Studies are often associated with a carefree time, full of fun, and from time to time also learning. Meanwhile, in communist Poland, students fought to make a living at universities. Especially if they were active Catholic activists like Tadeusz Mazowiecki.
During year. Both were the norm right after the war.
The future prime minister decided to study law at the University of Warsaw. In the book Tadeusz Mazowiecki. The biography of our prime minister ”Andrzej Brzeziecki, we find justification for this choice:
Why right? I do not know. It was not a well-thought-out choice. I rejected history, although I liked it because I thought I didn't know enough about it, and for some time I also thought about sociology. In the end, I chose the law because it seemed to give me a general humanistic education.
Tadeusz Mazowiecki studied in the so-called Małachowiance, the oldest school in Poland (photo:Jolanta Dyr, CC BY-SA 3.0 PL).
Everything seemed to be improving, despite many doubts about the new system. The young student, like many others, helped to remove rubble from the capital. He took careful notes of his lectures as there was no access to the textbooks. He was involved in the activities of the University of Warsaw Lawyers' Club, of which he became chairman.
Thief? Provocateur!
The Lawyers' Club was a shareholder of the Academic Publishing Cooperative . It was a key institution for the academic community, as it printed lecture scripts and textbooks which were so important for the university at that time. Mazowiecki became its president for a year and a half (1947–1948), his task was to improve its disastrous condition.
The cooperative published texts for many Warsaw universities. Among them were scripts for the Faculty of Catholic Theology, which was later removed from the University of Warsaw in 1954 by the government of the Polish People's Republic. The actions of Mazowiecki were very much displeased by activists from the Akademickie Związek Walki Młodych "Życie" subordinate to the Polish Workers' Party. It was a harbinger of trouble.
The article is based on the book by Andrzej Brzeziecki entitled Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Biography of our prime minister ”(Znak Horyzont 2015).
Mazowiecki was attacked by young Marxists and recognized as a cleric. Soon after, the script matrices for the Warsaw University of Technology were stolen from the printing house. The president was accused of stealing, which would ultimately plunge him.
Mazowiecki was saved by Ryszard Winnicki from the Union of Independent Socialist Youth, also a member of the board of the publishing house. He managed to catch a thief who turned out to be a colleague from the cooperative, but in fact a provocateur.
Although the future prime minister was acquitted of the allegation of theft, he decided to honorably resign from his position. As we know, it is not the first and not the last time that Mazowiecki has acted for such reasons.
Student life - flirting and binge
Mazowiecki tried to find himself in political organizations. After a short stay in the reactivated Labor Party (the party was taken over by the PPR), he became closer to the PAX community of Bolesław Piasecki, an association of lay Catholics ready to cooperate with the communist authorities. As a Catholic, he did not join socialist organizations, although his views tilted to the left at the time.
The founder of PAX, Bolesław Piasecki, was the leader of the National-Radical Movement of the Phalanx before the war. In the photo, he speaks at his 1937 rally in Warsaw.
It was then that the young student began to publish, or rather complain mainly. In the pages of "Czas Akademickie" (an addendum to the Pakistani Word "Universal Word"), he criticized taking a student for lack of independence in thinking and willingness to learn. He was also worried about the lack of involvement in cultural life and the constant flirting at parties. Andrzej Brzeziecki quotes one of such articles in Mazowiecki's biography:
Those who discuss a subject, even the last play at Teatr Polski, are in a sense alienated from the partying party. (...) The rest goes to the so-called social flirting. No, it's not flirting, it's some goofy pretend flirting. (...) In short - the content of social gatherings is, apart from the usual and often even coarse in its form, a friendly banter and worthless conversation - a pseudo-flirt.
Some of these texts are exceptionally satirical for the author. In the column " Sublokatorska dola" Mazowiecki presents post-war housing problems in the form of a diary:
9 X. Here's what I'm not allowed to do yet:turn on the lights in the evening after ten o'clock, unless for a thousand zlotys surcharge; receive visits from friends in the morning, when the hostess is asleep; snore at night (...); get up before seven in the morning. I asked what I was allowed then. [Godpodyni] She answered me to live. So I live.
Unfortunately, after being disappointed with the harassment in student organizations, the everyday life of students in Warsaw turned out to be equally discouraging.
Mazowiecki lost to Marx. For now (photo:gravitat-OFF, CC BY 2.0)
Student vs Marxist legal theory
The future prime minister has collapsed studies. It cannot be denied that it is partly my own fault. For several years, he devoted his time to numerous organizations and writing, so he missed classes and neglected his studies. When he wanted to return to university and resume his education, he was prevented by ... Marx.
A certain professor, encountered in the corridors of the faculty, ordered Mazowiecki to pass an exam in the theory of law. The student tried to protest that he had already passed this course. He heard in reply: "Now there is a Marxist theory of law!". It was too much for the young idealist. He dropped out of college for good and devoted himself entirely to the work in Paks.
Source
Andrzej Brzeziecki, Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Biography of our Prime Minister , Znak Horyzont, Krakow 2015.
Editing:Roman Sidorski, photo edition:Roman Sidorski