̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Poland

Cambridge to launch Polish Studies programme

ag236 — Fri, 14 Jul 2017 09:54:26 +0000

̽��ֱ��signing will mark the grant of 15 million złotys (approximately £3.1 million), allocated to the ̽��ֱ�� of Warsaw by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, to endow in perpetuity a Polish Studies Programme at Cambridge.

̽��ֱ��programme will provide opportunities for research collaboration, as well as teaching in Polish language, literature and culture.

̽��ֱ��programme’s research output will be complemented by a series of high-profile public events that will aim to stimulate research in Polish culture and society, and promote greater understanding of Poland’s role in European history as well as its position as a rising economic power.
̽��ֱ��new initiative will build on the success of the existing four-year pilot programme in Polish Studies at the ̽��ֱ��, led by Dr Stanley Bill of Cambridge’s Department of Slavonic Studies and supported by the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP), the M.B. Grabowski Fund, the Zdanowich Fund and Cambridge’s School of Arts and Humanities.

Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, signed the agreement with the Rector of the ̽��ֱ�� of Warsaw, Professor Marcin Pałys.

Professor Martin Millett, Head of the School of Arts and Humanities at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: “We are delighted to be strengthening this relationship with our colleagues in Poland, which is not only of strategic importance to the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, but of significant import at this time in the history of Europe.”

“ ̽��ֱ��continuity of Polish Studies at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is an opportunity for both parties to develop teaching and research cooperation,” said Assistant Professor Maciej Duszczyk, Vice Rector for Research at the ̽��ֱ�� of Warsaw. He added: “An Advisory Board for the new Polish Studies programme at Cambridge –consisting of representatives from the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, the ̽��ֱ�� of Warsaw, and the Foundation for Polish Science—will be tasked with setting the framework for our collaboration.”

̽��ֱ��agreement was concluded with the support of Poland’s Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

In the autumn, representatives of both universities will meet in Warsaw to take part in an event to mark the enhanced collaboration.

Polish language, literature and culture will be a permanent feature of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s research and teaching following the signing, today, of an agreement with the ̽��ֱ�� of Warsaw.

We are delighted to be strengthening this relationship with our colleagues in Poland, which is not only of strategic importance to the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, but of significant import at this time in the history of Europe.

Prof Martin Millett

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Yes

British and Polish ̽��ֱ�� leaders reaffirm strong academic links

pbh25 — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 10:33:29 +0000

̽��ֱ��strength, and the considerable untapped potential, of academic links between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and Poland were in evidence during the recent visit of a group of senior Polish scientists and university leaders.

̽��ֱ��Polish delegation, including Professor Marcin Palys, Rector of Warsaw ̽��ֱ��, and Professor Maciej Żylicz, President of the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP), were in Cambridge last month for a round table on UK-Poland scientific collaboration. They were welcomed by the Vice-Chancellor of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Professor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz, and by Dr Stanley Bill, Director of the ̽��ֱ��’s pilot initiative for Polish Studies.

Marking the first anniversary of the launch of the Polish Studies initiative, Dr Bill said: “ ̽��ֱ��high level meeting of leaders from British and Polish institutions generated a very fruitful exchange of ideas for future cooperation in science and innovation. It was especially encouraging to see consensus on the importance of the humanities in this process. Research collaboration in any area is a form of cultural exchange, and requires mutual respect and understanding.”

He added: “ ̽��ֱ��new initiative in Polish Studies in the Department of Slavonic Studies at Cambridge precisely aims to provide British students with knowledge of Poland's culture and language, while also educating the broader public through a series of special events. We believe that this work will form an important part of the process of building bridges between the UK and Poland across a range of areas.”

Commenting on the discussions about student mobility and researcher exchange, Professor Palys said: “ ̽��ֱ��interest for collaboration in scientific projects is clearly rising.” He expressed his support for the work of the Polish Studies programme, which, he said, “will trigger more research in humanities and beyond”.

