Youth and the period of World War II
Son of Ferdinand and Jadwiga Professional and public activities in the People's Republic of Poland
Activities in the 1950s, 60s and 70s
After graduation, he worked at the Ministry of Justice (until 1954), later at the Legal Sciences Department of the Polish Academy of Sciences (until 1956). In the years 1956-1957 he was a member of the editorial team of the weekly Po prostu. He wrote with Walerym Namiotkiewicz and Jerzy Ambroziewicz a text entitled To meet people from the Home Army (published in this magazine in the issue of March 11, 1956), in which the authors called for the rehabilitation of soldiers of the Home Army. In his articles, he pointed to abuses in the judiciary and the administration of justice, he described the symbiosis of the party apparatus with the criminal milieu in the province. From 1957, he had been banned for two years as a journalist. In the years 1956-1962 he belonged to the Club of the Crooked Circle, from 1958 to 1961 he was a member of the club's board. After the dissolution of this organization, he participated in meetings with Jan Józef Lipski. According to Ludwik Hass's work, Jan Olszewski was admitted to Freemasonry on May 1, 1962 in the independent Copernicus Lodge in Warsaw. In this lodge, he was given the rank of master in 1964, later he was to be the second caretaker, speaker and great adopter of the Grand Lodge of Poland. Jan Olszewski in the interview-Prosto river in his eyes claimed that the revamped Lodge of Copernicus served only as a camouflage to continue certain threads of the Club Crooked Circle's activities in conspiracy. In the 1960s he was a defender in political processes, including Melchiora Wańkowicz (1964), Jacek Kuroń and Karol Modzelewski (1965), Janusz Szpotański (1968), Adam Michnik and Jan Nepomucen Miller. In the years 1968-1970, in connection with the defense of students arrested during the manifestations of March in Warsaw, he was suspended in the law of practicing the profession. After this period, he returned to work as an attorney. In 1970 he took part as a defender in the process of activists of the independence movement organization. In December 1975 he was the initiator, co-author (together with Jacek Kuroń and Jakub Karpiński) and the signatory of Letter 59 to the Sejm, which included protest against the proposed amendments to the Constitution of the PRL and a declaration of the opposition's goals. In January 1976, he also wrote to Wojciech Ziembiński, Letter 14 to the Sejm, against the introduction to the constitution of the record of inviolability of the alliance with the Soviet Union. He signed a statement from 14 intellectuals from June 1976, sympathizing with workers' protests. In 1976 he was among the founders of the Polish Independence Agreement. During his activity in PPN 1976-1980 he announced more than fifty program publications. In 1977, he wrote, issued by this organization and then resumed as part of the second circulation of publishing, the Citizen's guide and the Security Service, which became the instruction for oppositionists worked out by SB officers during martial law. He belonged to the PPN's four-person leadership together with Zdzisław Najter, Andrzej Kijowski and Jan Józef Szczepański. In 1976 he participated in establishing the Workers' Defense Committee. He was the co-author of his Appeal to the society and authorities of the Polish People's Republic of 23 September of that year. He was not deliberately placed on the list of disclosed KOR members, which made it easier for him to provide legal assistance to the repressed and tried after the June events. In October of the same year, together with Aniela Steinsbergowa and Józef Rybicki, he considered the establishment of a Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, which would cooperate with similar organizations from outside Poland. From January 1977, he actively participated in the talks of the Independence Nourishment with representatives of KOR - Jacek Kuron, Jan Józef Lipski, Antoni Macierewicz and Piotr Naimski. In September 1977, he signed the Declaration of the Democratic Movement, which is a programming document of the KOR community. Activities in the 1980s
