Seweryn Bialer

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Seweryn Bialer (born November 3, 1926 in Berlin - † February 8, 2019 in New York City ) was a Polish-American political scientist and professor of political science at Columbia University in New York City.

Life

During the Second World War , Bialer, who came from a Jewish family, joined the Polish communist resistance in Lodz in 1942 . From 1944 until the liberation he was in Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp . After the end of the war, he quickly rose to become a lecturer in Marxist ideology in the communist-controlled security apparatus. First he headed in Pomeranian Słupsk the Political Department of the Training Center of the militia , police in Poland People's Republic said. He then became head of the Political Department of the Central Police Department in Warsaw. In 1951 he took on a leading post in the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers' Party (PVAP), and at the age of just 27 he became a professor at the Stalinist-oriented Institute for Social Sciences of the Central Committee, of which he also became a member. He wrote numerous commentaries for the party organ Trybuna Ludu as well as instructions for communist propaganda.

According to his own statements, disillusioned with the reality of the party system, Bialer fled to West Berlin in January 1956 and reported to the US occupation authorities . The Americans immediately took him to Washington. There he reported to the US secret services about his knowledge of the power struggles in Moscow after Stalin's death in 1953.

He also gave the broadcaster Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty a series of long interviews entitled “I chose the truth”, in which he sharply condemned the Stalinist system and reported on his experiences in the PVAP propaganda apparatus. He was invited by the subcommittee of the US Congress , which investigated the infiltration of the authorities by communists ( Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Security Laws ). When he appeared before the subcommittee, the exiled Pole interpreted Jan Karski , who in 1942 had little interest from President Franklin D. Roosevelt with his eyewitness account of the Holocaust . Bialer reported that the PVAP was also of the opinion that the Soviets were the killers of Katyn .

After moving to New York, he received his PhD in Political Science from Columbia University . He was sponsored by former US Ambassador W. Averell Harriman , who was one of the architects of Washington’s policy of containment towards the Soviet Union. In the following years Bialer dealt with analyzes of the Soviet system, he published several books on the subject. At Columbia University, he took over the Chair of Political Science from the Robert and Renee Belfer Foundation .

honors and awards

Publications (selection)

  • 1969: as editor: Stalin and His Generals: Soviet Military Memoirs of World War II , (1980) Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. ISBN 0-521-23518-9 .
  • 1981: as editor: The Domestic Context of Soviet Foreign Policy . Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado. ISBN 0-89158-783-7 .
  • 1982: Stalins's Successors: Leadership, Stability and Change in the Soviet Union .
  • 1983: The USSR after Brezhnev . Foreign Policy Association, New York City, USA, ISBN 0-87124-086-6 .
  • 1984: as editor: Politics, Society, and Nationality Inside Gorbachev's Russia . Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA, ISBN 0-8133-0753-8 .
  • 1987: Soviet Paradox: External Expansion, Internal Decline . Button, New York City. ISBN 0-394-75288-0 .
    • German: The hollow giant: The Soviet Union between claim and reality , translated from the English by Hermann Kesterer. Econ Verlag, Düsseldorf / Vienna. ISBN 3-430-11309-1 .
  • 1988: together with Michael Mandelbaum : Gorbachev's Russia and American Foreign Policy . Westview Press, Boulder. Colorado, USA. ISBN 0-8133-0751-1 .
essay
  • 1995: Domestic and International Factors in the Formation of Gorbachev's Reforms in: Alexander Dallin / Gail. W. Lapidus (eds.): The Soviet System. From Crisis to Collapse . 2nd revised edition. Westview Press, Boulder / San Francisco / Oxford. ISBN 0-8133-1876-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ In Memoriam: Seweryn Bialer (1926-2019). Harriman Institute, Columbia University, February 14, 2019, accessed February 16, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Biographical data, unless otherwise stated, according to encyklopedia.naukowy.pl Seweryn Bialer
  3. ^ Kremlin Rivalry Related by Pole; Ex-Warsaw Aide, in US, Quotes Secret Documents on Leaders 'Disputes' Attack on Molotov Related Mao Dispute Told Molotov Plant Renamed, in: New York Times , June 15, 1956, p. 4.
  4. ↑ Seweryn Bialer: prawdę Wybrałem. Ed. Wolna Europe. Munich 1956.
  5. ↑ Hearing before the Subcomittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Security Laws. Government Printing Office. Washington 1957, part 29, p. 1589.
  6. ^ Nick Eberstadt: The Poverty of Communism. New York / London 1990, p. 76.
personal data
SURNAME Bialer, Seweryn
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-American political scientist
DATE OF BIRTH November 3, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 2019
Place of death New York City