At the end of the visit, which was supported by the British Embassy in Warsaw, Professor Żylicz remarked: “Poland has huge potential, and already quite significant scientific achievements in many fields of science. ̽��ֱ��United Kingdom brings to the table a culture of excellence in scientific work. As we gradually get to know each other and start to work together our scientific efforts may bring outstanding results.”

̽��ֱ��anniversary of the Polish Studies initiative has been marked with a 'fruitful exchange' of ideas.

Tony Bowden

Uniwersytet, Warsaw

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Yes

Past as Prelude: An International Conference on Polish-Ukrainian Relations

th288 — Mon, 22 Jun 2015 15:48:07 +0000

‘Past as Prelude: Polish-Ukrainian Relations for the Twenty-First Century’ is held in partnership with Cambridge Ukrainian Studies, an academic centre in the Department of Slavonic Studies.

̽��ֱ��conference will bring together scholars, politicians and public intellectuals from Poland, Ukraine and beyond.

It seeks to develop new directions for the complex relationship between Poland and Ukraine, which has become more important than ever in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine.

Speakers will include Michał Boni, Norman Davies, Ola Hnatiuk, Yaroslav Hrytsak, Paweł Kowal, Serhii Plokhii, Mykola Riabchuk, Sławomir Sierakowski, Frank Sysyn, and Karolina Wigura, among others.

̽��ֱ��conference is free and open to the public, but online registration is required at www.PolandUkraineconference.org

̽��ֱ��history shared by Poland and Ukraine has seen devastating wars as well as the ethnic cleansing and mass deportations of civilian populations.

It has also witnessed many productive periods of cooperation and solidarity.

In fact, over the course of recent decades, Poland and Ukraine have developed a constructive relationship that may stand as one of the most remarkable political and social achievements of European diplomatic history.

̽��ֱ��future of this relationship is still bound up with difficult discussions of the past. ̽��ֱ��conference ‘Past as Prelude’ is intended to enrich these discussions and to propose new paradigms for the future.

̽��ֱ��event will be open to the broader public through roundtable panels that will be livestreamed around the globe. It will also interact with audiences on Twitter via the hashtag #PolandUkraineConference.

‘By engaging eminent thinkers from Poland and Ukraine in dialogue,’ said Dr Stanley Bill, Lecturer in Polish Studies, ‘we hope to cultivate an open exchange of ideas that will yield fresh pathways for the positive development of Polish-Ukrainian relations in circumstances of increasing regional instability.’

̽��ֱ��conference marks another productive collaboration between Cambridge Ukrainian Studies, a permanent programme in the Department of Slavonic Studies since 2010, and Cambridge Polish Studies, a pilot initiative launched in the Slavonic Department in September 2014.

Dr Rory Finnin, Head of the Department of Slavonic Studies, said: ‘Our new programme in Polish Studies is quickly becoming the most dynamic initiative of its kind in Europe. It is not only cultivating new ground in the study of Poland but also engendering fresh comparative research into the cultures and societies of Eastern Europe, which is a critical objective for the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge.’

̽��ֱ��Cambridge Polish Studies initiative – which is sponsored by the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP), the M. B. Grabowski Fund, Trinity College’s Zdanowich Fund, and the School of Arts and Humanities – combines undergraduate education in Polish literature and language with a rich cycle of special events, including guest speakers, public debates, film screenings, and academic conferences.

̽��ֱ��initiative aims to make Cambridge a key centre for the study of Poland in the UK and beyond.

̽��ֱ��Embassy of the Republic of Poland in London, ̽��ֱ��Oxford Noble Foundation, and ̽��ֱ��Polish Cultural Institute in London have partnered with Cambridge Polish Studies and the Department of Slavonic Studies to make the ‘Past as Prelude’ conference possible.

On June 30 and 1 July 2015, the new Polish Studies programme at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge will host an international conference on the future of Polish-Ukrainian relations at Sidney Sussex College.

Our new programme in Polish Studies is quickly becoming the most dynamic initiative of its kind in Europe.

