Helena Łuczywo (1946)

“Working 16 hours every day, fearless, neat, usually imposing her opinion in a sweet, yet firm tone”, that’s what Krzysztof Leski supposedly said about her. Leski cooperated with her both in the Polish Underground State and in free Poland. Łuczywo belonged to a unique generation of rebellious Warsaw students that took to the streets in March 1968 and who were at the same time the disappointed children of prominent communist figures. She was born on 18 January 1946 in Warsaw into the family of Jewish communist activists Ferdynand Chaber and Dorota née Guter. As an active member of the KC PZPR (Central Committee of the Polish United Workers’ Party), her father secured the family’s finances and believed in the system, even though he was forced to go on pension during the 1968 Polish purge. In the 1960s, Helena studied political economy at the University of Warsaw, where she became involved in official student organizations. She became the prefect for her year. Moreover, along with a group of students that included, among others, Seweryn Blumsztajn, Ryszard Bugaj, and Aleksander Smolar, she was active in the Polish Socialist Youth Union. She was soon expelled from the university for participating in the student strikes in March 1968. She managed to graduate just one year later. But as she herself reminisced, “until 1976 she was devoted to family life”.

Helena returned to the university to study English, which was to play a significant role in her future opposition activities. At the same time, at the end of June 1976, Poland was swept by a wave of strikes and protests stemming from the government declaration of drastic price increases on some consumer products. The scale of repression towards those striking resulted in the immediate reaction of Solidarność. Numerous groups in communities attempted to aid the persecuted workers from Ursus, Radom, and Płock. Such were the circumstances surrounding the emergence of the KOR (Workers’ Defence Committee) in September. Helena and her husband, engineer Witold Łuczywo, cooperated with the entity by organizing aid for workers. Due to her proficiency in English, she was appointed as an interpreter to support foreign reporters covering the events of June.

A year later, along with her husband Witold, Jan Lityński, and Ludwika and Henryk Wujec, she founded the independent biweekly magazine Robotnik. She was the editor of the magazine until 1981. That’s when she became a full-time journalist. Helena was also a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, and in the beginning of 1981, she set up the Press Agency of “Solidarność”, which she led until the imposition of martial law.

Upon the imposition of martial law on 13 December 1981, Helena Łuczywo became active in the Underground Polish State. The quick implementation of the underground press was to alleviate the spreading of misinformation. After only a few days, the underground Wiadomości (“News”) started to circulate in Warsaw. It took a few weeks for the first issues of such magazines as KOS or Tygodnik Wojenny (“Wartime Weekly”) to appear. The press was perceived to be one of the main forms of resistance against the authorities. As Łuczywo herself recalls: “Back then it was really essential to be aware of what was going on. Hence the idea of publishing press information. […] The first thing we did was to rewrite the information on green tissue paper and transfer it to the West. It even turned out that somehow these papers made it there”.

On 16 December 1981 Helena, Joanna Szczęsna, Zofia Bydlińska-Czernuszczyk, Anna Bikont, Anna Dodziuk, Katarzyna Harpińska, and Małgorzata Pawlicka began publishing Informacja Solidarności (“Information from Solidarność”), a zine that was a few pages long and initially issued daily. In February of the following year, the editing board began publishing the Tygodnik Mazowsze (“Masovia Weekly”), which over time became the most prominent magazine of Solidarność.

Its inception is linked with the tragic story of Jerzy Zieleński, a former member of the Home Army, prisoner of Pawiak, and participant of the Warsaw Uprising who was appointed as editor-in-chief of the new magazine Mazowsze just before the imposition of martial law. He got to work, created the editorial team, and made arrangements with authors. However, upon learning about the imposition of martial law, he committed suicide on 13 December 1981. The editorial team remembered Zieleński by publishing the magazine’s first issue on 11 February 1982 as issue No. 2. The first issue was symbolically dedicated to the late editor.

After Zieleński’s passing, Helena Łuczywo took over the post of editor-in-chief and began working with the female-dominated editorial team. She maintained close relations with Zbigniew Bujak and other leaders of Solidarność who remained in hiding. Helena helped with the living arrangements of the underground state and searched for suitable flats.

The editors of the magazine, which was to become a press body for regional authorities of the opposition, worked on the go, moving the editorial office every two weeks to a new flat to avoid being discovered. The editorial team also included Anna Dodziuk, Marta Woydt, Wojciech Kamiński, and Ewa Kulik, who was the crucial link between the magazine and the regional authorities of the underground Solidarność. Due to the mass detainment of men, who until then usually held key organizational positions, the underground press became the most female-dominated area of the Polish democratic opposition. Marianna Domańska, whose flat served as a meeting place for the editorial team, also cooperated closely with Tygodnik. 290 issues were published by April 1989, which puts it at the absolute forefront of underground magazines. Regular publishing was possible thanks to an extended network of printers, editors, and distributors.

When Helena stopped hiding in January 1983, the character of the editorial team’s operations changed. All the editors worked at their own places, meeting at the editorial office a few times per week. The police were familiar with some of them, so it was crucial to ensure that none of them was followed. The Tygodnik was prepared in cycles that covered a few days. Helena would start working on Sunday. After the meeting of the entire editorial team, a part of it would spend a few days together polishing the pieces. Then, the texts were typed on a Vari-typer and submitted for printing and distribution. It was mainly distributed at Warsaw industrial plants, universities, and libraries; beginning in 1984, it was also distributed outside the region. It was the only underground magazine with nationwide reach. In large centers such as Kraków, Wrocław, Gdańsk, and Szczecin, 2,000–3,000 issues were distributed. Such a large circulation was possible thanks to an efficient printing system implemented by Witold Łuczywo, who authored the idea of decentralizing printing.

There was no strict hierarchy of the editorial team. Each of the editors handled whatever was needed at the moment. Each of them would also curate pieces about the themes that were most important to them. For example, Łuczywo would write about economics, while Szczęsna handled legal matters. However, many co-workers emphasized Helena’s leadership skills when it came to decision making or organizing the operation of the editorial team. The significance of the network of contacts that she was able to create was equally important. Along with Joanna Szczęsna, they contacted contributing authors. These writers received remuneration, though some refused to accept it or donated it to charity. Many authors used pen names to avoid repression from the authorities.

Being a part of an underground editorial board had its own unique nature. It demanded particular focus on organizational activity. As Łuczywo reminisced: “80% of our energy went into making sure that the militia didn’t catch us and into making the entire system work. Looking for flats was the most labour-intensive part. And 20% was the actual preparation of the Tygodnik, deciding what a given issue should include, gathering it, and so on.

1989 marked the occurrence of one of the most significant events in the modern history of Poland – namely, the Round Table talks. Representatives of the authorities of the Polish People’s Republic, the democratic opposition, and church entities participated in them. The talks ignited political shifts and led to partially free elections in June. Most political writers and editors of the Tygodnik perceived these talks as a chance to democratize the system. Helena even participated in the negotiations as a representative in the sub-table on media issues, for one of the resolutions concerned the launch of an independent, opposition daily magazine. That’s how Gazeta Wyborcza came to life, with Adam Michnik taking the spot of the editor-in-chief. He proposed an offer of cooperation that was accepted by a significant part of the editorial team at Tygodnik, including Helena Łuczywo as deputy editor-in-chief.

In the following years, Helena was the president (1990-98) of the Agora Gazeta publishing company and then vice president of the management board (until 2004) at Agora SA, one of Poland’s largest media companies. She cooperated with Gazeta Wyborcza until 2009, when she retired.