Tadeusz Wasilewski

From Vilnius to Warsaw

Tadeusz Wasilewski was born in Vilnius in 1933. After the war his family moved to Bydgoszcz. He began studying history at the University of Warsaw in 1951 and joined its staff four years later. A student of Aleksander Gieysztor, he researched Byzantium, the Balkans, Rus' and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Early modern Lithuanian history became one of his main fields.¹²

Why does he appear on this site?

For the Polish Biographical Dictionary, Wasilewski wrote the entry on Samuel Kmicic. Its final sentence calls the soldier a model for Sienkiewicz's fictional Andrzej Kmicic. The entry also makes the differences clear: the real Kmicic opposed Janusz Radziwiłł in 1655 and did not defend Jasna Góra.³

Wasilewski edited seventeenth-century memoirs, including Jan Antoni Chrapowicki's diary and Bogusław Radziwiłł's autobiography. He also wrote a biography of John Casimir and many entries for the Polish Biographical Dictionary. His work with documents helps separate contemporary testimony from later literary scenes.¹

Beyond scholarship

From 1991 to 1995 Wasilewski served as Poland's ambassador to Bulgaria, a country whose history he had also studied. He died in 2005. He was neither a participant in the Deluge nor a character in the novel or film. His place here is as a historian whose arguments we cite and assess.¹