Dr Rory Finnin

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Yes

Cambridge Polish Studies to host inaugural free lecture

th288 — Tue, 06 Jan 2015 10:30:34 +0000

̽��ֱ��POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews was opened in Warsaw only last October.

On the site of the former Warsaw Ghetto, it is a spectacular modern award-winning building with extensive collections presenting the whole thousand year history of the Jewish community in Poland, once the largest Jewish Community in the world, which was almost entirely destroyed during the Holocaust.

̽��ֱ��core exhibition area includes a multimedia narrative with interactive installations, paintings and oral histories.

“A virtual tour of the POLIN Museum of the history of Polish Jews in Warsaw” is a free event on Friday 16 January from 5pm in the William Mong Hall at Sidney Sussex College.

̽��ֱ��Museum’s Programme Director Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett will conduct a stunning virtual tour illustrating the museum’s philosophy and how Poland is rediscovering the Jewish dimension of its history.

This will be followed by a broader discussion on the subject of Jewish memory in contemporary Poland with Dr Roma Sendyka, a researcher at the Jagiellonian ̽��ֱ�� in Krakow.

Cambridge Polish Studies was launched in October 2014, like the Museum, in the ̽��ֱ��’s Department of Slavonic Studies.

This innovative pilot initiative – sponsored by the Foundation for Polish Science (FNP), the M. B. Grabowski Fund, Trinity College’s Zdanowich Fund, and the School of Arts and Humanities – combines undergraduate education in Polish literature and language with a rich cycle of special events, including guest speakers, public debates, film screenings, and academic conferences.

̽��ֱ��initiative aims to make Cambridge a key centre for the study of Poland in the UK and beyond.

Dr Stanley Bill, the new Lecturer in Polish Studies, said: “We cannot understand the history of Polish culture without the Jewish thread. For centuries the Polish lands were a place of refuge for the Jewish people and a hotbed of religious and cultural innovation.

“Today, many Poles are keen to rediscover this aspect of their own history, learning about the vibrant communities that formed an important part of Polish life before the Nazi genocide. ̽��ֱ��POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews is already making a crucial contribution to this process.”

Dr Bill works largely on twentieth-century Polish culture, with strong interests in Polish-Jewish and Polish-Ukrainian relations.

Before coming to Cambridge, he worked at the Jagiellonian ̽��ֱ�� in Krakow, Poland.

He did his Ph.D. in Comparative Literary Studies at Northwestern ̽��ֱ�� in the United States. He originally hails from Perth, Australia.

This event is part of an emergent research cluster within the department concentrating on the shared multicultural heritage of today’s Poland and Ukraine.

In Easter term, the eminent Polish philosopher Agata Bielik-Robson will come to Cambridge to discuss the work and legacy of the great Polish-Jewish writer, Bruno Schulz, who was murdered by the Nazis in 1942 in a region that now belongs to Ukraine.

In June, Cambridge Polish Studies will organize a major international conference on Polish-Ukrainian relations in partnership with Cambridge Ukrainian Studies.

For free registration for the event on 16 Januaryclick here

Remembering and celebrating the rich thousand-year Jewish dimension of Poland’s history will be the theme of the first major event hosted by the recently-launched Cambridge Polish Studies, an initiative of the Department of Slavonic Studies.

We cannot understand the history of Polish culture without the Jewish thread

Dr Stanley Bill

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Yes

Massacre and metaphor: remembering Katyn

bjb42 — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 09:43:09 +0000

In thick fog on 10 April 2010, the pilot of a Polish Air Force Tupolev Tu-154 struggled to bring his aircraft down at Smolensk North Airport in western Russia. Visibility was reduced to just 1,600 feet, and insofar as any subsequent investigation could establish, by the time he realised that he was flying too low, it was already too late. ̽��ֱ��plane hit trees on approach, turned upside down, and broke apart on the ground, parts of it eventually coming to rest a few hundred feet short of the runway. 96 people were on board; none survived.

