Overview of the Zdzisław Rurarz papers

Finding aid prepared by Hoover Institution Library and Archives Staff

Hoover Institution Library and Archives

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Title: Zdzisław Rurarz papers

Date (inclusive): 1967-2008

Collection Number: 2014C27

Contributing Institution: Hoover Institution Library and Archives

Language of Material: Polish

Physical Description: 10 manuscript boxes (4.5 Linear Feet)

Abstract: Correspondence, writings, biographical data, and photographs, relating to political conditions in Poland, the defection of Zdzisław Rurarz to the United States in 1981, and international relations.

Creator: Rurarz, Zdzisław

Physical Location: Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

Access

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.

Use

For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Library & Archives.

Acquisition Information

Materials were acquired by the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2014.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], Zdzisław Rurarz papers, [Box no., Folder no. or title], Hoover Institution Library & Archives

Biographical / Historical

Zdzisław Maciej Rurarz was born in 1930 in Pionki, a small town south of Warsaw. He joined a communist youth organization at sixteen and the Polish United Workers' Party (PUWP) several years later. He earned degrees in economics, and taught at the Warsaw School of Economics through the 1970s, and for a while served as economic adviser to the first secretary of the PUWP, Edward Gierek. By the time Rurarz was appointed ambassador to Japan, however, he was thoroughly disillusioned with communism and Poland's role as a Soviet dependency. The rise of the Solidarity trade union and the looming threat of a military crackdown hastened his decision to defect. In December 1981, when Poland's communist authorities declared martial law and arrested thousands of Solidarity activists, Rurarz and Romuald Spasowski, Polish ambassador to the United States, protested by renouncing their allegiance to the Moscow-dominated government in Warsaw and seeking political asylum in the United States. After contacting US diplomats in Tokyo, Rurarz made a daring escape to the US embassy, along with his wife and daughter. He was immediately declared a traitor and tried in absentia by a military court in Warsaw. The sentence was death, revocation of his Polish citizenship, and confiscation of all property.

When, after the negotiated 1989 "round-table" agreement between the communist regime and the opposition, and the first semifree elections in the Soviet bloc, Rurarz was again sadly disappointed. One act of the new, Solidarity-led government was a revising of the case against him, commuting his death penalty to twenty-five years in prison. Instead of embracing prominent Polish defectors such as Rurarz, Spasowski, and the CIA's top agent in the Warsaw Pact, Colonel Ryszard Kukliński, the new Polish authorities regarded them as traitors. Eventually, the court annulled the sentence and declared complete "rehabilitation," but Rurarz never reconciled himself to the strange mixture of the new and the old represented by the governments of postcommunist Poland and its political elites. He never went back to Warsaw and spent his remaining years writing and speaking his mind, mostly to émigré audiences. Rurarz's death in 2007 was practically unnoticed by the Polish media.

Scope and Contents

The Rurarz papers consist mostly of his articles and other publications, speeches, and interviews, as well as correspondence, virtually all from the period after his defection.

Subjects and Indexing Terms

Poland -- History -- 1980-1989

Poland -- Foreign relations -- Japan

Japan -- Foreign relations -- Poland

Diplomats -- Poland