In September 1980 he joined the organization of an independent trade union in Warsaw. At the meeting of representatives of independent unions in Gdańsk on September 17 of that year, he appeared, alongside Karol Modzelewski, with the concept that all newly formed unions would unite in a single nation-wide structure, which was accepted. He was an adviser to the National Coordinating Committee (since October 1981 National Commission) of the Independent Self-Governing Trade Union Solidarity and the board of the Mazowsze Region, and also one of the authors of the first statute of Solidarity. Then, together with Wiesław Chrzanowski, he ran the registration proceedings of the union in Warsaw, and later also the registration proceedings of NSZZ Rolników Indywidualnych Solidarność. In December 1980 he co-founded the Defense Committee of Prisoners for Beliefs, appointed by the KKP. From January 1981 he was a member of the program and consultative council of the Social and Professional Work Center at the KKP. After the imposition of martial law (together with Wiesław Chrzanowski) he unsuccessfully tried to make the interned Lech Wałęsa appeal to the authorities of the underground Solidarity to cancel the protests planned for August 31, 1982. On behalf of the secretary of the Polish Episcopate, Archbishop Bronisław Dąbrowski held talks with representatives of the authorities regarding the release of prisoners and internment camps of the sick. He took part in trials against strike organizers and underground publishers. He was a defender, among others Lech Wałęsa, Zbigniew Romaszewski, Zbigniew Bujak. In the spring of 1983 he was the initiator of a joint statement of the underground Solidarity Trade Union, trade unions and autonomous, containing a protest against the banalization of all trade unions in Poland. He was detained for 48 hours, then - straight from arrest - appeared in the courtroom as a defender in the process of the underground Inter-Factory Workers Committee of Solidarity. Authorized by Primate Jozef Glemp in 1984 and 1985, he appeared as an auxiliary prosecutor in the trial of the assassins of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko. He was also the plenipotentiary of the spiritual family. In the accusatory speech, broadcast by the radio at the time, he presented his version of events, claiming that the murder was to be a political provocation aimed at unleashing riots in the country. He belonged to the signatories of the statement of May 31, 1987, issued by a group of people invited by Lech Wałęsa, containing the basic goals of the opposition. After stopping the hiding Kornel Morawiecki, he was supposed to be his defender, but he convinced him (together with Andrzej Stelmachowski, among others) to emigrate from the Polish People's Republic in April 1988. In May 1988 he was one of the mediators (along with Halina Bortnowska and Andrzej Stelmachowski) in conversations during the strike in Huta im. Lenin. Later, he took part in the conversations of Father Alojzy Orszulik with generals Czesław Kiszczak and Zbigniew Pudysz at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where the need to save the country was discussed. In December 1988, in connection with the planned talks of the Round Table, he co-founded the Citizens' Committee with the Chairman of NSZZ Solidarność. He took action to explain the circumstances of the killings made in 1989 on the priests Stefanie Niedzielak, Stanisław Suchowolcu and Sylwester Zychu. From 1982 to 1989 he published in the Catholic Review, in 1989 he began working with Tygodnik Solidarność. Activity in the Third Polish Republic
1989-1991
He was a participant in the Round Table discussions (as an expert on the solidarity side in the sub-module on law reform and courts). He did not run for the Contract Sejm. In the years 1989-1991 he was the deputy chairman of the State Tribunal. In 1989 he became a member of the Independent Historical Committee for the Katyn Massacre, and in 1990 he was a co-founder and founder of the Polish Katyn Foundation. From 1990 it belonged to the Center Agreement. In the autumn of the same year, he participated in the preparation of Lech Wałęsa's electoral program and was his trustee in the National Electoral Commission in the presidential election. He became a member of the Advisory Committee of the President of the Republic of Poland Lech Wałęsa (1991). In the parliamentary election in 1991, he was elected to the Sejm of the 1st term from the list of the Center's Civic Agreement. He sat on the Constitutional Committee of the National Assembly, as well as in the Sejm: extraordinary committees for consideration of draft constitutional laws, the Justice Committee and the Committee on Administration and Home Affairs. In addition, he participated in the work of the Subcommittee on the foundations of the political and socio-economic system and the Subcommittee of legislative, executive and local self-government bodies. The government of Jan Olszewski
