Jan Olszewski

Jan Ferdynand Olszewski (20 August 1930 – 7 February 2019) was a Polish conservative lawyer and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Poland for five months between December 1991 and early June 1992 and later became a leading figure of the conservative Movement for the Reconstruction of Poland.

During his premiership, Olszewski's cabinet worked under new international conditions. At the end of December 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved. This motivated the government to start integration with NATO and European Community. For the first time, in official documents, it was mentioned that membership in NATO is part of Polish defence strategy. Negotiations to withdraw Russian armies from Poland started at the end of October 1990, were accelerated. In March 1992, a period of confusion occurred when president Lech Wałęsa presented his conception of new economic and military alliance with former Warsaw Pact during his visit to Germany, which went against the euro Atlantic direction of the government. Olszewski’s government changed the concept of privatization of national corporations. Total stop of privatization led to open conflict with liberal groups in the parliament. On 22 May 1992, Olszewski opposed the signing of a clause in Polish-Russian Treaty of Friendly and Neighbourly Cooperation, which handed over former Russian military bases to international Polish-Russian corporations. Olszewski sent a telegram to Moscow to the president Lech Wałęsa informing of government opposition to the clause. Wałęsa, after a conversation with Boris Yeltsin changed the controversial clause. However, this did not stop further clashes with the president.