Within hours, images of the wrecked fuselage were being broadcast around the world. ̽��ֱ��dead included the Polish President, Lech Kaczyński, his wife, Maria, and numerous senior politicians, military personnel and representatives of the clergy. In a heartbeat, the country’s leadership had essentially been lost. What was profoundly haunting was that the group had been on its way to a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacres, an incident in which 21,857 of the country’s elite had, under entirely different circumstances, also perished. ̽��ֱ��symbolism was unavoidable. Katyn is just a few miles west of where the plane went down.

What followed was an astonishing outpouring of emotion not just in Poland, but in Russia as well. Roads around the Polish Embassy in Moscow had to be closed as mourners rushed to lay flowers and sign a book of condolences. Russia organised a national day of mourning, and Vladimir Putin ordered that the film Katyn, by the Polish director Andrzej Wajda, be shown in a primetime slot on national television. As the Polish intellectual Adam Michnik observed: “ ̽��ֱ��Smolensk catastrophe broke something in our Polish and Russian hearts. In the hearts of the leaders and of regular people. It was as if a gigantic dam opened - a dam behind which unexpressed words and gestures were piled up.”

Throughout the Soviet era, the fact that the Katyn massacres had been perpetrated by Stalin’s secret police, the NKVD, was systematically covered up by the Kremlin. After the Cold War, information and acknowledgement were more forthcoming but not at the rate many Polish activists wanted. ̽��ֱ��Smolensk disaster, quickly labelled Katyn-2, shook the status quo.

“Suddenly in Russia there was a new openness and a new willingness to confront the truth of what happened in 1940,” Rory Finnin, a lecturer in Ukrainian Studies at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, says. “There were visible scenes of commiseration with Poland in the Russian capital, and there was productive political growth on both the Russian and Polish sides. Months after the crash, for instance, the Russia Duma unequivocally declared Katyn a crime of the Stalinist regime. In Poland, politicians and civic figures repeatedly acknowledged Russia’s own painful past and noted that many ordinary Soviet citizens had themselves been victims of Soviet state terror. There was a newfound sense of shared suffering. It took a tragic accident with eerie connections to an historical atrocity to evoke these memories and to begin to transform them.”

Memory and its shifting nature are the central concerns of the new book Remembering Katyn, which traces the ways in which the Katyn murders have been represented in Eastern Europe since 1940. Coauthored by Finnin, his Cambridge colleague Alexander Etkind and a team of scholars, it examines how the tragedy has resonated through the words and deeds of generations of activists, politicians, filmmakers, and writers. It maps that legacy not just in Russia and Poland, but in Belarus, Ukraine and the Baltic States as well.

Its scope reflects the fact that over 70 years, Katyn has evolved from the name for a single historical event into a metonym and metaphor – a shorthand for multiple killing fields in Eastern Europe and beyond. ̽��ֱ��book calls attention to the fact that, contrary to our popular understanding, the majority of the victims of the Katyn operation were executed far from the Katyn Forest itself. These Polish victims were buried in killing fields in Russia, Ukraine and, almost certainly, Belarus as well. “Katyn” has become the collective noun encompassing all of these places. It has also become a term for similar tragedies dissociated from those events. In 1949, for example, the Soviet massacre of many thousands of Ukrainians in the city of Vinnytsia during Stalin’s purges became known as the “Katyn of Ukraine”. In 1995, Srebrenica was dubbed “the new Katyn”. Like the words “Holocaust” or “Gulag”, “Katyn” has acquired a transcendent meaning.

Finnin and Etkind attribute such a phenomenon in part to the intersection, and mutual dependence, of history and memory. History may provide us with a chronicle and analysis of events, but memory refashions them for us to understand in more organic and unpredictable ways. ̽��ֱ��air crash of 2010 is an extreme example of what they call a “memory event”, a moment of rupture when the past is remembered and in effect repurposed. Other, less extreme incidents that can provoke memory events include the release of films and books, court decisions and political announcements.