On December 6, 1991, the Sejm of the first term, at the president's request, appointed him as the chairman of the Council of Ministers. After forming the composition of the Council of Ministers, his cabinet received a vote of confidence on December 23. He made his first foreign visit as prime minister in February 1992 in the Vatican. As the President of the Council of Ministers he declared a slowdown in the privatization of state assets, he also advocated de-communization in the Ministry of National Defense (including all soldiers and civilian employees of the Polish Armed Forces and ministries) and in the Ministry of Interior in this Office for State and Police Protection (including civilian employees subordinate to the Ministry of Internal Affairs who are not officers) ), not preparing legal solutions in this area when managing the Council of Ministers. In May 1992, he expressed his opposition to the idea of transferring bases left by Russian troops stationed in Poland in the hands of international Polish-Russian companies. By a resolution of the Sejm of 5 June 1992, Jan Olszewski was deprived of office as a result of passing a vote of no confidence. Voting the appeal filed in May for the dismissal of the government was accelerated in connection with the activities of the Minister of Internal Affairs Antoni Macierewicz as part of the so-called lustration resolution of the Sejm and drawing up the Macierewicz list. Activity since 1992
In 1992 he came out of the Center Agreement, he became the founder of the Movement for the Commonwealth, in which he assumed the post of the chairman (after the split in 1993 he became the honorary chairman of the RdR of StanisĹ‚aw WÄ™gĹ‚owski). Together with The Freedom Party of Kornel Morawiecki and the Polish Action of Antoni Macierewicz set up a coalition for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth before the parliamentary elections in 1993, which did not exceed the electoral threshold with the result of 2.7%. He, standing for the Sejm in the Warsaw district, obtained 39,071 votes. After losing his parliamentary mandate, he took part in various initiatives integrating non-parliamentary right-wing groups (including as part of the Saint Catherine Convention). In the presidential election in 1995 he took fourth place, receiving 6.86% support (1 225 453 votes). In the second round, he did not support any of the candidates. Having obtained this result, he founded a new party called the Polish Reconstruction Movement, which in 1996 in polls received even a dozen or so percent of support. The position of the new group began to weaken in connection with the emergence of the Solidarity Electoral Action, to which a significant majority of non-partisan parties joined. In the 1997 elections, the ORC achieved a relative failure, obtaining 5.56% of the vote and receiving six seats in the Sejm of the 3rd term. One of them fell to Jan Olszewski, who became a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Committee on Justice and Human Rights. He registered again as a candidate for the office of the president in the 2000 elections. However, he withdrew before the voting day, granting support to Marian Krzaklewski. Earlier - in August of the same year - he suffered injuries in a car accident in which a member of the ROP authorities Waldemar GrudziĹ„ski was killed. In the parliamentary election in 2001, for the third time he became a deputy from the Warsaw district, this time from the list of the League of Polish Families (winning 13 255 votes). He was again involved in the work of the Committee on Justice and Human Rights. He did not join the LPR club, remaining a non-attached member. On August 27, 2002, he co-founded the ROP Circle of Deputies with two other deputies. Together with Antoni Macierewicz and Gabriel Janowski, before the parliamentary election in 2005 he created a federation party called the Patriotic Movement, which in the elections to the Sejm gained 1.05% of the vote. Jan Olszewski himself, in this election, unsuccessfully applied for a Senate mandate in the Warsaw District, earning about 123 thousand. votes (16.22%) and taking 6th place. In the years 2005-2006 he was again deputy chairman of the State Tribunal. From April 10, 2006 he was an advisor to the President of the Republic of Poland, Lech KaczyĹ„ski, for political affairs. In the parliamentary election in 2007 he was to run for the Senate from the Law and Justice party, but his candidacy did not collect the required number of signatures. On November 9 of the same year, he assumed the post of head of the Military Information Services verification committee, replacing Antoni Macierewicz in this position. On January 20, 2011, he resigned from the post of chairman of the Polish Reconstruction Movement (which on June 23, 2012 was self-dissolved).
