Aniela Mieczysławska Raczyńska began collaborating with Jerzy Giedroyc's Literary Institute in the late 1940s. The two knew each other since the opening days of the Second World War in 1939 when Aniela and her husband Witold Friedman Mieczysławski, Polish diplomat, landed in Bucharest where Giedroyc served as the secretary of the Polish embassy in Romania. While in the US, she organized fundraising events for Giedroyc's press and Kultura review. The collection contains 7 files and hundreds of letters exchanged between Mieczysławska and Giedroyc from 1957 to 1992. It casts a broad glance on contacts, collaboration and animosities between Polish émigré circles in Britain, US, and France and provides the critical evidence of discrepancy between Jerzy Giedroyc's milieu and the "Polish London" mobilized around the Government in Exile. The bone of contention was the relationship with Polish People's Republic. While Giedroyc consequently built bridges between diaspora and the country, taking into consideration political changes, cultural trends, and literature and philosophy created in socialist Poland, the London émigrés viewed themselves and their institutions as the only guardians of Polish political and cultural tradition, culture and national identity. The correspondence documents and tracks down Aniela Mieczysławska Raczyńska's gradual conversion to the 'London' camp and Jerzy Giedroyc's disenchantment with London exiles. It also contains fascinating perspectives and detail on the social life of Polish political and cultural elites in exile.
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