From older Scots literature to corporate social responsibility via Soviet Union and mechanical cutting

I expressed in an earlier post my surprise on seeing Sally Mapstone, professor of Older Scots literature at the University of Oxford in the UK, among members of international scientific committee of the conference Corporate Social Responsibility, organized by an obscure foundation Institute of Scientific Research and Expertises from a non-university town of Gorzów Wielkopolski in western Poland. At the time of the conference, 15-16 December 2016, she held already the post of the Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St Andrews (UK), the oldest university in Scotland, established in 1413. In the current ranking of world universities compiled by Times Higher Education it is classified as number 165 in the world.

Sally Mapstone authored and edited publications on literature in Scots and Latin before 1707. For example, she authored the book Scots and Their Books in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (1996), book chapter Shakespeare and Scottish Kingship: a Case History (1998), and edited the book Older Scots Literature (2005). How does the older Scots literature relate to "corporate social responsibility"? There is no visible connection between her academic research and the roles she performed in academic administration and the conference theme.

One can similarly question the disconnect between the subject of the conference and professional lives of other conference organizers.

Tadeusz Zaborowski, the operator of the foundation behind the conference, is a retired professor of mechanical engineering at the Poznań University of Technology. One of his early publications is "Możliwości adaptacji przecinarek taśmowych do cięcia anodowo-mechanicznego" ("Possibilities of Adapting Band-type Cutting-off Machines for Combined Anodic and Mechanical Cutting") in an obscure Polish monthly Mechanik in 1983. Between that paper and the next one listed in the Scopus database, "Verification of cutting zone machinability during the turning of a new austenitic stainless steel" is a gap of 28 years. His next several publications in the database are from the mechanical engineering domain.

There is, of course, nothing wrong in pursuing new interests and exploring new areas of research and social activity. It is, however, astonishing, that Zaborowski acts as chairman of the organizing committee of the conference on corporate social responsibility, i.e. in a field in which he did not seem to have been active.

What about conference's deputy chairs?

Daniel Fic, has no publications in the Scopus database. His web page at the Higher School of Security (Wyższa Szkoła Bezpieczeństwa) in Poznań informs that he graduated from both the Wrocław University of Technology and Moscow School of Management in 1976. He was clearly privileged and highly trusted member of Communist inner circles. There is no information about his doctorate. His subsequent career at two institutions of higher learning in Zielona Góra, Higher Pedagogical School and Higher Engineering School, in which he held a number of management positions, includes the position of chairman of the Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Technology, for which he was quite obviously professionally unsuited.  He obtained habilitation from the Moscow University in 1989. Fic is also a faculty member of the Faculty of Management in the Higher Military School of Land Forces in Wrocław. Fic's background indicates an extremely strong backing of the Communist authorities. and the Communist military.

Zygmunt Bauman, a retired professor of the University of Leeds, was a sociologist (died in January 2017). He worked for the Communist military intelligence in his youth. His later claim about cutting off ties to Communist intelligence cannot be taken seriously.

Tatiana Ronginska. No publications in the Scopus database. PhD and habilitation in Leningrad. She is currently head of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Zielona Góra, which was formed as a fusion of the Higher Pedagogical School and Higher Engineering School, institutions where Fic also held important positions. Ronginska came to Zielona Góra in early 1990s, at the time when the Red Army was leaving Poland. She was one of a large wave of arrivals from the Soviet Union to the universities and institutions of culture. The military contingent was replaced with the next batch of troops. Quite clearly the Russian and the Polish side co-operated in the smooth placement and preferential treatment of the Soviet individuals in institutions across Poland.

Xuesong Yin from China. There are several persons having this name in the Scopus system. None represent the field of economics.

Robert Woźniak from Poland. Three persons from Poland in the Scopus database with the same first and last name, none in economics. Each with just a couple of papers.

