Lech Kaczyński: President of Poland’s Supreme Audit Office (1992-1995)

The book entitled “Lech Kaczyński. Prezes Najwyższej Izby Kontroli w latach 1992-1995” [Lech Kaczyński: President of Poland’s Supreme Audit Office (1992-1995)] has been published; its author, Anna Karolina Piekarska, is a graduate of the Institute of History (University of Warsaw) and an employee at the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw (since 2006). She is also a co-author of a joint publication “Lech Kaczyński. Biografia polityczna (1949–2005)” [Lech Kaczyński: Political Biography (1949–2005)] (Wydawnictwo Zysk i S-ka Poznań 2013). In 2017–2018, she held the post of Editor-in-Chief of an English-language magazine “The Warsaw Institute Review”.

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Piekarska writes in the preface as follows: the purpose of the following publication is to familiarize the reader with (…) the beginning of President Kaczyński’s career as an official that so far has been known to a narrow group of state audit experts and Kaczyński’s closest associates in the Supreme Audit Office. Back in 1992, he was given an opportunity to head an important state institution and develop his managerial skills.

(…) As explained in the further part of the book, the nine-chapter publication provides a review of circumstances in which Lech Kaczyński was appointed President of the Supreme Audit Office as well as details on the institution’s reforms (including its organizational, substantial and personal aspects). Moreover, Piekarska focuses on such issues as control over most important areas of state’s activities, cooperation with foreign-based entities, providing the institution with an appropriate legal framework through a new act’s legislative process and, last but not least, reasons for Kaczynski’s resignation from the post. The last chapter of the book presents opinions and reviews as well as reminiscences about Lech Kaczyński, an homage paid by his closest associates in the Supreme Audit Office. (…)

Piekarska’s publication is a valuable source of information about an administrative career of the late President Lech Kaczyński, killed in a plane crash in Smolensk (Russia) in April 2010, an activity that seems little known to a large public. So far, biographers, historians and journalists focused predominantly on the political leadership of Poland’s former president.

The author stressed that the latter aspect, being both parallel and complementary to Kaczyński’s political career, developed in a highly consisted way, constituting a model example of the administrative cursus honorum in the Third Polish Republic.

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The book was published by The Warsaw Institute Reviews Sp. z o.o while its contents partner is Warsaw Institute Foundation. Media patronage of the publication is provided by “The Warsaw Institute Review”. The book is available in the Warsaw Institute‘s online bookshop. More details available here.

Anna Karolina Piekarska, “Lech Kaczyński. Prezes Najwyższej Izby Kontroli w latach 1992–1995” [Lech Kaczyński: President of Poland’s Supreme Audit Office (1992–1995)], The Warsaw Institute Review Sp. z o.o, Warsaw 2018, p. 182.