Meeting with Grzegorz Gauden

On June 20, 2017, the Ihor Meniok Polonistic Scientific Information Center, in collaboration with the cafe Lokal na Panskiy, organized a meeting with Grzegorz Gauden, a long-term director of the Polish Institute of Book, who has actively contributed to the development of the Bruno Schulz International Festival in Drohobych for the last eight years, initiating the spread of its ideas in many countries of the world (in 2012 The fifth Festival welcomed participants from 21 countries). He took care of the development of the Ukrainian reception of Bruno Schulz, inviting leading Ukrainian modern writers in Drohobych, initiating and supporting a new Ukrainian translation of Schulz’s literary works by Yuri Andrukhovych.

Grzegorz Guden is a lawyer and an economist, a journalist and a well-known figure in the Polish Solidarity; he published articles in the informal press of a “second turn”, was interned in Poland under the martial law, emigrated in 1984-1993 to Sweden, where he organized the Solidarity Support Committee. In 2004-2006 he was the editor-in-chief of the Rzeczpospolita newspaper, in 2008-2016 the director of the Polish Institute of Book. In 2012, the Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski awarded Gzhegorz Gauden with a high state award, the Cavalier Cross – the Order of the Renaissance of Poland.

Thanks to the initiative and advice of Grzegorz Gauden, a Book Institute was created in Ukraine. He is a great fan of Ukraine, particularly attentive to Drohobych and its people. This was evident in his stories told at the meeting, when he shared his vision of our city as a European one and the university as an important center of European culture and science.

Photos by Igor Fetsiak