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Title: Mieczysław F. Rakowski papers
Date (inclusive): 1958-1996
Collection Number: 90111
Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives
Language of Material:
Polish
Physical Description:
95 manuscript boxes, 1 oversize box
(39.1 Linear Feet)
Abstract: Diaries, writings, correspondence, printed matter, photographs, and video tapes relating to political conditions in Poland
during the 1980s, and to the Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza.
Creator:
Rakowski, Mieczysław F.
Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives
Box 96 closed. The remainder of the collection is open for research; materials must be requested in advance via our reservation
system. If there are audiovisual or digital media material in the collection, they must be reformatted before providing access.
For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 1990.
[Identification of item], Mieczysław F. Rakowski papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives.
Mieczysław Rakowski (1926-2008), a journalist and politician, was Poland's top communist intellectual. From 1958 to 1982,
he was the editor-in-chief of the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) organ
Polityka, perhaps the most open and sophisticated weekly in all the Soviet Bloc. He was deputy prime minister from 1981 to 1985, and
the vice-marshal of Sejm, from 1985 to 1988. Rakowski was prime minister from 1988 to 1989, the last year of the communist
regime in Poland before the takeover of the government by the Solidarity opposition. After the PUWP suffered a resounding
defeat in the first semi-free elections in the Soviet Bloc in June 1989, Rakowski tried, unsuccessfully, to salvage the future
of his party, becoming its last first secretary. During the remaining eighteen years of his life, he tried to present himself
as a Social Democrat and continued to write and offer occasional political commentary on Polish politics. He visited the Hoover
Institution in 1998 and gave a lecture on Poland and the collapse of the Soviet Bloc titled, "Ushering Out Communism: A View
from the Other Side."
Scope and Content of Collection
The materials include some thirty-eight years of political diaries, writings, printed matter, photographs, and sound and video
recordings. Of particular importance are Rakowski's diaries, including the original texts, showing redactions and revisions
made before their subsequent partial publication in 1998 to 1999. The diaries, covering the period from 1958 through 1996,
are an invaluable source on Polish and former Soviet bloc politics as seen by an astute observer and participant. Comparing
the originals with the published version provides an interesting record of the author's intellectual and political meanderings
and evolution and, for students of the ancillary disciplines of history, an excellent case study of how diaries are turned
into memoirs.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Poland -- History -- 1980-1989
Poland -- Politics and government -- 1980-1989
Poland -- Politics and government -- 1945-1980
Video tapes
Statesmen -- Poland
Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza