Against the background of the scandal with the deprivation of Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky of the Order of the White Eagle, there is a lot of talk about who else received it, paying special attention to controversial historical figures. However, in this context, they hardly remember Jerzy Giedroyc, the only Pole who refused to accept Poland’s highest state award.

Polish publicist, politician and public figure, founder and editor-in-chief (1947-2000) of the cult magazine Kultura, which was the most influential Polish publication in exile in the 20th century, Jerzy Giedroyc went down in history as an active supporter of Polish-Ukrainian cooperation, an opponent of mutual territorial and other claims.

Jerzy Giedroyc came from an ancient, polonized Lithuanian family. Born on July 27, 1906 in Minsk in the family of Ignacy Giedroyc and Franciszka Stazycka. His childhood passed in Russia. In 1919, the Giedroyc family moved to Warsaw, where Jerzy graduated from the Jan Zamoyski Gymnasium.

Subsequently, he studied first law and then history at the University of Warsaw. Even then, Giedroyc began political activity - he was the head of the Patria Corporation and the Intercorporate Circle in Warsaw, an activist in the academic organization State Thought and an employee of the foreign department of the Main Academic Committee of the Polish Union of Academic Youth.

From 1929 to 1935 he worked in the Ministry of Agriculture as a press assistant and parliamentary assistant, and from 1935 - in the Ministry of Industry and Trade as head of the presidential department. At the same time, Gedroits was engaged in journalistic activities. He was the editor of the magazines "

After the outbreak of World War II, Jerzy Giedroyc, as an employee of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, was evacuated to Romania (1939-1940). In March 1941 he was transported to Istanbul, where Gedroyc volunteered for military service.

He fought as part of the Separate Brigade of the Carpathian Riflemen, was a participant in the Libyan military campaign and the battles in Tobruk (1942), headed the department of military magazines and publishing houses of the Propaganda Bureau of the 11th Polish Corps (1941-1944), worked at the Tank Training Center in Gallipoli (Italy) (1944-1945).

In 1945, Jerzy Giedroyc became director of the European Department of the Ministry of Information of the Polish Republic in London.. The following year he founded a publishing house in Rome for demobilized soldiers: the Literary Institute. In 1947 the Institute was moved to France, first briefly to the Parisian Hotel Lambert and then to Maisons-Lafitte near Paris.

Since 1947, Giedroyc has been the publisher and editor-in-chief of the magazine "

Ukrainian emigration figures collaborated with Kultura: Bogdan Osadchuk, Yuri Lavrinenko, Yuri Shevelev, Ivan Lysyak-Rudnitsky, Boris Levitsky, Ivan Kedrin, Ivan Koshelivets and others.

The publication criticized the position of the Polish government in exile, which called for the restoration of the borders of the Polish state as they existed in 1939. The newspaper supported the restoration of independence of Lithuania, Ukraine and Belarus.

Giedroyc died on September 14, 2000 in Maisons-Lafite, after which, in accordance with his wishes, the Kultura magazine ceased to exist. The last issue was published in October 2000.

Jerzy Giedroyc was a member of the editorial board of the Russian dissident magazine " Consistently, sometimes contrary to the opinion of representatives of Polish emigrant circles and even his closest associates, he advocated the establishment of good neighborly relations between Poland and its eastern neighbors.

Giedroyc's employees emphasize that Ukraine occupies a special place in his ideological heritage. In 1974, together with Juliusz Mieroszewski, he formulated the concept fundamental to Polish political thought. As Giedroyc said then, the independence of Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus is a factor contributing to the independence of Poland, while the enslavement of these countries by Russia contributes to the enslavement of Poland.

“Gedroyc’s eastern policy was the following: the best relations with Russia, but on one condition - that this should not be at the cost of independence and vital interests, first of all Ukraine, as well as Belarus and Lithuania,” said Jerzy Pomianowski, a close associate of Giedroyc.

It was Gedroits who initiated and in 1959 published the first anthology of Ukrainian literature of the 1920-1930s repressed by Stalinism. The editor proposed a title for this anthology, which soon became the name of an entire tragic era in the history of the Ukrainian people - “Executed Revival”.

Researchers of the publicist’s heritage remind that Poland was the first in the world to recognize the independence of Ukraine. They claim that this was largely due to the systematic and long-term work of editor Giedroyc, who explained to the Poles that “without an independent Ukraine there is no independent Poland.”.

Editor Jerzy Giedroyc understood that Poles – both in the diaspora and at home – needed to abandon pre-war political thinking. This, in his opinion, was the main prerequisite for Ukrainian-Polish dialogue and reconciliation.

The political credo of Jerzy Giedroyc – “For the sake of the future, the Poles must leave Lviv to the Ukrainians and Vilna to the Lithuanians. This is necessary to have a good relationship with them,” recalled Warsaw University employee Jan Malicki.

Professor of the Free University of Berlin Bogdan Osadchuk noted that without the influence of Jerzy Giedroyc on Polish politics, Ukrainian-Polish state relations would have been much more difficult after the collapse of the USSR.

Jerzy Giedroyc received honorary doctorates from the Jagiellonian (1991), Friborg (Switzerland, 1996), Wroclaw (1998), Bialystok (1998), Warsaw (1998), Szczecin (2000), Lublin (2000) universities; and was also an honorary member of the Polish Historical Society (1991), laureate of the Polish PEN Club Prize (1989), the. Saint Brother Albert (1993), awards from the weekly Polityka (1995) and the Golden Rod of the Polish Culture Foundation (1999).

He was awarded the Legion of Honor (1938), the Officer's Cross of the Romanian Crown (1930), the Knight's Cross of the Belgian Crown (1938), the Estonian Order of the White Star (1932), the French Officer's Cross of the Legion of Honor (1996). In 1997 he received honorary citizenship of Lithuania, and in 1998 - the Order of Gediminas.

Critically assessing the situation in Poland after 1989, in particular the reforms under Lech Walesa, in 1994 Giedroyc refused to accept the highest Polish award - the Order of the White Eagle.

The editor also refused the award of Ukraine - the Order of Merit, III degree.. He noted that he devoted most of his life to the normalization of Ukrainian-Polish relations, and if he managed to achieve some results, this is already the highest reward.

After this, the second, third and fifth presidents of Ukraine renounced their Polish Orders of the White Eagle.

In addition, other Polish awards were refused by Ukrainian politicians, including Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andriy Sibiga, Head of the Presidential Office Kirill Budanov and Ukrainian Ambassador to Poland Vasyl Bodnar. They consider Navrotsky’s decision a mistake from which Russia benefits.