Biography

Stefan Kisielewski (7 March 1911 in Warsaw – 27 September 1991 in Warsaw, Poland), nicknames Kisiel, Julia Hołyńska, Teodor Klon, Tomasz Staliński, was a Polish writer, publicist, composer and politician, and one of the members of Znak, one of the founders of the Unia Polityki Realnej, the Polish libertarian and conservative political party. Kisielewski was born to a Polish father Zygmunt Kisielewski and a Jewish mother Salomea Szapiro.

In 1927 he entered the State Conservatory of Music in Warsaw, where he received three diplomas: in theory (1934, under Kazimierz Sikorski), in composition (1937, also under K. Sikorski) and in pedagogical piano (1937, under Jerzy Lefeld). He also studied Polish literature and philosophy at Warsaw University and completed his composition studies in Paris, in the years 1938–39.

As a composer, Kisielewski remained firmly rooted in French neo-classicism, although his writings supported contemporary musical trends in Poland more broadly (Thomas 2001).

His writing and political thought were generally marked by pragmatism and support for liberalism.

In 1964 he was one of the signatories of the so-called Letter of 34 to Prime Minister Józef Cyrankiewicz regarding freedom of culture. In 1968, for criticizing censorship in communist Poland (at the meeting of the Polish Writers' Union he used the designation 'dyktatura ciemniaków' – 'a dictatorship of dunces' – which became famous in Poland), he was forbidden to publish for three years. He was also beaten up by so-called "unknown perpetrators" (a euphemism for perpetrators of criminal acts of political violence who in all likelihood were members of the Communist secret police). In 1981 he coined the sentence "It's not a crisis, it's a result" to describe the down turn of the Polish economy at that time as a result of socialism. Another one of his famous statements was "socialism heroically overcomes difficulties unknown in any other system", referring to the fact that many of the economic and social ills found under socialism were self-created.

In 1990, together with the magazine Wprost, he established the Kisiel Prize.