Corporate social responsibility is among the last themes one would respect to be on the mind of persons with strong ties to Communist civilian and military authorities. Clearly there is more to this conference and its participants than meets the eye.

Institute of Scientific Research and Expertises in Gorzów Wielkopolski

Institute of Scientific Research and Expertises, Instytut Badań and Ekspertyz Naukowych (IBEN) in Polish, in Gorzów Wielkopolski in western Poland is an interesting institution. It was founded in 1978 as Ośrodek Badań and Konsultacji, which could be translated as Center of of Research and Consultation. According to address provided on its website, ul. Górczyńska 21, 66-400 Gorzów Wielkopolski, it is located in the same building as the local branch of one of the largest Polish banks PKO BP, next to a large shopping center. The website displays text in Polish, Russian and English. The name of the Institute's director is not published in the "contacts" section. The key name associated with the Institute seems to be Tadeusz Zaborowski, until recently faculty member of the Poznań University of Technology, some 100 km east of Gorzów. The website claims the Institute remains under supervision of Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

The register of Ministry-supervised foundations for the year 2017 contains nearly 900 names. Fundacja Instytut Badań i Ekspertyz Naukowych (Foundation Institute of Scientific Research and Expertises) is listed in position 263. The founding year is given as 2008. The Foundation did not submit a report of its activities in any of the years 2012-2015, which begs the question how the government's supervisory function is being performed. However, the practice of not submitting activity reports seems to be very common among these foundations. The obvious conclusion is that both the government, regardless of its composition, and the academic circles in Poland are very happy with this state of affairs.

The Polish text of the website sometimes makes an impression of being translated from Russian. Its quality is less than good. Texts in Russian and English also contain obvious mistakes.

The official national register of companies and institutions, Krajowy Rejestr Sądowy, shows three other names of Zaborowski family in the foundation board and two additional individuals, one Polish and one probably Ukrainian, apparently a collaborator of T. Zaborowski, a retired employee of Uniwersytet Zielonogórski (University of Zielona Góra), a town 100 km south of Gorzów.

In 2016, the Institute claims to have organized international conference Corporate Social Responsibility, Społeczna Odpowiedzialność Biznesu, held in Poznań on 15 and 16 December. Those looking for more detailed information about the conference are served a real treat:

It was one should fill in conference the card of notification of part in aim of obtainment of more far information and send her till November 30, 2016 y. on address: Institute for Scientific Research and Expertises, Górczyńska Street 21, 66-400 Gorzów the Wlkp., Poland or e-mail on address: [...] It was can information also get under number of telephone / fax [...]

The conference's international scientific committee chairman was T. Zaborowski, of course. Among the deputy chairs were the late communist sociologist Zygmunt Bauman (died in early 2017), as well as Tatiana Rongińska, a native of Leningrad in the Soviet Union, currently director of the Institute of Psychology at the University of Zielona Góra. Bauman was employed by the communist military intelligence.

Zaborowski himself has very good contacts in Russia. The website's gallery presents several pictures of him receiving the honoris causa doctorate at Moscow State Technological University “Stankin“ (MSTU Stankin), although the date of this award is not stated. This distinction is more surprising if we lookup the author's name in the Scopus database. Quite clearly, other, non-scientific reasons were decisive in the award decision.

There are some surprising names among members of the scientific committee, such as Sally Mapstone. S. Mapstone became Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of St Andrews (UK) in September 2016. She has previously served as Pro-Vice Chancellor for Personnel and Equality and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Education at the University of Oxford. It would be interesting to know how and why she agreed to lend her name to this dubious project.

On 17 February 2017, IBEN's facebook page invited doctoral applications:

Ladies and Gentlemen,
kindly inform you that a person interested in the implementation of the management of doctoral dissertations and from the construction and operation of machines and ergonomics (job security) may submit their CV to [...] by 28.02.2015 together with proposals for the problems which they wish to take to resolve.
Upon receipt of CV interested will receive detailed information indicating that people were qualified for further proceedings. All are informed of the receipt of the resume, Welcome

Opened Project at ResearchGate

4 June 2018

I opened project Critical Narrative Analysis, Organized Social Violence, Criminal State at researchgate.net. The project was placed on the web at lsborkowski.com/pol/ two years ago.

