COMMUNISM'S NEGOTIATED COLLAPSE:
THE POLISH ROUND TABLE TALKS OF 1989,
TEN YEARS LATER
A Conference at the University of Michigan, April 7-10, 1999

Prime Minister in the months leading up to the Round Table negotiations, Mieczyslaw Rakowski (b. 1926) was an officer of the Polish People's Army from 1945 to 1949 and received a doctorate in history from Warsaw's Institute for Social Sciences in 1956. He began his political career in 1946 as a member of the Polish Workers' Party. From 1948 to 1990 he was a member of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR), serving on its Central Committee from 1975 to 1990. After serving one year as Assistant Editor, Rakowski became Editor-in-Chief of the weekly magazine Polityka in 1958, a position he held until 1982. He was Deputy Prime Minister from 1981 to 1985, Deputy Speaker of the Sejm and leader of its Socio-economic Council from 1985 to 1988, and a member of the PZPR's Politburo from 1987 to 1990. From September 1988 to August 1989, Rakowski served as the last communist Prime Minister of Poland; from August 1989 to February 1990, he was the last First Secretary of the PZPR. Since 1990, Rakowski has been Editor-in-Chief of Dzis: Przeglad Spoleczny. He is the author of numerous publications on politics.

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