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Aleksander Smolar - Change needs to be radical (177/201)

112 views · Published 20 December 2018 · 2:00 · Indexed 14 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: You could say that fidelity here was defined differently, it is simply this: you have to give everyone, workers included, the chance to live in a normal – meaning a Western – country. You had to create democratic conditions, namely the right to have organisations, protests, representation and so on. On the other hand, it was essential that market conditions be introduced as quickly as possible because, as the later experiences of post-Soviet countries showed, if this process is introduced slowly, it will collapse. And so it's not possible to slice off this tail, so to speak, bit by bit; it needs to be severed at once so these changes need to be radical. This was one of the fundamental points of disagreement in that first period when the model of transformation as well as its symbol was Leszek Balcerowicz, the Deputy Prime Minister in Mazowiecki's government.

In any case, I stayed in close contact with Jacek even once he was no longer a minister after the presidential elections were lost, by which time he was very sick, and I would visit him often. I would visit him often and I could see his views for what they were. This grieved me deeply. I think I understood the reason for this, the ideological one primarily but also the purely psychological one. This, however, didn't affect our separation because by then he was already unfortunately marginalised. My contact with Karol was very casual. I see him from time to time and he is someone who is very dear to me, but I can't say that I see him often.

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