Trust 2018

It was announced in Poland on Monday 26 March 2018 that Prime Minister Morawiecki was awarded the Lech Kaczyński Prize. The award ceremony was broadcast live countrywide by TVP Info and Polsat tv stations. The event was held in the conference hall of the National Stadium. And as usual, a great many false words were spoken.

It was proclaimed, for example, that Morawiecki was tortured by the Communist Security Service (Służba Bezpieczeństwa), whose functionaries wanted supposedly him to reveal the hiding place of his father. This is of course a nonsense. Mateusz Morawiecki's father was not in hiding, because he had no reason to hide. Mateusz was not tortured. Quite the opposite. The Morawiecki family belongs to the highest Communist trust category and that is why they were assigned public roles of very high visibility. The Solidarity trade union and other associated "oppositional" movements were classic Communist operations of the Trust type.

Similarly, the Kaczyński family of the Lech and Jarosław twin brothers belongs to the category of the highest Communist trust.

2013 Letter to the European Commission

Letter to the European Commission

June 6, 2013

We would like to notify the EU Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship about a very serious problem concerning routine and widespread violations of basic human and constitutional rights in Poland. The size of the problem is huge.

We feel our particular case is an important one because it shows with clinical precision the mountains of pathology in Poland. The conventional propaganda has it that it is the uneducated and the unskilled ones who face the largest difficulties in Poland. Quite opposite is actually true. It is the best and the brightest whose rights are violated most significantly.

I am enclosing below the letter written by my wife MG and myself. It focuses on her personal experience as a target of a brutal elimination campaign. Our experience, the experience of our families and the observation of the public life in Poland leave us no choice but to conclude that Poland is not a democracy. It never was a democracy after 1990 despite many claims to the contrary. This is certainly a strong statement since it goes against the conventional view. However this claim is based on fighting for our dignity and honor "in the trenches" of our personal lives, in a day-to-day struggle for our rights that are supposedly guaranteed both by the national constitution and by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. You have to look the beast close in the eye in order to understand the full extent of human rights violations. The Polish post-communist bureaucracy is exceedingly skillful in falsifying the reality. In this sense there is a full continuity between the communist times and the regime of the present day.

The problem that most journalists, academic researchers and politicians miss completely is the survival, cohesiveness and flourishing of the entire social group related to the communist junta. It is this hidden dimension that determines career paths. It is also a taboo subject. The names of political factions and officially declared political views do not matter at all. Poland is a political cabaret where the action on the political stage is the least important of all. If necessary, new political parties can be easily created out of thin air with the same cast of the usual suspects and their friends. There is the hidden information flow for the 10-20 privileged per cent of the population (this is only an order-of-magnitude estimate) and there is the political farce for the rest of us.

Non-governmental organizations are equally useless. They are part of theatrical decorations and are mostly vehicles for self-promotion or misuse of funds. They can forever organize seminars on certain themes without advancing democracy by an iota.

Let us make ourselves perfectly clear. There never was a civil society in Poland after 1945. The prevailing view that the rise of the civil society in the 1970s and 1980s somehow brought about the regime change and democratization can be safely classified as a fairy tale.

It was not easy to arrive at this conclusion. We have been bombarded with the praise for the successful Polish democratization both from within our country and from without. However for many years that picture was at odds with our daily experience. Finally, some more recent traumatic events provided us with plenty of evidence about the survival of dictatorship in Poland and about its current character.

I am an associate professor of Physics at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland. I have significant international experience. I was a graduate student at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, and University of Florida in Gainesville, where I obtained my Ph.D. in Physics in 1995. During my doctoral studies I spent one year in Germany at the Karlsruhe University. Also I once did practical training at the Twente University in the Netherlands as an undergraduate. I spent one year as a postdoctoral research associate at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta in 1997/98.

