Sea, Belarus, Ukraine, Germany, Russia, Lithuania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Poland has a population of 38 million people; nearly 90 percent are Roman Catholic.

Poles struggled against foreign dominance from the 14th century and the modern Polish state is less than one hundred years old. Polish borders expanded and contracted through a series of partitions in the 18th century. After a brief period of independence and parliamentary democracy from 1918 to 1939, World War II brought occupation by Nazi Germany and the near annihilation of the Jewish population. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Poland’s Jewish population went from over 3 million in 1933 to 45,000 in 1950.

After the war, Poland became a Soviet satellite state and a communist system was imposed. Farms were collectivized, basic freedoms curtailed, and a culture of fear developed under a Stalinist regime. The 1960s brought greater prosperity and some liberalization. Labor protests in the early 1970s tested the communist government’s resolve and prompted modest reforms.

In 1978, Polish Archbishop and Cardinal Karol Wojtyla became Pope John Paul II, the first non-Italian to hold the position since the 16th century. The pope’s triumphant return to Poland in 1979 saw massive outpourings of public support, shaking the foundations of the government and inspiring the opposition to press for peaceful change.

In 1980, shipbuilders in the seaport city of Gdansk united to confront the government. Their calls for greater political liberties and improved working conditions developed into the Solidarity movement. Solidarity’s leader, Lech Walesa, became the movement’s voice. Protests and unrest spread throughout the country and the communists replaced their leadership. General Wojciech Jaruzelski became prime minister and declared martial law on December 13, 1981. Solidarity was outlawed and Walesa and other Solidarity leaders were imprisoned.

While martial law was lifted in 1983, Poland continued to stagnate. Mikhail Gorbachev’s elevation to leadership of the Soviet Communist Party in 1985 brought new pressures for reform in Poland. A failing economy and continued repression incited workers to a new wave of strikes in 1988. A desperate regime agreed to legalize Solidarity and conduct semi-free elections. In the 1989 parliamentary elections, Solidarity won 99 of the 100 Senate seats and 160 of the 161 lower house seats they were allowed to contest. Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a Solidarity leader, became Poland’s first non-communist prime minister in over four decades. In 1990, Lech Walesa was elected president with 74 percent of the vote. While Solidarity splintered as Poland democratized, a coalition government of anti-communist parties won fully free parliamentary elections in 1991.

Poland transitioned to a market economy and applied for integration into western institutions. Economic dislocation returned the former communists, now social democrats, to power in 1993. Free elections and peaceful transitions in the following decades solidified Poland’s multi-party democratic system. Reforms eventually led to a more robust economy and Poland joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.

In Freedom House’s Freedom in the World 2013, Poland earned the status “Free,” (as it has since 1990) receiving the best possible rankings in the categories Political Rights and Civil Liberties.