Jacek Kuroń

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May 1, 1989 Demonstration with the opposition and Jacek Kuroń
Jacek Kuroń's grave

Jacek Jan Kuroń (born March 3, 1934 in Lwów , Poland , † June 17, 2004 in Warsaw ) was a Polish civil rights activist , publicist , historian , educator and politician .

Jacek Kuroń, one of the leading figures in the democratic opposition in the People's Republic of Poland , co-founded the Committee for the Defense of Workers in the 1970s, and Solidarność , one of Lech Wałęsa’s closest collaborators . He was a member of the opposition side in the round table talks in 1989. Kuroń was Minister of Social Affairs and Labor in the first democratically elected governments from 1989–1990 and 1992–1993. He was a member of the Unia Demokratyczna party or from 1994 Unia Wolności . In the 1995 presidential election he received more than nine percent of the vote.

biography

Kuroń first grew up in Lwów in what was then eastern Poland, which was annexed by the Soviet Union after the Second World War. In 1946 his parents moved with him to the Warsaw district of Żoliborz , where he lived for the rest of his life. From 1949 he was a member of the communist youth association Związek Młodzieży Polskiej , from 1952 to 1953 he was a full-time functionary there. During this time he was also a member of the communist Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (PZPR; Polish United Workers' Party), but was excluded from both organizations because of critical comments.

In 1955 he initiated the scout group of the "Walterists" (named after the communist general "Walter" ). In 1956 he was accepted back into the PZPR. The General Walter Tribe became part of the official Polish Scout Association ZHP . Kuroń led the tribe until it was dissolved in 1961 because he had emphasized its autonomy and self-government too much and his theater groups had criticized the political situation. Kuroń then wrote for the scout magazine Drużyna , but was fired in 1963 for allegedly advocating wrong educational concepts .

At the same time he studied at the University of Warsaw and graduated in 1964. During his studies he was a member of the Związek Młodzieży Socjalistycznej (Association of Young Socialists) and in 1962 he joined the discussion club at the University of Warsaw, founded by Karol Modzelewski , which was dissolved the following year. In 1964, together with Karol Modzelewski and with the help of Adam Michnik, he distributed a Marxist criticism of the communist system, the Open Letter to the members of the basic organization of the Polish United Workers' Party and the members of the university organization of the Union of Socialist Youth at Warsaw University . Thereupon he was arrested for the first time on November 14-15, 1964 by the Polish security service SB for 48 hours and expelled from the PZPR for the second time. In 1965 he was sentenced to three years in prison but released in 1967.

During the student riots in Warsaw in March 1968 , he was arrested again and sentenced to 3½ years in prison and released in 1971. In 1975 he was involved in organizing protests against the revision of the Constitution of the People's Republic of Poland .

During the August strikes in Gdansk in 1980 , he was taken into preventive detention and was released in September following the August agreement between the regime and Solidarność. After martial law was imposed from 1981 to 1984, he was imprisoned for three years.

After the revolution of 1989 he joined the Ruch Obywatelski Akcja Demokratyczna (ROAD; Citizens' Movement Democratic Action), which emerged from part of the Solidarność movement . In 1991 this was merged into the Unia Demokratyczna (UD; Democratic Union), from which in turn the Unia Wolności (UW; Freedom Union) emerged in 1994 . Within the UW he represented the Christian conservative "ethos wing". Kuroń was a member of the Sejm from 1989 to 2001 . From September 12, 1989 to December 14, 1990 and from July 11, 1992 to October 26, 1993 he was Minister of Labor and Social Affairs in the governments of Tadeusz Mazowiecki and Hanna Suchocka . He ran for the Unia Wolności in the 1995 presidential election , but received only 9.2 percent of the vote.

At the request of the children, he received the international award as Cavalier of the Order of Smiles . On January 7, 1999 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit.

Kuroń died on the night of June 17, 2004 after a long period of cancer .

Fonts

  • with Karol Modzelewski: monopoly socialism. Open letter to the Polish United Workers' Party . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 1969.
  • Belief and guilt. Once communism and back . Structure, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-351-02148-8 .
  • Social Policy Dilemmas . New Critique, Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-8015-0270-8 .

Web links

Commons : Jacek Kuroń  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Reinhold Vetter: Warsaw in the storm of history. Metamorphoses of a long-suffering city. Tectum Verlag, Baden-Baden 2020, p. 221.
  2. ^ A b c Andrzej Friszke, Ryszard Żelichowski: Jacek Kuroń, 1934–2004. In: Biographisches Lexikon Resistance and Opposition in Communism 1945–91. Federal foundation to come to terms with the SED dictatorship, July 2016.
  3. ↑ . Jacek Kuroń / Karol Modzelewski: Monopoly Socialism. Open letter to the Polish United Workers' Party . Hamburg 1969.
  4. ^ Cäcilie Schildberg: Political Identity and Social Europe. Party conceptions and citizen attitudes in Germany, Great Britain and Poland. VS Verlag, Wiesbaden 2010, 285.
  5. ↑ Office of the Federal President
personal data
SURNAME Kuroń, Jacek
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kuroń, Jacek Jan (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish civil rights activist, publicist, historian and politician, member of the Sejm
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Lwów , Poland
DATE OF DEATH June 17, 2004
Place of death Warsaw