My wife and I can present mechanisms that are routinely employed for the purpose of destroying individual careers and lives in Poland. We can travel to Brussels to deliver our testimony in person.

Yours sincerely,
LSB

------

I, MG, am a pianist and a piano teacher at the school of music in Zielona Gora in Western Poland. It is a public school supervised by the Ministry of Culture. It consists of two levels. Both levels take six years to complete. Most students stop after six years, since the musical education at the higher level is quite demanding. The pupils who take the full course of study, typically graduate at the age of 19. The second-level graduates may continue their musical education at the university level.

I graduated from the Academy of Music in Poznan in 1991 and soon afterwards took a job at the Zielona Gora school as a teacher of piano. I had many successes during my teaching career. My pupils won awards at nationwide and international piano competitions. I received many awards from the school's directors, as well as the award from the Minister of Culture. My hard work earned respect among the students, their parents and fellow teachers. I was appointed head of the 18- member piano section in 2008.

In September 2011 I was suddenly attacked by a new employee of the piano section, who was hired in 2009. She challenged part of our teaching program, claiming it was not compatible with the Ministry regulations. Our teaching programs are reviewed periodically, every couple of years. The last such review was held in May 2011. After some cosmetic changes the program was approved by the members of our section during one of our meetings. This was a routine procedure. Teaching programs in the classes of classical instruments may evolve in time but do not change radically. I gave a written response and handed the matter over to the director. Very soon it became clear that the attack on the section's teaching program was only a prelude. This was a provocation whose aim was to start a vicious campaign against me, to vilify me as a person, teacher, and a social being. The school's director should normally make decision, one way or another, and close the matter. Instead the director avoided making any decisions and started participating in various attacks against myself. I was attacked in every possible way.

Meetings were arranged during which the provocateur was allowed to publicly throw unfounded accusations against me. It became absolutely clear, beyond any doubt, that everything I say or do will be used against me. It did not matter what was right and what was wrong, what was true and what was false. I gave abundant detailed explanations, I begged for rational, simple decisions, to no avail. Someone decided to destroy my professional life, my public image, to totally discredit me as a person and to annihilate my ability to perform social and managerial functions. The smearing campaign was in full swing. For example, I was officially reprimanded for my absence at a meeting of our school's section heads with the director. On that day I did not have any classes and I had to go to a doctor because my health deteriorated as a result of relentless vicious attacks, conducted openly, publicly with full approval and participation of the school's director and the local area representative of the
Ministry of Culture. In addition to enormous, unbearable psychological stress, I developed somatic symptoms such as not being able to speak without coughing, as if something was clutching my throat.

In one letter to me the director indicated that I was mentally unstable. Similar opinions were voiced to school employees. My every step, my every move was closely watched. It was a manhunt and I was the target. When I notified the Minister of Culture about all of this in November and December 2011, nothing changed. At this point it was clear that all these attacks, all this war waged against me had the government's seal of approval.

In the first days of September 2011 I also became head of the Parents Council, although not without some hesitation. As someone who knew the school very well both as a teacher and as a parent (my daughter was a student of piano in the school; she dropped the school since the attacks began), I had some ideas about improving its role and I wanted to give it a try. I seemed to have a full support of both the director and the parents. However, it turned out very quickly that my role in the Parents Council was used as yet another opportunity for brutal attacks. I asked the director for the Bylaws of the Council. The director presented to me a document that had neither a date, nor a signature. Obviously the Council had to vote a fresh set of Bylaws in order to avoid legal problems. However the saboteurs in the Parents Council blocked my attempt to introduce the bylaws, which was required by law. They simply refused to discuss and vote on the matter.

