Look Who it Was Random video

Aleksander Smolar - Five ladies and me (32/201)

157 views · Published 18 December 2018 · 1:15 · Indexed 8 November 2026

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

Watch on YouTube

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 had six people working under me – one man, who was a friend who’d also graduated from the same department as I and with whom I didn’t have a good relationship while we were students, but when were worked together, we got on very well. And five ladies who were charming, who loved me completely, who simply… because if they had wanted to take their revenge on me, it would have been… I really knew nothing about this work, they could have done for me in five minutes. They helped me, they told me everything. I knew the theory, I knew that the game between an enterprise and a planner, which is what he was symbolically called in the language of economics, always depended on the planner’s attempts to force the greatest possible production while from below, there was cheating in an effort to obtaining the highest price for the lowest production work and so on and so on. I knew in theory how to act to oppose the authorities but they, the ladies mainly, told me what I needed to do. I remember that there was the wife of General Karlicki there. It was a charming place and I played a totally different role. This fascinated me over many months and I was learning, I was learning many things.

More from this channel