On September 12, 1964, author Sergius Piasecki died on emigration. His life could be utilized as a screenplay for an adventure film. Author Big Bear's mistress and Red Army officer's records He was, among others, an intelligence agent, a smuggler, a Communist prisoner and a National Army soldier. All this can be found in his novels.
In the Polish People's Republic, all Piasecki's works were banned. any home libraries have preserved prewar editions Big Bear's mistress, in tiny amounts his books appeared in the 1980s in illegal circulation. After years, Piasecki was rediscovered in the 1990s.
Sergiusz Piasecki was born on 1 April 1901 in a tiny village of Lachowice close Baranowice, as an illegitimate kid of a Russian nobleman Michał Piasecki, chief of local post office, and Belarusian peasant Claude Kułakowicz. another dates of his birth can besides be found in various sources, e.g. on 19 March 1901, or given by Piasecki on emigration – 1 June 1899. The communicative of the writer's life was mysterious from the beginning.
Initially, he was cared for by his mother, whose name he had until he was 11. She then raised him – very harshly – his father's concubine. It was not a happy time, but at the same time it had a key impact on his further fate. In the household home of the future Polish writer, only Russian was spoken.
As a teenage boy, Piasecki went to prison due to a fight at school. He managed to escape, and then, traveling to Moscow, he went to Moscow, where the Bolshevik revolution had just begun.
‘W Moscow witnessed the revolution, its atrocities, and the death of its friends. It left a lasting mark on him. At that time he gained an aversion to the Bolshevik ideology, which he later expressed in his work" – the conference “Literary music lover: studies on the life and work of Sergius Piasecki”, organized in March 2024 by the Institute of National Memory and the Institute of Polish Philology in Wrocław.
"At the age of 18, he joined the insurgent Belarusian organization Green Dab and returned to Minsk. Here he graduated from the telegraph and telephone school. He worked in this profession until 8 August 1919. He collaborated with the Polish Army in the business of the city. On 9 August 1919, during street fights with Bolsheviks, he was injured" – it was written in the conference material. Piasecki's destiny was besides presented: “He fought in the ranks of the Polish Lithuanian-Belarusian Division. He served in the Military Directorate of Telegraph and Phones from late September 1919 to 10 April 1920. He shortly graduated from the School of Infantry Podchorzych in Warsaw. He participated in the Polish-bolshevik War, including in the defence of Warsaw in August 1920. After the war ended, he was demobilized on 12 May 1921."
The next months of his life in the East Ends were sometimes wandering from place to place, during which he frequently broke the law. He was then curious in Polish intelligence, as a individual who could be utilized for agent work. Piasecki had military training, he knew Belarusian and Russian languages and Polish-Soviet borderlands well. In August 1922 Piasecki became an agent in the exhibition of the 2nd branch of the General Staff of the Polish Army No. 6 in Brest over Bug, dealing with intelligence, counterintelligence and non-frontal diversion. He served many Polish intelligence institutions in russian territories. The borders crossed illegally, sometimes even over 20 times a month. According to his superiors, he was characterized by “brave courage”. Then he was appointed Lieutenant.
The cover for Piasecki's intelligence activities was then widespread on the east border of smuggling. In the event of russian arrest, the destiny of the spy was determined, and the smuggler could number on a milder sentence, saving his life in exchange for prison. There was besides another side to the medal of specified cover – the smugglers' environments were specific, they made quite a few money, but they were never certain about tomorrow. Any further action could have ended in death. It was degenerative for the psyche and ethics of young people, and it was tried to suppress life, alcohol and cocaine parties. Piasecki was besides subjected to specified trials.
In the spring of 1923, he was arrested for robbery and spent 21 months in prison. Justice at the ends of the department on a different basis than in the central part of the country. Border authorities faced continuous robberies by bands from the ZSRS area and in order to reduce problems with home crime, courts issued very harsh sentences for the most insignificant offenses.
After leaving the prison, Piasecki unsuccessfully sought a job, including trying to join the Legion of Foreigners, the historians of IPN reached specified facts. For deficiency of means of living, he decided to engage in criminal activity, and in July 1926 he took part in a robbery, after which he was caught and sentenced to death by an ad hoc court in Vilnius. He was then 25 years old and quite a few baggage of experience.
The officer's rank and his work for Polish intelligence saved his life, bearing in mind, the death punishment was changed to 15 years in prison. Initially he held it in Rawicz and Koronów, he was later transferred to a dense prison on the Holy Cross in Kielce. There he underwent a profound spiritual transformation, 1 of the effects of which was to begin writing.
