Instytut Literacki i Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski – mało znane wątki kontaktów okresu zimnej wojny
Literary Institute (in Maisons-Laffitte) and Catholic University of Lublin – not well-known threads of mutual contacts during the Cold War

Summary/Abstract: Contacts between Catholic University of Lublin and Literary Institute in Maisons-Laffitte (near Paris) were not sufficiently examined by researchers. Their beginnings reach 1957. The first effects were scholarships for scholars from Lublin university, first of all granted by Ford Foundation. The Director of the foundation Shepard Stone visited Lublin in June 1957. One of the beneficies of the program was prof. Jerzy Łukaszewski, later professor and rector of College d’Europe in Brugge. But the most important effect was intensive book exchange which lasted till the end of the Cold War. It is worth to say that University Library of the Catholic University of Lublin after 1989 was one of few libraries in Poland supplied with a set of “Kultura” and publications of Literary Institute. Giedroyc had also his own vision of the role which Lublin university should play – he was trying to convince about it e.g. Czesław Miłosz who was invited to visit Lublin in June 1981. Giedroyc had good contacts also with particular scholars from the university, like Tadeusz Chrzanowski, Zdzisław Kudelski or ks. Roman Dzwonkowski, though this is not a full list. Those contacts had advantages also for an editor – he gained additional information about the situation in Poland and distribution of “Kultura” was broader. But advantages for the university were incomparably greater. Thanks to those contacts the “space of freedom and truth” was widened.

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