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15.05.2019

Ignoring the trivial

15.05.2019
Ewa Balcerowicz  (Fot. Mateusz Stankiewicz)

She graduated from SGPiS [Main School of Planning and Statistics, now SGH Warsaw School of Economics, the oldest business school in Poland – translator’s note], worked at the Polish Academy of Sciences and co-founded a renowned economic think-tank. 
Admittedly, at some point she had to step back a bit and postpone her career to support her husband, Leszek Balcerowicz. However, it was her choice so she never felt like she was sacrificing herself. We meet Ewa Balcerowicz on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of Poland’s freedom and independence.

A young economist in communist Poland – ration coupons for meat, queues, empty shelves, gray streets – gets her dream scholarship at the University of Warwick, one of the top ten universities in England. She could finish her doctorate there. Her husband has a one-year contract at a neighbouring North Staffordshire Polytechnic, also in the School of Economics. They have two children, a nine year old son and a five year old daughter. They have been learning English at home so far.

She is looking forward to going to England because she is fed up. She is fed up with those ration coupons for meat, queues, empty shelves and the gray landscape surrounding them. She is even fed up with her own flat in the proletarian district of Bródno, located on the eighth floor of a Plattenbau block of flats and 53 square meters in size. They have wonderful neighbours, but with “diverse backgrounds”: young academics and the “nowhere employed” (in communism – as it is well known – there was no official unemployment) who were making their idle time pass more pleasantly with alcohol and noisy parties.

So she is looking forward to living for a year in a different, normal and certainly more colourful world. In the summer of 1989, she and her husband are staying in an allotment near Warsaw, preparing intensively for their scientific work. They are ready by August. She has already packed their suitcases.

And then one day the phone rings. For her husband. Her husband goes to a meeting and when he comes back, she already knows she has to start unpacking and say goodbye to her dreams of colourful England. The phone call came from Tadeusz Mazowiecki, the newly appointed Prime Minister of the first non-communist government in post-war Poland. Following the “Round Table Talks” and the landslide victory for the opposition in the elections on 4th June, the Solidarity Labour Union was forming a government. Its most urgent task was to transform the economy from the socialist one to the free market and to get Poland out of the crisis – the country was bankrupt at that time with hyperinflation consuming everything – and it was her husband, Leszek Balcerowicz, who was supposed to accomplish this task.

Ewa Balcerowicz remembers that moment perfectly well. – We held a family powwow and I said no. Not only because I felt sorry about not going England and missing an opportunity for both our children and us to live a normal life. I just knew what my husband was up to. And in my opinion as an economist, this was a task which was impossible to accomplish.

I ask with disbelief: – You didn’t believe in your husband, did you?

She responds confidently: – No, I didn’t.

– Did you tell him that?

– No, I did not. You don’t say things like that.

Leszek Balcerowicz has to make his decision within 12 hours, Mazowiecki will not wait. And he agrees, because – as he told me – he would otherwise have regretted it for the rest of his life. Because it was an opportunity that only happens once in history. Not in Poland’s history, but in the history of the world. Never before has anyone made the transition from totalitarianism to democracy while simultaneously introducing capitalism. He agrees in spite of his wife’s objection. Ewa Balcerowicz smiles at that memory today: – I knew he’d do whatever he wanted anyway. Should I have got divorced and run back to Mummy’s place? That’s not what marriage is all about. I’ve learned not to fight for issues that are impossible to win. I thought it wasn’t worth it because I know what my husband is like. He’s decisive, if he makes a choice, there’s no turning back. It’s easier for us to get along if I simply accept this trait of his.

Ewa Balcerowicz  (Fot. Mateusz Stankiewicz)

They had been married for 12 years then and she was getting to know her husband for the second time. She had known him as a partner – easy-going, smiling, never whining; as a father – who would go cycling with the kids, talk to them, drive them to school; as a lecturer and a scientist. – I would have never suspected that he could be so firm, so well-organized, so tough. He embarked on an impossible task that involved an enormous amount of work. He became a leader. It was a surprise to me.

Ewa Balcerowicz speaks precisely and answers the questions succinctly. She avoids big words and pathos. Ewa Lipska, a poet and friend of the family, admits that Ewa is extremely objective, but there is a lot of warmth in her matter-of-factness.

However, I do not ask how the new discovery of her husband’s character affected their relationship, because I know that any such question will be quietly ignored. There are limits, but we’ll talk about them later.

They met at university, at the SGPiS. She – having graduated from high school with flying colours – chose to study foreign trade, which was the most difficult faculty to get admitted to. She comes, as she says, from a poor peasant family. Her mother was a hairdresser, her father was a military man with an incredible thirst for knowledge which he instilled in his children – Ewa and her brother.

