page_title: Witold Kieżun
section_title: Return to Poland
hierarchical_section_title: Witold Kieżun / Return to Poland
caption_attribution_description: English: Witold and Danuta Kieżun 2010
context_page_description: Witold Jerzy Kieżun is a Polish economist, former soldier of the Home Army – the Polish resistance movement against German occupation during World War II, participant of the Warsaw uprising and prisoner in the Soviet Gulags. Kieżun is a former professor at Temple University, Duquesne University, Universite de Montreal, Université du Québec à Montréal, Bujumbura University, Warsaw University. He served as Chief Technical Advisor of the United Nations Development Programme in Burundi, Rwanda, and Burkina Faso. Witold Kieżun is currently a lecturer at Kozminski University in Warsaw. He received Doctor Honoris Causa from Jagiellonian University and the National Defence University of Warsaw. Kieżun is an honorary member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and an honorary citizen of Warsaw.
context_section_description: After the fall of Communism in Poland, Witold Kieżun was being considered for the post of Minister of Finance in the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, but he turned down the offer due to the lack of specificity of the request and his commitment to his UNDP project in Burundi. In 1995 Witold Kieżun started giving regular 6-week long courses of international administration at Leon Kozminski Academy of Entrepreneurship and Management in Warsaw, where he became professor, but he still resided full-time in Canada until 1999, when he his wife Danuta permanently moved back to Warsaw in Poland, where Witold continued to work as lecturer, author and advisor.
  During the 1990s, Witold Kieżun developed several propositions related to the administrative transformation of Poland and other post-communist states, e.g. the East European Countries Administrative Modernization for Nations Building project for the United Nation's Department of Technical Cooperation for Development. Witold Kieżun provided advice to the governments of Hanna Suchocka (1992–93), Jerzy Buzek (1997–2001), Marek Belka (2004–2005) and Jarosław Kaczyński (2006–2007) as well as to president Lech Kaczyński.
  Witold Kieżun's assessment of the economical and administrative development of post-transformation Poland has been generally critical. Kieżun claims that the chosen path of economic transformation after the end of Communism had not taken into account the specifics of the Polish economy and that the applied "shock therapy" did not focus on preserving and modernizing existing assets, but unnecessarily handed over public assets to foreign companies and members of the former Communist party elite at drastically understated valuations. Kieżun accredits this to a lack of interest and knowledge of economics of the political elite in Poland during the transformation years, in particular the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki, as well as a too academic and detached-from-reality textbook liberalism of then finance minister Leszek Balcerowicz and Poland's foreign advisors such as George Soros and Jeffrey Sachs. While Kieżun admits that the chosen path ultimately helped stop hyperinflation, according to Kieżun Poland's economic transformation resulted in creating a post-colonial state of dependence which puts at risk the future economic development of Poland. As support for his thesis Kieżun refers to annual profit outflows by foreign-owned companies in the range of 40–80 billion Polish Zloty (~3–5% of Poland's GDP), a too low share of wages in GDP, mass emigration, high unemployment and a very low fertility rate. Witold Kieżun has also been critical of the administrative transformation of Poland, stating that it served short-term political interests by creating unnecessary complexity and an excess of public servant posts while sacrificing government efficiency.
  On 9 January 2001, Witold Kieżun was kidnapped at gunpoint from a parking lot at Polna street in Warsaw by 2 unidentified men who knew his identity. The kidnappers drove Kieżun out of Warsaw in his own car, took his cell phone and address book, but were not interested in the money he carried or his Swiss watch. Ultimately, the kidnappers left Kieżun in a forest near Otwock, and drove off with his car, which was later found undamaged near Marysin. The background of the kidnapping has never been clarified.
  Witold Kieżun also frequently comments on Polish history, in particular related to the Second World War and the ongoing Polish debate about the justification and sense of the Warsaw uprising. Kieżun believes that the Uprising was a necessity, because the population of Warsaw longed to actively put an end to the genocidal occupation of Warsaw by the Germans. As the specific trigger for the Uprising, Kieżun sees the German order to participate in the transformation of the city into "Festung Warschau", a German military concept of total resistance in a city to maximize slow-down of the Soviet advance, taking into account the city's complete destruction. The population of Warsaw refused to follow the order, which was punisha
caption: Witold Kieżun with his wife Danuta 2010
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