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Aleksander Smolar - A difficult child with a red silk scarf (91/201)

94 views · Published 18 December 2018 · 1:42 · Indexed 24 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: I don’t think I was too popular with the teachers – I was a difficult child and I responded in a way which they tolerated with difficulty. By that I don’t mean that I talked back at them but I sat there staring at them with a look of contempt and rage and they couldn’t bear that look I gave them even though formally, there was nothing they could accuse me of.

I was – for me this was always a separate chapter of my life – I was always a member of lots of different organisations. I had a need to be involved and to be active so I was in the scouts. Those scouts were different then. It was scouting, Red Scouts I remember, I used to wear a red scarf… a Soviet scarf, it was made of silk. It was super refined compared with the Polish scarves which were made of dyed fabric. I had this very fine silk one and I remember…

[VT] From your father?

From somewhere in Russia. They had a lot of contacts, so they’d got it from somewhere but from where I don’t know. I remember one of my schoolmates – he wasn’t by any means a friend – pulled this scarf off my neck in the street obviously as a sign of ideological enmity. This was also something that I came across, not often but still it happened.

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