Vitaly Portnikov. Centenary of Giedroyc

Centenary of Giedroyc
Vitaly Portnikov

Date of publication: September 18, 2000

Last Thursday, 94-year-old Jerzy Giedroyc, editor-in-chief of the largest post-war newspaper of Polish emigration, Kultura , founder of the famous Literary Institute, publisher of Witold Gombrowicz, Czeslaw Miłosz, Gustaw Gerling-Grudziński, “director” of post-war Polish literature, brilliant, died in Maison-Laffite near Paris. an analyst who, for several decades—decades, not years—thought about what the relations of a democratic Poland would be with an independent Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus, and a democratic Russia. The true scale of the personality of this man, who during his lifetime was perceived by his contemporaries rather as a fading ideal of the Polish intelligentsia, will not be appreciated in the countries neighboring Poland for a long time. Giedroyc was tough and demanding towards his own homeland: he, who did so much to nurture Polish independent thought, preserve free literature and help the underground opposition during the years of martial law, refused all Polish orders and awards and never came to his homeland, left by him back in 1939. He, considered a Russophile, was a member of the editorial board Continent pages and providing Culture for publications by Russian dissidents, did not forget to warn about the danger of a revival of Russia’s imperial ambitions - a danger not so much and not only for the neighbors of this country, but for Russian society itself.

The attitude of the man who in Poland was simply called the Editor can hardly be explained today in one or two words. Adam Michnik speaks of Giedroyc as an “eastern cosmopolitan”, a citizen of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, who knew how to think in the spaces of the old Russian Empire. And indeed, this man, born in Minsk, formed in pre-war Poland, who lived for more than half a century in France, perceived as a single whole, first of all, the space of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth - Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus - and realized the connection of this space with Russia. “Not only the future of our countries, but also the future of a uniting Europe depends on the normalization of Polish-Russian relations. Our history is a bleeding register of mutual accounts. This antagonism is exacerbated by mutual ignorance. Both Russians and Poles have distorted ideas about each other.” , - wrote the editor-in-chief of Culture . "He had the courage to say unpopular things. He was always pro-Ukrainian, but never anti-Russian" , writes Adam Michnik about him.

It is necessary to say specially about the Ukrainian sympathies of Jerzy Giedroyc, since after the Second World War, overshadowed for the Polish emigration by the loss of Eastern Galicia with Lvov and Stanislav (present-day Ivano-Frankivsk) and the partisan movement in the lands of Western Galicia that remained part of Poland, the manifestation of sympathy for Ukrainians was like death. And Ukrainians abroad had their own account to pay against the Poles: from national confrontation during the years of independent Poland to the eviction of the Ukrainian population from their ethnic territories after the war (Operation Vistula). And in this atmosphere, Jerzy Giedroyc speaks about the inevitability and necessity of Polish-Ukrainian cooperation and mutual understanding, publishes the galaxy of Ukrainian writers who died in the 30s of the so-called “executed Renaissance”. There is still no Ukraine on the map, and few believe that it will appear - but Jerzy Giedroyc, a Pole from Minsk, begins to create Cultures with his own hands before the eyes of amazed readers the image of a different Ukraine - European-oriented, capable of producing talents, being intellectual and spiritually close to Poland. Even today, the Ukrainian intelligentsia itself manages to create the image of such a Ukraine with great difficulty. “No other publication has done what Kultura, not a single political party, group or person has done. This is a lot, but we must remember that all this happened outside of Poland and Ukraine ,” says Bogdan Osadchuk, a professor at the Free University of Berlin. There has never been anything like this in history, and these seeds sprouted well; now many politicians in Russia and Ukraine are guided by these very ideas . "

“I know that in Poland there are people who grew up from “Culture ,” says the Russian poet Natalya Gorbanevskaya. And, probably, not only in Poland. Giedroyc managed to set the style of the entire Eastern European emigration - the style of love with open eyes, love-responsibility, not simply allowing criticism, but requiring a critical attitude to what is happening and a realistic reassessment of the past. " Jerzy Giedroyc was the Polish Alexander Herzen of the times of the communist dictatorship, and "Culture" was a "bell" that brought the Poles out of apathy, liberated them from fear, glorified the words of truth from emigration and freedom ," writes Adam Michnik. Giedroyc not only wrote himself: he, who considered himself primarily a director, knew how to encourage others. This is how the famous Diaries of Witold Gombrowicz arose, one of the phenomenal works of Polish literature of the past century, which recorded a new state of mind of an intellectual from the East - the ability to realize the priority value of the Personality, its right to be itself in confrontation with the state, society, nation... Giedroyc and Gombrowicz, Giedroyc and Gerling-Grudzinski, Giedroyc and Milosz, Giedroyc and Czapski - magnificent duets of people who were bored in the West and raved about the East, but who managed to prove Poland’s spiritual right to be in the West. And this is perhaps more important than political declarations about NATO and the European Union; moreover, such declarations would have been impossible without the painstaking work of re-awareness of itself, if not by the entire Polish society, then at least by its active part.

“He lived a long time. It’s wonderful that he lived to see the triumph of his ideas - the end of the communist dictatorship, the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was he, with the power of his spirit and thoughts, who defeated the Soviet empire ,” writes Adam Michnik.

Gone as giants go. A few days before his death, he communicated with Culture readers on the Internet. Signed the latest issue of Culture . The latter - because, according to the wishes of the Editor, the publication of the newspaper ceases with his death: “I understand that with my departure from this world, “Culture” will also disappear. I agree with this. I did not raise my heirs because I did not know how to do this. However, I hope that I did something good for my homeland, for Poland . "