She had a boyfriend and plans for the future. And then she met Leszek, an assistant professor at the SGH. She saw him at a scientific conference, listened to a lecture he held there and was delighted by him. They talk briefly, her fascination grows. She thinks that with a man like that she will never be bored. They talk for hours, not only about economics, and Ewa makes a decision. She breaks up with her fiancé. Leszek is six years older, divorced and has a small child. Ewa admits that her parents weren’t delighted to hear about their marriage, but she and Leszek were certain. Well, perhaps not quite certain, because on the wedding day Leszek asked her once again: “Are we doing the right thing?” She responded with the assurance she felt: Yes, we’re doing the right thing”. Their wedding day does not run smoothly. Her mother was so emotionally affected by the occasion that she fainted right after the ceremony and had to be taken to hospital in an ambulance. His mother called to say that she wasn’t coming because this was all too much for her.

It was the 1970s, they were both working at the university and living the lives of young scientists, debating whether there was any possibility of change in Poland. Was communism going to collapse? They did not believe it even when they took part in the Carnival of Solidarity in 1980. They soon discovered that they were right. On December 12, 1981, Leszek leaves for Brussels to attend a congress of economists. A day later Ewa wakes up in the morning, her son has a high temperature, and she hears on the radio that martial law has been imposed. She doesn’t hear anything from her husband, the phones are not working. Her friends try to comfort her: “Don’t worry, he’ll get you into Belgium now. You’re going to start a normal life”.

On the 16th of December in the evening, when it is already known that the ZOMO [paramilitary-police formations during the Communist Era – translator’s note] had killed nine workers in the Wujek mine, the doorbell rings. She opens the door and sees Leszek. He had got on a completely empty train heading east and reached Warsaw two days later. He had managed to get a cab, which was a miracle in those days. The taxi driver asked him: “Where have you come from?” “From Belgium”. Leszek’s answer made him stop the car. “You must be crazy coming back to these Bolsheviks who have just killed the miners here”. – I wasn’t even surprised that he came back. He wouldn’t have left us alone. We have never considered leaving Poland permanently, although my husband has been offered several opportunities. This is our country, we breathe this air, this is our place on earth and we serve it as well as we can.

So a little pathos steals into our conversation, but only when we talk about work and social activity. But we’ll talk about it in a moment too, because we haven’t finished talking about 1989 yet. The communist era is coming to an end and free Poland is about to begin, her husband being one of the “founding fathers”.

It is she who drives him in their little Fiat 126 to the premises of the Ministry of Finance, which Leszek Balcerowicz is about to become the head of. It’s the 13th September, 1989, ten o’clock in the morning. They arrive too early – neither of them like to be late – and walk up and down in front of the ministry building waiting for Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki. Suddenly they look up and see people leaning out of all windows and waving at them. Leszek Balcerowicz enters a new life. When she drives away, she knows that the old one has just ended. Her husband, who was already Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance at that time, has left home and will be away for a long time. Actually, it wasn’t until after 800 days that he returned.

Ewa Balcerowicz does not have happy memories of that period. – It was a dramatic period – she admits. She was worried all the time. Worried about her husband – because he was working inhumanly hard, and on Sundays, when he had some free time, he paced incessantly. Because of the adrenaline. – I had to stay calm and not bother him with housework. And I felt abandoned, overwhelmed with problems. I had to do the shopping when there was nothing but queues. Communism meant constant humiliation and debasement. No one remembers that in order to buy something for supper you had to stand in a queue without being sure that there was enough for everyone. The same goes for petrol, and the car is essential for her to get everything organized: getting to work, picking up the kids. It is then that the Council of Ministers offers them a larger, more comfortable apartment, closer to the city centre. The Balcerowiczs reject this offer; they have firm principles in this respect: no privileges deriving from power. – That’s what exposing people to temptation looks like – she still flares up at that memory. – I had no doubt that we had to say no. Neither did Leszek. And they left us alone, because you know what it’s like to give in once. It is then easy to get involved in some kind of strange agreements from which there is no turning back. It’s easy to lose face.

But the worst thing about that busy time was fear. Her husband works a dozen or so hours a day on Balcerowicz’s plan the aim of which is to change Poland. He comes back home in the middle of the night, she waits for him ready to serve supper, smiling, asking how he was. And all he wants to do is not to speak. He doesn’t have the strength anymore. Did she rebel? – I had periods of rebellion – she admits. – I felt as though fate had punished me, I was abandoned, everything was on my head, I had to be both father and mother; my children were suffering. Why would we want that? However, I quickly told myself off for complaining because it was a sin on my part to do so. I have wonderful children, a job that I love and a husband who may not be a typical husband but he does great things. She adds: – After all I knew what he was getting himself into. I read newspapers and watched TV – Leszek was a hero on the newspapers’ front pages.

