Prof Staniszkis was a courageous person and a scientistWe will remember Prof Staniszkis as a courageous person and a scientist. There is much to her credit for changing things for the better in Poland

The eminent sociologist and political analyst Prof. Jadwiga Staniszkis has passed away. She will have turned 82 next week. The news of the professor’s death was confirmed to PAP on Monday afternoon by the daughter of the deceased.

Although she had been ill for several years and no longer spoke in public, her theses, views and analyses are still part of our reality. I received the news of her death with great sadness.

She was an outstanding scholar who participated in world intellectual debates without any complexes. Excellent English, knowledge of the latest literature, hard work and a brilliant mind made her a unique figure in the Polish humanities. Her work from the 1980s on Solidarity as a self-limiting revolution is still worth reading today.

She participated in the most important political events of the era, actively fighting communism. In March 1968 she protested as a young student, in August 1981 she helped the workers with her good advice. Out of that uprising came the Solidarity movement, the flourishing and suppression of which, followed by a rotten compromise with the communists, cast a shadow over the entire generation.

As a young journalist diving into political issues in the second half of the 1990s, I looked upon her as a great star. Staniszkis was read; her interviews were discussed. But was it possible for an ordinary journalist to talk to such an eminent historical figure? It soon turned out that yes. There was only one condition - to seek the truth. She accepted interlocutors from left and right, provided she sensed authenticity in them. She was disgusted, so I reckoned, by pretence and meaningless talk. It was a waste of her time; she considered public life far too serious a matter.

She called a spade a spade, firmly, sometimes unpleasantly for those being reviewed. The controversy this caused, however, would pass her by; she never commented on it.

But she was also able to enthuse about figures in public life, praising and promoting them. Sometimes this passed quickly, and she expressed her disappointment bluntly.

What guided her opinions? She stubbornly sought the truth about Poland’s situation. She rejected the complacency that dominated the Third Republic, pointing out the weaknesses of development, the inequality in the distribution of national income, and the marginalisation of certain cities, regions and social groups. Few had such courage. At the same time, her vision of Poles, including those disadvantaged in the transformation process, was not idealised. But she fought hard, courageously and bravely for the Poland in which elites effectively build the welfare of the whole society.

In January 2013, she told the weekly ‘wSieci’ in an interview with me and Jacek Karnowski:

‘This [Tusk’s] government has indeed perfected the ability to seek equilibrium at a low level, to get people used to lower and lower standards. But the possibilities for such actions are rapidly shrinking.

There is terrible poverty and unemployment in many regions. Recently, EU statistics reminded us that we are the third poorest country in the EU from last, overtaken by Lithuania.

In September that year, in another interview, she added:

What dominates is short-term vision.

This began immediately after 1989, when industries such as electronics, engineering, optics, then fairly modern, were consciously driven into bankruptcy.

I have always pointed out that it is the real economy and not the purely financial dimension that determines a country’s position. Unfortunately, in Poland, the real economy has been dismantled. This is pushing us even further to the periphery. In this situation, the government is trying at all costs to keep us in the centre of the Union using political methods. This is quite pathetic and impossible.

The emigration of young people is the result of this very process, the decline of the real economy, production and innovation. You can see it happening everywhere - industries such as the automotive, shipbuilding and engineering sectors have collapsed. They needed modernisation, improvement of products, but they had a huge capacity for development, they were the most modern in our economy and capable of competing with the West in the future. They have been destroyed. The education system is also changing, with graduates less and less capable of innovation

— stated the professor.

These were not popular views at the time, but boldly, logically articulated, they opened the eyes of many. They shaped the thinking of many Poles, building the intellectual base for the ambitious attempt to move away from the national micromania undertaken in 2015. She strongly urged for it. Until her health allowed her to talk, she always stressed that she was rooting for the project.

She was able to see the truth through the propaganda and decorations.

She alone, together with the Kaczynski brothers and a handful of other intellectuals, were not seduced even for a moment by the naive story of a country which, as if by magic, thanks to Michnik and Kwasniewski, emerged from communism and built a viable democracy. She introduced and described scientifically the concept of ‘post-communism’, defining it not as simply a post-communist state but a permanent and stable, though fundamentally inefficient and unjust, separate system. She described this hybrid with curiosity but also disgust - especially with regard to the participants in the political game and its chroniclers who were blind to its pathologies.

She sought a Poland that was ambitious, intellectually alive and organisationally skilful, capable of implementing projects that overcame impossibilities and barriers. This attracted her to the camp of the Kaczynski brothers. She was, however, a capricious, harshly reviewing ally. Nevertheless, she always sided with the Polish camp in moments of real difficulty. She made a fine mark after the Smolensk tragedy when she stood by it most unequivocally. And she never really came down from this position of appreciating the breadth of PiS’s vision of Poland and the awareness that there was and will be no better.

We will remember Prof Staniszkis as a courageous person and scientist. Much of her credit goes to what has succeeded in changing Poland for the better. Her journalistic testament is a call for ambitious politics, clear rules in public life, thinking, looking for development opportunities, reaching out to smart and energetic people.

She rejected mediocrity and deadly complacency.

She will also remain in our hearts as a wonderful interlocutor, from the days of Radio Plus through the former „Newsweek” and „Uważam Rze” to „Sieci”, usually somewhere in a tiny office at the headquarters of the Polish Academy of Sciences in the Staszic Palace in Warsaw, at the institute in Polna Street or in the café for travellers at the Central Station. There, before returning home or setting off on a longer journey, she would usually make an appointment with me to authorise an interview.

She loved travelling, especially by train. Now she has set off on her last one.