Wojciech Roszkowski

Wojciech Stefan Roszkowski OOB (born 20 June 1947 in Warsaw), sometimes known by the pseudonym Andrzej Albert, is an influential right-wing Polish historian and politician. From 1990 to 1993, he served as vice-rector of Warsaw School of Economics and from 1994 to 2000, he was the Kościuszko Chair of Polish Studies at the University of Virginia, USA. In 2004, Roszkowski won election to the European Parliament from the Law and Justice Party for a five year term.

Works and reception

Mariusz Turowski, a philosopher of historiography at University of Wrocław finds Roszkowski to be an influential exponent of the "patriotic school of Polish historiography" that gained status in post-Communist Poland; his works posited a "clash of civilization" between conservative Christian ethics and multicultural democracies. For him, the downfall of Western Civilization originated in the Age of Enlightenment, once it negated the existence of God.

Daniel Blatman, writing in 1997, noted Roszkowski to be among a new generation of post-Communist historians who tried to portray Poles as the ideal victim of Nazism as well as communism, and exonerate them of all misdeeds — his monograph on post-War history of Poland portrayed the Kielce pogrom as a handiwork of Communist agents, rather than Poles, despite lack of supportive evidence.

In December 2023, Roszkowski was given the "Patriot of the Year" (Polish: Patriota Roku) award during the Patriot Day IX (Polish: IX Dzień Patrioty) event. Both the event and the award are organised in part by the same Biały Kruk publishers that have published several of Roszkowski's books.

Historia i teraźniejszość textbooks

In August 2022, the Polish Ministry of Education and Science authorised Roszkowski's 1945–1979. Historia i teraźniejszość (1945–1979. History and the Present) textbook for use by liceum and technikum schools when teaching a newly introduced subject of the same name; scholars and commentators criticised the book as essentially being a far-right tract that, in addition to other claims, stigmatised IVF-conceived children, equated feminism, liberalism, and other popular ideologies with Nazism, depicted neo-Marxist influence as being a reason for the prominence of women's rights and gay rights movements, and was critical of the Black Lives Matter movement and of negative assessments of the Crusades. The book also referred to the controversial writings of Daniel Cohn-Bendit on paedophilic acts and contained graphic images of human corpses. The issue was compounded by an alternative textbook being slow to receive official authorisation and by Roszkowski's book being available for sale in state-run post offices which, under the Law and Justice government, have often been criticised for selling publications that are seen to be aligned with that party's beliefs. The book's supposed depiction of IVF-conceived children drew negative commentary from Civic Platform leader Donald Tusk, while Polish Ombudsman Marcin Wiącek wrote a letter to education minister Przemysław Czarnek in which he reported the wider concerns of teachers and parents about the book's suitability for use in schools. Roszkowski branded criticism of his book as being "a certain offensive, manipulation of public opinion, a kind of preventive censorship" and said that the passage purportedly referring to IVF did not in fact address this subject. Roszkowski's publisher also stated that it was not in agreement with the "criticism and incorrect interpretation" of the book and invited people to sign a petition denouncing the "numerous attacks falsely accusing [Roszkowski] of belittling children conceived through IVF"; nevertheless, it announced that the relevant passage would not be included in new printings of the book. The Free Schools Initiative (Polish: Inicjatywa Wolne Szkoły) reported that, out of 2336 schools it had surveyed, only fifty-three planned to use the book; meanwhile, Roszkowski claimed that "probably" fifty thousand copies of the book had been sold by the second week of September 2022. A father of a child conceived through IVF announced his intention to sue Roszkowski; when the civil trial began in November 2023, Roszkowski failed to attend. In the meantime, Roszkowski had written a follow-up textbook covering the period between 1980 and 2015, with this newer book also receiving approval from the Ministry of Education and Science. Just like the first book, there was considerable controversy over the new book's content and sociopolitical slant, including its comparison of what it called "LGBT ideology" to the ideology of Marx and Engels, its claim that criticism of John Paul II mainly took the form of aggressive attacks by left-wingers, and its sympathy to global warming denial and to conspiracy theories about the 2010 Smolensk crash being a deliberate assassination.

Bibliography

• Najnowsza historia Polski 1914–2002 (Newest History of Poland 1914–2002), 2003, ISBN 83-7311-991-4.
• Historia Polski 1945–2005 (History of Poland 1945–2005), Wydawnictwo Naukowe PWN, 2006, ISBN 978-83-01-14696-2.
• Droga przez mgłę (Walking through the fog), Instytut Jagielloński, 2006, ISBN 978-83-60559-00-0.
• Świat Chrystusa (The world of Christ), Wydawnictwo Biały Kruk, 2016, ISBN 978-83-7553-218-0.
• Mistrzowska gra Józefa Piłsudskiego (Józef Piłsudski's Mastergame), Wydawnictwo Biały Kruk, 2018, ISBN 978-83-7553-240-1.
• Roztrzaskane Lustro – Upadek cywilizacji zachodniej (The Shattered Mirror – The Downfall of the Western Civilization), Wydawnictwo Biały Kruk, 2019, ISBN 978-83-7553-260-9.
• Orlęta Lwowskie (Lwów Eaglets), Wydawnictwo Biały Kruk, 2019.
• Kierunek Targowica. Polska 2005–2015 (Heading to Targowica. Poland 2005–2015), Wydawnictwo Biały Kruk, 2019.
• 1945–1979. Historia i teraźniejszość (1945–1979. History and the Present), Wydawnictwo Biały Kruk, 2022. ISBN 978-83-7553-347-7 Ministry of Education and Science ref. no. 1145/1/2022
• 1980-2015. Historia i teraźniejszość (1980-2015. History and the Present), Wydawnictwo Biały Kruk, 2023. ISBN 978-83-7553-370-5 Ministry of Education and Science ref. no. 1145/2/2023

See also

• 2004 European Parliament election in Poland

References

External links

• Personal profile of Wojciech Roszkowski in the European Parliament's database of members.