Look Who it Was Random video

Aleksander Smolar - My peers (29/201)

209 views · Published 18 December 2018 · 2:50 · Indexed 25 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 was his assistant lecturer so by its very nature our relationship was hierarchical; we later became friends when we were both émigrés. He left Poland, too, but he didn’t leave with Jewish travel documents – he simply got invited to Glasgow. He’d been removed from the university in Warsaw and like many other academics from that group, most of whom I was close to, for instance Leszek Kołakowski who went to Canada, the States and then later settled in All Souls in Oxford, Zygmunt Bauman who became a huge star – he died not so long ago but he was a huge star of post-modernism, post-modern sociology; he was a global authority. Bronisław Baczko, who also died recently, was there, too; he was an outstanding philosopher. There was also a very good sociologist there, Marysia Hirszowicz, Maria Hirszowicz. They formed a group of people with whom I felt a very strong bond, some of whom were my tutors – Brus taught economics, Bauman, Hirszowicz and Kołakowski sociology. This was a joint faculty – sociology and philosophy – and I studied a second faculty, sociology, so that was where I knew them from. I was Brus’s assistant lecturer, but Bauman proposed that I be his assistant lecturer in sociology. This was my natural environment and the fact that they all ended up living abroad was for me hugely significant. On the one hand, it clearly was sad that such people had to abandon Poland, but for me personally and for our group which later tried to organise itself – we published 'Aneks' – their presence was very important both as authorities and also as the authors of articles for us. They all – no, apart from Baczka – they all published articles in 'Aneks' and they constituted an essential element of our publication. In addition, I had a very close friendship with… well, with Brus with whom I obviously had a strong bond, with Leszek Kołakowski whom I knew earlier from the University of Warsaw. With Bauman there was later a very long hiatus in our mutual contact, but I also had a close friendship with him. He was hugely helpful in trying to find work for me. He always wrote letters of recommendation as did Brus, of course.

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