A special Ministry of Culture representative arrived just before Christmas 2011, supposedly to investigate the charges against the misuse of the Parents Council funds. This is the version I was given in writing by the representative. Some time earlier the director refused to show financial documents of the Parents Council, thus breaching the law. I was forced by the director to sign payment agreements e.g. for the insurance of the school buildings. Our school is public. The Minister of Culture acts as the school owner and paying for the school's insurance was obviously outside the responsibility of the Parents Council and a clear violation of the law.

A report was written and the verdict was issued in the first days of January 2012. The Ministry declared that all school documents were in perfect order and that my complaints about bullying and mobbing were completely unfounded. Instead I was being accused of showing authoritarian tendencies. However, the Ministry refused to send me the report's copy. The attacks continued. I was again assaulted verbally during meetings of the school's pedagogical council, i.e. the entire teachers body, in February and March 2012. There were also new provocations from the director, who tried to instigate a conflict between me and the school's orchestra conductor, when one of my students was to play Edward Grieg Concerto in A-minor with the school's symphonic orchestra, consisting of upper-class students. The director falsely accused me of being absent from work during my teaching hours. I was being forced into signing documents whose authenticity could not be established. No signature meant being accused of insubordination.

My every single activity was taken as a pretext to new attacks. When I hanged nice color posters in the school's hallway announcing my pupil's performance, I was accused of displaying unauthorized material.

One of the best employees this school has ever had, someone who made every effort to improve teaching methods and take a student to a higher level, someone who was always a team player and a good leader when one was needed, was now being made into the public enemy number one on all fronts. In parallel with this campaign of terror various school documents were falsified and fabricated in order to support the absurd accusations against me.

On March 8th 2012, the International Women's Day in Poland, I received an official note terminating my appointment as head of the piano section. Just two days earlier, on March 6th 2012, I went to Ministry of Culture in Warsaw and personally delivered full documentation related to the attacks. The law regulating the educational system in Poland states that a superior cannot dismiss a person from a managerial position in the school system without giving a detailed description of the charges against that person. The letter of dismissal contained no basis for this decision. It was another provocation. I suppose that in a normal democratic country the school's director would get into big trouble and quickly lose the job as a result of orchestrating and participating in all this orgy of bullying and mobbing. But not in Poland, because Poland is not a democratic country. Clearly the director has been following orders and was assured of full impunity.

When I decided to contact the prosecutor in January 2012, I hoped for the psychological terror to stop. I already had to take psychotropic pills to take me through every single day of this hell. I thought that the necessity to testify under oath would bring an end to this vicious cycle. The prosecutor was not in a hurry. He interviewed me on my own insistence, treating me more like a suspect than a victim. He behaved aggressively towards me. No one else was interviewed by him. No documents were checked. The prosecutor decided not to start any proceedings. When I read the letter announcing his decision I was surprised to find that he distorted my statement on the misuse of Parents Council funds. In other words my testimony was falsified by the prosecutor. Theoretically I could challenge this decision in the court but it already became clear that the court would act in a similar way. The lawless system could do anything to me. I was helpless. I realized that the facade of the democratic state was only a facade, nothing more. Law and justice do not exist in Poland. A gang of thugs could destroy an innocent citizen in a broad daylight, with full approval of the government and with eager participation of the functionaries of the legal apparatus.

I read in amazement how the Western press continues to praise Poland as a successful member of the European Union and as a benchmark of democratic change from the brutal totalitarian regime to a peaceful, progressive, and ever more prosperous member of the international community of democratic countries. The truth is Poland remained an oppressive regime. It does not matter much which political party is currently in power as anyone with a brain and some common sense will quickly notice that Poland in fact is a dictatorship thinly disguised as a democracy. Peoples' careers and lives are destroyed before they even have a chance to become leaders in different fields of social and professional activity.

