Mateusz Andrzej Piskorski (born 18 May 1977) is a far-right Polish politician and publicist.

Mateusz Piskorski
Member of Sejm
In office
25 September 2005 – 4 November 2007
Personal details
Born (1977-05-18) 18 May 1977 (age 47)
Szczecin, Poland

Education and professional work

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In 2001, he graduated in Political Science from the University of Szczecin. In January 2011, he received his doctorate at the Faculty of Political Science and Journalism of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań for a dissertation was titled "Samoobrona in Polish political party system".[citation needed]

In 2002, he became a lecturer at the University of Szczecin.[citation needed] He worked there until 2005. He also lectured at the Collegium Balticum and the High School of Pedagogy in Szczecin and, in 2007, returned to the University of Szczecin.[citation needed] In 2008, he was elected a president of the "Society for Polish–Venezuelan Partnership".[citation needed] He also became the president of the board of Nord Media Press and worked at polish NBC.[citation needed] From December 2009 to December 201, he was deputy director of Polish Radio Euro.[citation needed] He was a lecturer at the Jan Długosz University in Częstochowa.[citation needed]

Piskorski was a co-founder in 2007 of the European Center of Geopolitical Analysis (Europejskie Centrum Analiz Geopolitycznych - ECAG), a pro-Eurasianism Polish thinktank dealing with issues of geopolitics.[1]

Political activity

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As a student, Piskorski joined the Polish People's Party.[citation needed] He was also active in various societies promoting the idea of pan-Slavism.[citation needed] He was an activist of the far-right neo-pagan "Niklot" society[2] and worked in organizations with a popular-patriotic profile, such as the National-Democratic Party.[citation needed] An influence on his political activities was the ideas of Polish political philosopher Jan Stachniuk (leader of the pre-war society "Zadruga"). Those ideas combine on the one hand passionate patriotism, and on the other consequent anti-capitalism and anti-globalism. In 2000, he travelled to Russia at the invitation of Pavel Tulaev to meet with other far-right and pan-Slavic activists there.[3] He maintains close contacts with continentalists from all over Europe who consistently argue for "de-Americanisation of the Old Continent" and for the construction of Euro-continental cooperation "from Lisbon to Vladivostok".[citation needed]

In 2000, Piskorski quit the People's Party and in 2002 joined the Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland party to become the assistant to Member of Parliament Jan Łączny. He quit his PhD in 2005 to devote himself to politics.[citation needed] In 2005, he also became one of principal members of Andrzej Lepper's electoral committee during the Polish 2005 presidential election.[citation needed]

In the Polish 2005 parliamentary election, Piskorski successfully ran for the Sejm from the Szczecin constituency. As a deputy. he was a vice-chairman of the Reprivatization Committee and worked in the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Statutory Committee. He also represented Polish Parliament in the Assembly of Western European Union. The following year, he also ran for president of Szczecin in the 2006 local elections, but withdrew before the elections and supported a Law and Justice candidate instead.[4] He failed to defend his seat in the Polish 2007 parliamentary election and failed to return to the parliament in the 2011 parliamentary election (this time running as a candidate of Polish Labour Party (Sierpień 80)).[5]

 
Mateusz Piskorski and Krzysztof Tołwiński in 2023.

In February 2015, Mateusz Piskorski founded a new political party called "Zmiana" ("Change"), being a political platform that combines left-wing anti-capitalist views with anti-imperialist, pacifistic social policies. At the founding meeting, were representatives of the self-proclaimed Novorossiya to inform the Polish public about their views on the Russo-Ukrainian War.[6][7][8] Piskorski and his wife Marina Klebanovich received funding from Russian actors through "The International Agency for Current Policy". Klebanovich worked as a coordinator for the Agency's operations in Europe.[9]

In May 2016, shortly before the NATO summit, Piskorski was detained by the Internal Security Agency on the charges of "cooperation with Russian intelligence services, meeting intelligence officers and undertaking operational tasks from them as well as accepting payments".[10] Sources internal to the Zmiana party have described the detention as: “an attempt to intimidate those whose views on foreign, domestic and socioeconomic policy differ from those of the government”.[11] UN Working Group on Arbitrary detentions has asked to release him, in 2018.[12] On 16 May 2019 Piskorski was released on bail. Both rightists such as Janusz Korwin-Mikke and Grzegorz Braun and leftists such as Piotr Ikonowicz supported his release.[13]