Ewa herself worked at the Institute of Economic Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences, but she had to postpone the defence of her Ph.D., there was no time for that. Today, women would say that she did not have to sacrifice herself so much for her husband because her life and career were equally important. She didn’t have to serve dinner with a smile plastered on her face. – It wasn’t a fake smile – she denies – I was honest in what I did, I did it out of concern. There are times in the life of every married couple when you have to move aside a little and wait. I loved my job, but my family was even more important. My husband. Our children. I couldn’t possibly miss the opportunity to see them develop and grow up. I made a deliberate decision to let my husband have this time which was special for us, so that he felt comfortable in what he was doing (I was just concerned whether he’d hold out because the pressure was enormous). I also devoted this time to the children, because it was hard for them.

Ewa Balcerowicz  (Fot. Mateusz Stankiewicz)

It was the children she was most worried about. – I understood that something extraordinary was happening in Poland, that I was witnessing or even in a way participating in, but our children had a terrible life at that time. Their dad was on everybody’s lips. When Wojtek, our son, was going to a summer camp, he asked us if he had to introduce himself using the surname Balcerowicz. Can you imagine that? One day, a couple of young lads lay in wait for him in front of our block of flats. They wanted to beat him up. Because of his father. Fortunately, his classmates warned him and defended him. Wojtek often came home with his jacket all spat on. It happened that people called him names when he walked with his father. Ania used to cry because she thought her dad would never pick her up from kindergarten again. Her friends reported every day: “I saw your dad on TV”. And he wasn’t always well spoken of. Even Ewa avoided introducing herself with her surname – both in her classes with students and at the dry-cleaner’s. – The launch of the reform is a time of great hope. Communism collapsed; everything was supposed to be like in the West. Balcerowicz’s plan comes into effect, the shops are filling up. Even Pope John Paul II tells the Deputy Prime Minister: “They have called from Zakopane to say that it is already possible to buy chocolate everywhere”. Queues disappear, but problems arise: unemployment, which had been hidden during the communist era, bankrupt, unprofitable companies. And there it was: “Balcerowicz must go”, “Mengele of the Polish economy”. The attacks against the author of the transformation are intensified by the subsequent election campaigns. Ewa Balcerowicz says that she didn’t care, even though it took her a while to become immune to the attacks. – I know my husband, don’t I? People like actors but they do not necessarily like politicians. Nothing unusual – she is shrugging her shoulders. She doesn’t care now, either, when they criticize him, questioning the sense of the shock therapy. – I don’t read any comments, I don’t have time for that – she says categorically. However, when the situation started to become unbearable, she took her husband on holiday. – We would go abroad, because nobody knew him there and we had our privacy. She experienced a moment of horror when her husband was so overworked that he fell ill. They went to the Masurian Lake District then, even though he protested, saying that there was always something happening. – We have indeed paid a high price for those two years.

During the past thirty years, Ewa Balcerowicz has given perhaps two interviews. First of all, she wants to protect her privacy, and that is where she draws the line that cannot be crossed. Secondly, she doesn’t like to share her life with the entire world. The public exposure of privacy in today’s culture continues to amaze her. – You have to keep something to yourself – she says. She makes an exception for “Vogue”; after all, it is the thirtieth anniversary of Poland’s independence.

But she doesn’t shun the social life. – I don’t like sitting at home – she admits. – Unlike my husband. He would rather stay at home at the weekend, watching crime series and reading. My God, what a happy man he is then – she smiles tenderly. – At our home there are books all over the place. When the children moved out, he immediately had their two rooms converted into new libraries. Our daughter jokes that if she wanted to stay with us overnight, she would have no place to sleep.

From Bródno they moved to a terraced house in Zacisze – the name reflects well the character of their private life [Zacisze means a quiet and peaceful place in Polish – translator’s note]. The professor does not attend premieres and galas; rarely can anyone convince him that it is worth it. She understands his need for tranquillity after an intense week filled with work, never ending meetings, conversations, travels. She enjoys sitting with him on the terrace, she can even keep quiet like in the old, difficult times. That’s being together, even in silence. But she is also happy to put on her evening dress, go to the theatre and the opera. – I have a wonderful circle of friends, from my university days. We go out to see theatre performances, premieres, to have a glass of wine. My husband is happy when I go out, because he can relax over a detective novel in peace. But then he always asks how it was. They regularly go together to the cinema. They quarrel a little about what repertoire to choose, because the professor prefers to watch sensational films. – I find them boring, everything seems to be the same. I prefer the artistic cinema, the more serious works. Sometimes I succeed in convincing him. Recently we have watched The Favouriteand of course Cold War.