“Memory events may be said to reboot cultural memory,” the authors write in the introduction to Remembering Katyn. “Much like a computer, cultural memory is dependent on an interaction between ‘hardware’ such as monuments, plaques and street signs, and ‘software’, like novels, films and marches. Monuments are inconspicuous if people are not writing about them, snapping photos of them, laying flowers at their pedestals. Marches have incomplete itineraries without a physical structure designated for commemoration and hewn from stone. Memory events reboot cultural memory by keeping this hardware and software in dialogue while refreshing and updating the code that facilitates their exchange.”

One reason that memory has become so essential to the Katyn story is because the historical truth was suppressed for so long. We now know unequivocally that on March 5, 1940, the leadership of the Soviet Union, including Stalin himself, approved a recommendation from NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria that his men shoot “Polish prisoners of war [located in camps in Russia and Ukraine] and arrestees located in prisons of western regions of Ukraine and Belorussia.” These were men who had been arrested and interned during the Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939.

In 1942, after Germany and Russia had gone to war with one another, workers in German-occupied territory came across the graves at Katyn. ̽��ֱ��Germans elected not to release this information until the following year, Goebbels gleefully anticipating a PR coup against the Soviet enemy. After the German announcement, however, the Soviets responded by pinning the blame on the Nazis. As recent declassified US archival documents reveal, Roosevelt and Churchill tacitly recognised that Katyn had almost certainly been sanctioned by Stalin, but they towed the line for the sake of their alliance. “Let us think of these things always and speak of them never,” Owen O’Malley, British ambassador to the Polish Government-in-exile, said in a statement which summed up Britain’s ambivalence.

As the Soviet cover-up spread into the era of the Cold War, it was challenged by activists both within Communist Poland and the Polish diaspora. From the late 1940s, anonymous tributes to the victims started to spring up in key locations, notably Warsaw’s Powązkowski Cemetery. These tributes were repeatedly removed by the Polish security services. In April 1956, 20,000 Poles congregated in London to commemorate the massacres. By the 1970s, monuments had begun to appear in Stockholm and London, and in April 1980, on the 40th anniversary of the killings, Soviet dissidents issued a public statement “Look Back In Repentance” to mark the occasion.

In the late 1980s, the pending collapse of the Soviet regime allowed the Poles some limited access to Katyn, where the inscription to victims of the Nazi regime on the Soviet monument was changed, euphemistically, to a commemoration of “the fallen” that suggested no perpetrator. Mikhail Gorbachev nevertheless continued to deny Soviet state responsibility for the massacre. It was only in 1990 that this position became untenable with the discovery of new documentary evidence. Half a century after the killings, Russia finally acknowledged what Stalin had done. In 1993, Boris Yeltsin knelt before the Katyn cross in Warsaw and asked Poles: “Forgive us, if you can”.

As history, Katyn is the subject of competing narratives which, in the post-Soviet age, it has slowly become possible to test against the truth. As memory, however, the term now unquestionably goes beyond the historical event itself. As new generations grow up in Eastern Europe, they may well study the former, but their sense of who they are will also be shaped by the latter. In this respect, Katyn’s legacy is as a powerful example of what happens to history, after history has happened.

“If you look at how the past is made present to us, it’s clear that we learn as much from memory – transmitted through cultural texts like novels and films and memorials – as we do from the discipline of history itself,” Finnin adds. “Memory – how it affects us, influences us and changes us – has to be taken into account when we seek to understand society and ourselves.”

Remembering Katyn, by Alexander Etkind, Rory Finnin, Uilleam Blacker, Julie Fedor, Simon Lewis, Maria Mälksoo, and Matilda Mroz is published by Polity.

Swathed in conspiracy and suppressed by the Soviet establishment, the historical truth about the Katyn murders remained obscure for more than half a century. Yet at the same time, the memory of the massacre evolved. A new book shows how this memory defines Eastern Europe even today.

It took a tragic accident with eerie connections to an historical atrocity to evoke these memories and to begin to transform them.

Rory Finnin

Polity Press

Part of the fuselage of the aircraft which crashed near Smolensk in April 2010.