Election monitoring

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Mateusz Piskorski, as an expert and political scientist, participated and co-organized a number of "election monitoring missions", including elections unrecognized by OSCE and UN, since 2007 organised by the European Center of Geopolitical Analysis (ECAG):[14]

References

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  1. ^ Anton Shekhovtsov (2015) "Far-Right Election Observation Monitors in the Service of the Kremlin's Foreign Policy" Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship Lexington Books [1][2] p.233. See also Elisabeth Braw "The Kremlin's Influence Game[usurped]" World Affairs 10 March 2015
  2. ^ "In the late 1990s, he was an active member of the Association for Tradition and Culture Niklot, a neo-pagan, "metapolitical fascist" group that was influenced by the ideology of the Polish interwar neo-pagan fascist Zadruga movement. Apart from the indigenous Polish interwar influences, Niklot was inspired by volkisch ideology, writings of Italian fascist Julius Evola, and French New Right thinker Alain de Benoist." Shekhovtsov p.233
  3. ^ Shekhovtsov p.233
  4. ^ zel, p. 1.
  5. ^ Wyborcza 2011, p. 1.
  6. ^ ""Zmiana" - nowa partia ludzi Andrzeja Leppera. Zapraszają do Polski przedstawicieli Noworosji". 13 February 2015.
  7. ^ "Blog Mateusza Piskorskiego |". Archived from the original on 2016-06-07. Retrieved 2015-02-16.
  8. ^ "Ukrainian separatists blocked from entering Poland?".
  9. ^ Tkachenko, Martin Laine (Eesti Ekspress), Cecilia Anesi (IrpiMedia), Lorenzo Bagnoli (IrpiMedia), and Tatiana. "Kremlin-Linked Group Arranged Payments to European Politicians to Support Russia's Annexation of Crimea". OCCRP. Retrieved 2023-02-04.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. ^ "Wyborcza.pl". m.wyborcza.pl. Retrieved 2016-05-26.
  11. ^ "The Guardian". www.theguardian.com. 19 May 2016. Retrieved 2016-06-05.
  12. ^ Opinion No. 18/2018 concerning Mateusz Piskorski (Poland) para. 58-60
  13. ^ "Piskorski wyszedł na wolność. Oskarżony o szpiegostwo już udzielił wywiadu Rosjanom". naTemat.pl (in Polish). Retrieved 2020-01-14.
  14. ^ Anton Shekhovtsov (2015) "Far-Right Election Observation Monitors in the Service of the Kremlin's Foreign Policy" Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship Lexington Books [3][4] p.233
  15. ^ Piskorski "started his international election monitoring career in 2004 when he was sent to observe parliamentary elections in Belarus by Andrzej Lepper, leader of the populist Self-Defense of the Republic of Poland (Samoobrona Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej). According to the joint report of OSCE and ODIHR, the 2004 parliamentary elections in Belarus "fell significantly short of OSCE commitments," while "the Belarusian authorities failed to create the conditions to ensure that the will of the people serves as the basis of the authority of government." Piskorski's conclusion, however, was predictably affirmative: "There was nothing suggesting any violations."" Anton Shekhovtsov (2015) "Far-Right Election Observation Monitors in the Service of the Kremlin's Foreign Policy" Eurasianism and the European Far Right: Reshaping the Europe-Russia Relationship Lexington Books [5][6] p.233
  16. ^ "Misja ECAG na wyborach w Abchazji". Archived from the original on 2016-04-13. Retrieved 2016-06-02.
  17. ^ "Monitoring wyborów prezydenckich na Białorusi".
  18. ^ "Obserwacja wyborów samorządowych na Litwie".
  19. ^ "Obserwacja wyborów parlamentarnych w Estonii".
  20. ^ "Expert evaluation of regional election in Russian Federation 13th March 2011".
  21. ^ "Obserwacja referendum na Łotwie".
  22. ^ "RAPORT z obserwacji krótkoterminowej na wybory regionalne na terenie Berlina (Republika Federalna Niemiec) w dniu 18 września 2011 R".
  23. ^ "ECAG w Erywaniu".
  24. ^ "Obserwacja wyborów w Nagornym Karabachu".
  25. ^ "ECAG: Eksperci ECAG na wyborach regionalnych w Rosji". Archived from the original on 2016-04-13. Retrieved 2016-06-02.

Bibliography

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