She also makes the reservation that her appointments with her friends do not mean that they are living separate lives. They simply leave each other some space and the right to have their own interests and leisure activities. But they live their life together. Nowadays, the professor cannot help being invited to attend international conferences and to give lectures. He accepts the invitations, as long as his wife accompanies him. – It was nice when he said he didn’t want to travel without me, not even on short trips. They are now going to Turin, which they both love, just like all of Italy. – I pack my suitcase and say: “I am fed up with my clothes”. And Leszek answers right away: Go get yourself something new. He’s always been open to my shopping sprees. Actually, he likes to go shopping, although he does it in a hurry – hop on hop off – he chooses a suit and a tie; I prefer to have a little more time. They also like to eat out together; both of them consider themselves to be gourmets. Ewa no longer regularly provides home-cooked dinners. Her husband often brings something on his way home or invites her to a restaurant. – I ask him with a laugh whether he doesn’t like my food anymore, and he says seriously that he wants me to rest and relax.

When they were about to get married, they discussed and wrote down on a piece of paper the division of responsibilities – who is to take out the garbage and who is to do the dishes. Ewa has kept this piece of paper to this day, but she admits that in the most turbulent period, in the autumn of 1989, she put it in a drawer. – It would have been completely insane of me to demand that my husband participated in household chores. She smiles at me calmly and with absolute certainty. – I can see that you are looking at me with disbelief and doubt, but my long marital experience has shown me that you need to know when to let go. To ignore things which are not important. People either get accustomed to each other or they break up. You need to know what’s really important, keep an eye on it, and not argue about trivial things. And you have to take care of each other. To support each other. That time was the hardest in my husband’s life. Was I supposed to brawl with him over not throwing out garbage or not going to parent-teacher meetings? It would have been silly, wouldn’t it?

At this point I remember travelling with the professor to meet Lech Wałęsa – we are co-writing a book about the times of the breakthrough. As soon as we got on the train to Gdańsk, he would sit down and immediately pull out his phone: “Yes, Ewa, we’re on our way. I’ll see you later”. Three hours later we would arrive in Gdańsk. The professor would excuse himself and call again: “My darling Ewa, yes, we have arrived safely”. Ewa is smiling: – You see, we have made it. We have perfectly adjusted to each other. But my husband has traits of character that make a good life much easier – he doesn’t growl, he doesn’t whine, he’s a cheerful man who doesn’t care about trivial things.

Thirty years ago, the fact that a wife stayed at home while her husband was making his way up the career ladder was nothing unusual. Today, women are more aware of their rights, they demand equality and respect for their ambitions, both personal and professional. Ewa Balcerowicz strongly supports their aspirations, especially those concerning their role in the labour market. But she doesn’t think she has sacrificed herself for her husband. At that time, even though she had the household to cope with, she spent her normal working hours at the Polish Academy of Sciences (she admits, though, that if it hadn’t been for her mother’s help, it would have been impossible) and preparing an economic think tank project, which she founded with a group of friends in 1991. The CASE Foundation (Centre for Social and Economic Research) has enjoyed an excellent reputation to this day; its economic analyses are carefully studied by both the opposition and the government. They are also observed abroad – the foundation was ranked third in The Global Go To Think Tank world ranking. – My husband’s foundation FOR (Civil Development Forum) has been ranked well behind us – says Ewa Balcerowicz with pride. She co-founded CASE, used to be its president and now heads the Foundation’s Council. This gives her more time for travelling with her husband and for her beloved grandchildren. We meet at the CASE office for the interview and before we start, she proudly shows me the premises and introduces me to the employees. She considers the foundation to be her great personal achievement as a female economist, filling her with great satisfaction, despite the fact that on one occasion because of her work at the Foundation she was forced to submit to public questioning by a committee of inquiry into banks. The committee, which had been appointed solely for political reasons, wanted to question Leszek Balcerowicz, then the President of the National Bank of Poland. He refused, so his wife was summoned. – I found myself in the heart of the mess, but since I had nothing on my conscience, everything went smoothly. The politicians were only after Balcerowicz. But they didn’t succeed in getting him. Ewa Balcerowicz is also involved in charity work for Małgorzata Chmielewska’s Domy Wspólnoty Chleb Życia [Bread of Life Community Centres – translator’s note] Foundation, but when I ask her about it, she waves my questions aside. She doesn’t want to boast. She does it because she has a heartfelt need to do it and therefore there’s no need to talk about it.

What is her recipe for a happy relationship? – First of all, you have to be lucky enough to find one another. And then you have to be wise, have your own interests, support each other when needed and not worry about the trivial.

What is her recipe for a good life? – Do what you love to do. My husband and I could just give ourselves a break. But I’m still involved with CASE and the Economic Society, he – with FOR. Both of us believe that it is necessary to get involved in public life, that we have responsibilities towards society and the country. Therefore, the answer to the question whether it was worth going through all this is easy for her: – It was worth it.

Katarzyna Kolenda-Zaleska
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