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Yes

Recreating ‘ ̽��ֱ��Great Escape’

ns480 — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:50:34 +0000

Immortalised by the largely fictionalised 1963 Hollywood film starring Steve McQueen and Richard Attenborough, ‘the great escape’ of RAF airmen from the German PoW camp has become the stuff of legend.

But how did 76 men escape via a 100m-long tunnel from a camp built on a site chosen especially to thwart an escape by such means?

Hugh was among a team of experts, archaeologists, veterans and modern-day RAF personnel taken back to the site near Zagan in Poland to excavate for the first time the remains of ‘George’, a tunnel that was in progress when the war ended, and the famous ‘Harry’ tunnel from which the Allied airmen escaped on the moonless night of March 24, 1944.

̽��ֱ��results can be seen in ‘Digging the Great Escape’, shown on Channel 4 on Monday evening (November 28) at 9pm. ̽��ֱ��programme follows last year’s successful attempt by Dr Hunt to recreate 617 Squadron’s Dambusters raid.

Hugh, from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Engineering Department, said: “Although only a handful of men worked on the tunnel directly, the escape plan involved hundreds of prisoners who never really knew what the plan actually was. It was some people’s job to move bin lids or wear their hat a certain way if a German guard was coming – but they never knew why.

“It took a year to dig the tunnel but for more than 70 years since then, ‘Harry’ and ‘George’ have remained undisturbed – and with them the final secrets of a remarkable story and history.

“We all came away with an appreciation of just how difficult – and dangerous – digging the tunnel must have been. Working with the particular type of sand you find there is very tricky. It’s like making sandcastles on the beach; it’s fine if it’s a bit damp, but it dries out very quickly and then the walls cave in. They also had to dispose of a ton of sand for every metre they tunnelled.”

To make their great escape, the prisoners led by Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, made use of (or stole) 4,000 bed boards, 90 double bunk beds, 635 mattresses, 3,424 towels, thousands of knives, forks and spoons and around 1,400 Klim powdered milk cans – used to engineer an ingenious ventilation system. Some of the original Klim cans used were uncovered in the excavation of the site.

They also forged documents and befriended, bribed or coerced German guards to provide them with the civilian uniforms and train timetables so essential once they reached the other side of the fence.

However, all but three of the escapees were recaptured. Fifty of the 73 recaptured were executed by the Gestapo, including Roger Bushell.

For the return to Stalag Luft III, Dr Hunt was among a team of experts including engineer Lt Col Philip Westwood RE; war historian Dr Howard Tuck, archaeologist Dr Tony Pollard and Hilary Costello, one of his own engineering PhD students from Cambridge..

Among a host of responsibilities, Hugh and Hilary designed the 10m tunnel dug by modern-day RAF pilots, evaluated shoring methods, built the railway track and crafted digging tools and saws fashioned from bits of gramophone players, bunk beds and kit bags.

Interweaving the historical narrative with first-hand testimonies and the unfolding story of the excavations and experiments, the film offers a new insight into the Great Escape, and is a celebration of the courage and ingenuity of a remarkable group of men. ̽��ֱ��recreation also assembles a remarkable cast of surviving veterans of the escape, including Stanley ‘Gordie’ King, the man who operated the tunnel ventilation system on the night of March 24.

Added Dr Hunt: “What I think we learned from attempting to do something similar ourselves is the magnitude of the task; it’s simply amazing what they achieved given how difficult it was. But talking to some of the people who were involved, we also got a sense of the bravery, camaraderie and fun of it all - despite the fact that the Germans knew they were tunnelling and were looking everywhere for them. In comparison, we had it easy.

“What is astounding is the range of skills that the prisoners had to build the tunnels, ventilate and light them, as well as making compasses, radios, forging documents, heat treating metals, you name it. A lot of these skills have direct links back to engineering and that can hopefully get young people thinking about university studies in engineering – rather than getting an economics degree and going to work in the city.”

First it was the Dambusters raid, now Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Dr Hugh Hunt has helped to recreate ‘ ̽��ֱ��Great Escape’ from Germany’s infamous Stalag Luft III.

What I think we learned from attempting to do something similar ourselves is the magnitude of the task; it’s simply amazing what they achieved given how difficult it was.

