Andrzej Stawar

Andrzej Stawar (born Edward Janus, 1 May 1900 – 5 August 1961) was a Polish Marxist writer and critic and translator. He was mainly active as an anti-Stalinist political activist, journalist and avant-garde proponent in arts during the interwar period. Towards the end of his life, he became an acclaimed Marxist literary critic in the Polish People's Republic despite never demonstrating loyalty to the PZPR. The publication critical of the Soviet-based political system abroad following his death became a major event.

Life Edward Janus was born on 1 May 1900 in a family of landless peasants.

Communist and art critic In the early 1920s, he joined the Communist Workers' Party of Poland and published his early articles in the periodicals of the left-wing peasant press. In 1924, he assumed the post of secretary to the Communist faction in the Polish parliament (Sejm), despite the party being officially banned in Poland, edited its bulletins and proclamations and wrote for the illegal press. His first conflict with the Communist Party occurred in 1926, during the May Coup by Marshal Józef Piłsudski and his Sanation movement: the party supported the coup, and Stawar became a principled critic of its "opportunism". Stawar appeared to be the most prominent and sophisticated author of Dźwignia, having the most education in Marxism. As a literary critic, Stawar believed that ultimately literary criticism should serve to facilitate a change in the "mass reader's" "relationship to the whole shape of literary matters — a relationship after all created under the influence of a hostile class ideology." In 1931, the editorial board of Miesięcznik Literacki, including Wat and Stawar, were arrested. They were eventually released the same year.

The newspaper was sold openly in the 1930s under the Pilsudski regime and wasn't confiscated what was one of the reasons of Polish Communists believing the Anti-Stalinists to be traitors who aided the Polish government with anti-Soviet propaganda; they even suspected that the government "intentionally smuggled" the newspapers in "communist-filled prisons." Stawar's "defection" had a painful effect on his Communist friends who had regarded him as their teacher in Marxism before and cut ties with him. Janina Broniewska, to whom Stawar had confessed his love, wrote: "Our most principled sectarian, our mentor... undergoes an evolution. He converts — like a woman of loose morals falling into religiosity in her old age — to Trotskyism." Wat despite agreeing with Stawar on Stalin and helping the newspaper by reading over articles and making suggestions never contributed to it by writing any materials, as he regarded it as "aiding the enemies" of "homeland of the proletariat."

Publications Political writings O bonapartyzmie i faszyzmie Jeszcze o Antysemityzmie O biurokracji sowieckiej Historia’ Trockiego Pisma ostanie

Literary criticism Szkice literackie: wybór (1957) Tadeusz Żeleński (Boy) (1958) O Gałczyńskim (1959) Pisarstwo Henryka Sienkiewicza (1960) O Brzozowskim i inne szkice (1961)

Translations Leo Tolstoy. War and Peace (as Wojna i Pokoj) Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Poor Folk (as Biedni ludzie) Mikhail Sholokhov. And Quiet Flows the Don (as Cichy Don)