The communist totalitarian state has transformed itself. Perestroika was hugely successful. The power remained in the same hands. New lies and new tricks were invented. You do not have to bring out the tanks onto the streets in order to maintain the grip on power. After years of brutal murders, expulsion, repression and intimidation, you only need to keep an eye on those few individuals who become outspoken and dare to criticize the current regime. These days you do not have to shoot them in the back of the head somewhere in the pine forest in the wee hours of the morning. My grandfather, a graduate of the Wilno conservatory in the class of violin in the years before WWII, narrowly escaped this kind of death. He was an officer of the Polish army at the beginning of WWII, imprisoned by the Soviet Russia as a prisoner of war in the towns of Kozielsk and Griazovets in 1940. My grandfather fought later with the Allied forces on the Western front. When he returned to Poland to reunite with his son, he was immediately arrested and thrown in jail by the communist secret police in 1947. During the war my grandmother was forced by the German Nazis to do slave labor. She had a little son, who later became my father. She died soon of exhaustion and illness soon after the end of the war. Communists succeeded in breaking the bond between the loving father and his son. Breaking up families who value dignity and honor remains at the core of the junta strategy. My husband, an associate professor of physics, is the target of an acute discrimination, bullying and mobbing at the Department of Physics of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan.

These days careers of select individuals in Poland are killed at will, one by one, on fabricated, absurd charges. The communists knew perfectly well that you can't go on forever killing people physically. They gradually changed their tactics. Instead of killing the body they focused on killing the mind and the soul. The advanced knowledge of the social sciences was employed for the sole purpose of murdering the soul and murdering the social dimension of a person. Psychology became operational psychology. The key elements to the successful murder of the social being are the isolation of the victim and the participation of as many perpetrators as possible. This is the true meaning of Solidarity in Poland. It is the solidarity of the oppressors against an individual. All these methods inherited by the current Polish junta are widely used in Poland today. Psychological terror against any bright and brave individual standing up for dignity and honor is the main tool of the regime.

We are faced with a new type of dictatorship. We have multi-party elections in Poland, we have the parliament, different newspapers and tv channels, facebooks and twitters, and often the same tv series as people watch all over the world. However the ugly minds adapted to all that and are taking full advantage of the technological progress. They are running a system which one of us (L.S.B.) calls the BTL dictatorship, i.e. dictatorship "below-the-line". The chain of command is hidden from view. The tyranny relies on many seemingly independent acts committed by a large number of perpetrators in different institutions. It is the solidarity of the junta against the rest of us. The perpetrators of the junta are rewarded with money, prizes, careers, and social status.

The so-called velvet revolution of the 1989-90 was a fraud. This was merely a transformation of the brutal regime into a new form. A form that was better adapted to a new reality. This new form of dictatorship imitates the language of mature democracies. It imitates their rhetoric. It imitates some democratic processes. But it is no more than an exercise in deception. Another act in the same theatrical play, where public rituals are supposed to trick people into believing that beneath the rituals there is a genuine democratic content. However beneath a thin veil of democratic rituals is the same stalinist iron fist. Wladyslaw Gomulka, the First Secretary of the communist party declared in his Moscow speech on 18 June 1945, "We will never relinquish the power that we once won" ("Raz zdobytej władzy nie oddamy nigdy"). And it is this quote that perfectly describes the post-1990 Poland. Gomulka's followers kept his promise. The much-publicized Lech Walesa's line "We the People", opening his speech to the American Congress in 1991 was a lie.

The Polish communist junta seemed to give up power in a negotiated settlement with the representatives of the so-called democratic opposition in 1989. Much has been written about the apparent rise of the civil society in the communist countries and how it brought about the regime change. The course of events over the next twenty four years proved beyond any doubt hat that 1989 settlement was merely a trick enabling the communists to remain in control and to continue occupying all positions of power. The "democratic opposition" was neither opposition nor was it democratic. It was a device created by the communist dictatorship in order to legitimize the departure from the dull, old-style regime and mask the transition to a new, more advanced form of tyranny.

MG and LSB