Hugh Hunt

Hugh Hunt, Department of Engineering

Hugh in the recreated tunnel at Zagan

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Yes

Drug pushing in the New Europe

ns480 — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 08:43:41 +0000

An investigation by academic researchers has revealed how backroom deals and discreet pressure by pharmaceutical corporations are determining which drugs are delivered to hospital patients in Poland.

̽��ֱ��study, which is described by one of its authors as a "warning for the New Europe", was led by sociologists at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, UK. It calls for an overhaul of Poland's drugs reimbursement system - the process by which government effectively signs off new drugs for use - and suggests that flaws in the system allow some treatments to be employed for therapeutic programmes even though their effectiveness is not guaranteed.

̽��ֱ��fact that pharmaceutical corporations lobby decision-makers in an effort to ensure that their products are taken up by national health programmes is well-documented in countries such as the UK. Less clear is how far this is happening in the former Eastern Bloc states which entered the European Union in 2004, and whether it is properly acknowledged and controlled.

̽��ֱ��new research, published in the journal, Health Economics, Policy and Law, identifies serious loopholes in the drugs reimbursement system used by the Polish government, arguing that it leaves companies with too much room to influence the final decisions taken by the Ministry of Health. Interviews the researchers conducted with industry insiders revealed that companies commonly try to buy the favour of key policy-makers, or “outflank” them by winning over expert advisors and pressure groups.

Dr. Lawrence King, from the Department of Sociology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, said: "This may be part of a broader syndrome of the prominence of informal institutions in post-communist policy-making, rather than something which is unique to Poland. For the New Europe, this could be a warning."

Reimbursement is usually the final hurdle for a company trying to get its drug on to the market and is typically determined by government. Final checks about the product's cost-effectiveness and efficacy are made before a decision is taken about how the manufacturer will be paid. This means that flawed reimbursement systems can lead to the wrong drugs being sanctioned for use by health service providers, resources being wasted and, potentially, patients not getting access to the treatments they need.

Poland was chosen for the study because it is the largest pharmaceutical market in Central and Eastern Europe and an important player in influencing the balance of power in the pharmaceutical sector. ̽��ֱ��researchers focused on a major state reimbursement schemes that funds free therapies, used by hospitals to treat rare diseases and certain types of cancer. Typically it means funding innovative and emerging drugs rather than generic treatments.

Between February 2009 and April 2010, the team carried out 109 in-depth interviews with people involved with this policy - among them government officials, drug company representatives, national consultants and representatives from patient groups. They also reviewed existing legislation, policy documents, official reports and media articles. Two specific disease awareness campaigns in Poland were also tracked by the researchers.

They found a lack of regulation in Poland concerning the development of therapeutic drug reimbursement programmes, and of the way in which drug companies approach ministers. One lawyer they spoke to described reimbursement as "legal terra incognita", while others described the process of decision-making as akin to "black magic".

In addition, the study found that the Polish Agency for Health Technology Assessment (AHTA), which recommends drugs to the Minister of Health, rarely has conclusive data from the drugs companies about their products. One official told the team: "In half of research results, we deal with drugs whose effectiveness cannot be established."

These factors conspire to create loopholes which pharmaceutical companies can then exploit. While the Polish Ministry of Health does have a formal consultation procedure for receiving clients, those who use it described it less as a means of access, and more as a technique used to muzzle “unfriendly" manufacturers.

Meanwhile, informal deals are taking place outside the system, the study found. Companies build up relationships with key decision-makers by offering them mutual favours, such as support for sick relatives, or lucrative positions in the industry. In one case referred to in the paper, a cardiology drug was accepted for reimbursement even though the scientific evidence supporting it was doubtful. Later, the press discovered that the decision had been taken after the relative of a high-ranking ministerial official had a new flat "arranged" by the drug company.

Where pharmaceutical companies cannot access ministers directly, the researchers found that they attempt to reach expert national consultants instead. ̽��ֱ��state offers little renumeration for these expert scientists' work, which enables drug firms to offer their own financial support, or the consultants access to trials and medical knowledge that will help them to raise their academic profile.

