Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the Polish Literary Journal Kultura

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the Polish Literary Journal Kultura
Date
Wed February 8th 2017, 5:15pm
Location
Pigott Hall (Bldg. 260), Room 216

Speaker(s): Piotr Mitzner and Magdalena Chabiera (Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, Poland)

This lecture discusses the views of the editors of Kultura, the Polish émigré literary journal run from Paris, and its views on Russia and the future of Russian-Polish relations. In particular, the talk examines Polish émigré intellectuals’ reception of the works of Solzhenitsyn, including texts published by Soviet presses during the 1960s and those published in the West after the writer’s expulsion from the Soviet Union. The stance taken by Kultura is contrasted with the attitude toward Russian dissident culture in other centers of Polish emigration. The lecture analyzes the role of the controversies around Solzhenitsyn in helping or hindering  cooperation between Russian and Polish writers in exile during the 1970s.
Piotr Mitzner is a prominent Polish literary scholar, editor, poet, writer, and theater critic. During the 1980s he participated in the Polish underground press and the Solidarity movement. Since 1999, he has been a professor at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw, and since 2000, editor of the Warsaw monthly Novaia Pol’sha (New Poland). He collaborates with the history and human rights organization ”Memorial” in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Mitzner has authored numerous monographs and articles on the history of Polish theater, 20th-century Polish literature (e.g., on Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz), and the Polish-Russian literary relationship (including books on the Polish-Russian group in Warsaw “Domik v Kolomne” and on Leon Gomolicki).   
Magdalena Chabiera teaches at the Department of European Modernist Culture of the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University. She has edited collections by Jerzy Stempowski and Elżbieta Szemplińska and published articles about the 20th-century Polish-Russian literary relationship. She currently conducts  research in the archives of the Instytut Literacki in Paris.