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Aleksander Smolar - Establishing a profile for 'Aneks' (45/201)

135 views · Published 18 December 2018 · 1:45 · Indexed 13 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: We knew perfectly well that we had neither the resources nor the right profile – I mean, our awareness of who we were played a crucial role here. Most of us were at least of Jewish descent; not everyone, of course, but the majority. So in other words, we described our goal modestly: firstly, we are helping. The first title which I came up with was over-complicated: 'Overseas Supplement', but it was exactly the same, and then someone said: why not Aneks? And it became 'Aneks'. We published reprints mostly of intellectual debates on crucial topics that were taking place in the West which our readers, our potential readers in Poland needed to know about. These were topics which directly affected our countries, namely the countries of Central and Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union, as well as more general topics that broadened people’s intellectual horizons. In my opinion we could still do with something like this because unfortunately, there is a certain tendency to pull up the drawbridge even in intellectual circles. That’s apparent from the different analyses when people write about present-day Poland and this PiS government, about populism – very rarely is there a comparative perspective, meaning that a whole mass of things that happen in Poland have no reference to what is happening elsewhere. In other words, we need to look for the source which in this case is more than just something concrete, but never mind about that now. In any case, that was the profile of our publication.

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