Similarly, firms also help out patient groups whose cause matches the treatments they are trying to sell. In extreme cases, they even manufacture them. One former official in the AHTA told the researchers about a case in which a reimbursement application for a kidney cancer drug was submitted. Almost simultaneously, a patients' association lobbying for precisely this kind of treatment appeared on the scene. "It could not have been a coincidence," the interviewee is reported as having said.

Other informal lobbying methods are also identified in the paper. ̽��ֱ��researchers spoke to newspaper journalists who had been telephoned by drugs manufacturers wanting to "order an article" in the paper. They also encountered cases where firms had approached different ministers in an attempt to exert indirect pressure on the Ministry of Health, or, in the case of international pharmaceutical corporations, asked their own governments to exert diplomatic pressure on Polish decision-makers.

̽��ֱ��paper notes that while some of these methods resemble techniques long-since recognised in western Europe and the US, they are exaggerated in Poland by the imbalance between the economic resources of drug companies, and those of other players such as patient groups or consultants.

In response, the researchers recommend comprehensive reform of the current system in Poland, which would involve more effective regulation of consultations between the Ministry of Health and drug companies, and a beefing up of financial and organisational support for third parties, so that they can adopt a genuinely independent role. ̽��ֱ��authors also recommend strengthening the AHTA as a check and balance against the Ministry, and measures making the Ministry's own considerations more transparent, so as to decrease "the opacity of pressures from other ministries or states."

̽��ֱ��full paper, Pharmaceutical lobbying under postcommunism: universal or country-specific methods of securing state drug reimbursement in Poland? is published in the latest issue of Health Economics, Policy and Law.

A new study reveals how drug reimbursement policy in Poland is leaving gaping loopholes for pharmaceutical firms to exploit, raising questions about other, post-communist, EU member states.

This may be part of a broader syndrome of the prominence of informal institutions in post-communist policy-making. For the New Europe, this could be a warning.

Lawrence King

Carbon NYC from Flickr

Meds

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Yes

'Memory wars' of Eastern Europe

lw355 — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 16:34:37 +0000

Dr Alexander Etkind, Rory Finnin and Dr Emma Widdis in the Department of Slavonic Studies have received funding of €1 million over three years to lead an interdisciplinary, multinational study entitled ‘Memory at War: Cultural Dynamics in Poland, Russia and Ukraine’. ̽��ֱ��project involves academics in Cambridge, Groningen, Bergen, Helsinki and Tartu.

̽��ֱ��Memory at War project will employ pioneering methodology to map memory events in real-time across Eastern European borders. Literature, film, new media, historical textbooks and public politics will be examined to understand how these elements can mediate memory of the traumas of the 20th century, and how such memories are promoted, revised and censored.

‘Just as moments of glory and triumph provide launching pads for nation building, so do narratives of past trauma,’ explained Dr Etkind. ‘To what extent nations inherit tortured memories and act on them can set them apart, and this is what we are seeing today in how Poland, Russia and Ukraine remember the collapse of the USSR in 1991.’

Funding has been provided by HERA (Humanities in the European Research Area) as part of a €16.5 million programme of 19 transnational, collaborative projects. ̽��ֱ��projects are aimed at deriving new insights from humanities research on major social, cultural and political challenges facing Europe.

‘At the heart of the project is a conviction that Europe would benefit profoundly from an understanding of the, often subterranean, cultural trafficking of traumatic memories along the eastern border of the European Union,’ added Dr Etkind. ‘These memories, if left to fester, could be a destabilising influence in Eastern Europe. By bringing greater understanding to these hidden obstacles, constructive dialogue can be fostered.’

For more information, please contact Dr Alexander Etkind (ae264@cam.ac.uk).

A €1 million study will shed light on the role of cultural memory of the soviet era in Russia, Ukraine and Poland.

To what extent nations inherit tortured memories and act on them can set them apart.

Dr Alexander Etkind

Colin C

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