In a 1934 newspaper, he found information about the competition for the fresh of the year. Then he made efforts to write. It was not easy due to the fact that the prisoners could not have written material, and each written card was censored by the prison authorities. His determination made him accept.
"After 28 days, in June 1934, he wrote his first fresh Fifth stagebased on your own experiences. However, she was detained by prison censorship and reached the publisher only after a fewer years. It didn't alienate Piasecki. A fewer months later, he wrote a second, 350 pages fresh The road to the wall. Unfortunately, her first version is missing. In the fall of 1935, he began working on the fresh Big Bear's lover, by a work that, as it shortly turned out, gave him freedom and popularity,” wrote the IPN conference material.
Piasecki's work was then curious in Melchior Wańkowicz. “The Order” which he directed published Big Bear's mistress. The fresh was recognized as the most popular book of 1937 and its translation into 15 languages began. Until the outbreak of the war, in September 1939, 3 editions were released Big Bear's mistress and 2 more Piasecki novels – Fifth stage and The gods of the night equal.
At the same time, a broad social run to pardon the author began. Petitions of people of culture, and even politicians, to president Ignacy Mościcki yet took effect – Piasecki got out of prison after 11 years of imprisonment. Time on the loose spent mainly on writing subsequent novels.
The outbreak of the war found him in Vilnius, where he joined the conspiracy fight. He was a associate of the peculiar Branch to execute death sentences handed down by underground courts. Memoirs from this period were besides found in his later novels.
In 1944, after entering Poland, the russian Army hid, was wanted by the safety Office. After a fewer months, he decided to go to the West. Together with the UNRRA convoy, utilizing false documents, he left in the spring of 1946 via Cieszyn, Czechoslovakia, Germany and reached Italy. There he was admitted to the 2nd Polish Corps and later evacuated with him to the UK. In August 1947, he was demobilized and settled in London.
From 1953 he lived in Hastings, a tiny rented apartment. He lived modestly, frequently moonlighting for physical labor. He wrote a lot, from this period comes among others the thieving trilogy Apples, I'll look at the window., No 1 will give us salvation and novels Seven Lucifer pills, Red Army officer's records, Legend shaker, Man turned into a wolf, For the honor of the Organization, Adam and Eve, Tower of Babel. In his post-war publications, he recalled years of war and was very strict about the communist strategy and its associates. In his opinion, he denounced the western states' policies towards the USSR besides mild.
His biographer, Richard Demel, characterized Piasecki’s individual at the time: “He lived virtuously and generously, yet inactive with any distrust of the planet around him. He was respected by the authorities and members of the AK in the abroad for his courage and activity in the underground, especially under German occupation. He recovered his military awards, and the board of the Association of Writers in abroad recognized his writing position."
Exhausted by long prisons, years of business and mediocre life on emigration, he suffered from lung cancer. Despite treatment, he died on 12 September 1964 at the Polish Military infirmary in Penley, Wales. He was buried at Borough Cemetery in Hastings.
During the years of PRL the Piasecki fresh was not published in Poland, censorship did not give them the least chance. In the 1980s, respective of his books were published in a second circulation. any private libraries preserved the pre-war edition of his novel. Piasecki's work was rediscovered in the 1990s. A good ad for her was inactive alive legend of pre-war editions Big Bear's mistress and the success of abroad translations of this book.
Neither the subject substance of his books, nor Piasecki himself, who spoke critically about Polish authorities in emigration journals, were in any way acceptable to the authorities of the Polish People's Republic. Paradoxically, a feature movie was created in 1985 Smugglers directed by Vladimir Olszewski, whose game was based on a fresh Big Bear's lover. The authors of the script – Włodzimierz Olszewski and Jan Purzycki – fundamentally utilized the names of the main characters, names of respective localities, the communicative axis related to smuggling and transferred the action from the Polish-Soviet border to Polish-Romanian for political reasons. Despite a good acting cast (Janusz Gajos in the function of Józef Trofida, Henryk Bista as old Alińczuk, Joachim Lamża as Vladek Piasecki) Olszewski's production was hard for people who knew the novel. The movie was not highly rated and passed without echo.
In 1993, a three-part series was created. The life of the disarmed man. In the 1990s, the theatre was adapted Red Army officer's records.
Source: PAP / Tomasz Szczerbicki
