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Aleksander Smolar - The Institute of Public Affairs (193/201)

144 views · Published 20 December 2018 · 2:43 · Indexed 19 October 2026

Channel: Web of Stories - Life Stories of Remarkable People · 2018 · News & Politics

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To listen to more of Aleksander Smolar’s stories, go to the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVV0r6CmEsFwlxPLurqAOCrabBgGrqLA7

Aleksander Smolar (b. 1940) is a Polish writer, political activist and adviser, vice-president of the Institute for Human Sciences and president of the Stefan Batory Foundation. [Listener: Vitek Tracz]

TRANSCRIPT: That was one domain, so to speak, of politics. The second was in support of forming an institute of democracy. And here, Soros disagreed – an institute of debate was nonsense. But in fact, it did happen because together with Krzysztof we set up something which exists to this day, the Institute of Public Affairs. From a fund which I haven't yet mentioned, we gifted two programmes which were the starting point for this Institute of Public Affairs headed by acclaimed social politicians and led by Jacek Kuroń. He was in charge of our social politics programme which was planned for a future government as this was a period when the left-wing – the post-communist left-wing – had gained power and needed a programme for when they would be in office. Later, Jacek was replaced by another well-known figure in Polish politics who became the vice-minister when Jacek was made Minister of Social Affairs and then later he was a minister himself – that was Michał Boni. Now he's an MEP. A second programme, focussing on administrative reform, was headed by someone who's now dropped out of politics even though he's still a young man – Jan Rokita. He's a very confrontational politician who at one point looked poised to become the Prime Minister of the Polish government but this didn't happen. So these were the two programmes that we gifted. They became the leaven for the growth of this institute, the Institute of Public Affairs. We were already doing this then – I didn't ask Soros, in fact, I didn't ask him about anything. This was the relationship we had, it was very interesting. I hold him in very high esteem understandably, I'm also full of admiration for him and I like him very much as a person. He has a certain reserve about him but he's also very sincere. I had an accident and he wrote to me immediately and then later on my first visit to the States, I went to his place for dinner and we spent hours talking just the two of us. He was very attentive and very sincere. You could see that in the case of my friend, Wiktor Osiatyński who died recently. Soros came to his funeral especially and said a few very kind words about, among other things, funding a grant in Wiktor's name.

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