Polish version of the text: O mechanice i inżynierii komunistycznego zarządzania uczelnią.
On 25 September 1963, the Polish Communist daily Trybuna Ludu printed the list of about fifty newly nominated university professors. The decision was signed by members of the State Council, with this collective body playing the role similar to that of the president of the state.
The nominees have been promoted from an appropriately lower rank of the academic hierarchy, with one exception.
Teobald Olejnik of the Technical University of Poznań carrying the title of magister inżynier, mgr inż., or something like an MSc Eng, has been promoted to profesor nadzwyczajny, which can be translated roughly as an associate professor. The surprising bit is the promotion from a non-PhD degree directly into a state professorship, skipping the intermediate stages.
This extremely privileged treatment by the Communist authorities must have been a reward for a particularly loyal and valuable service performed by Mr. Olejnik. I tried to find some information on the individual. He was born in 1906 and died in 1990. He was 57 at the time of his nomination. And still no PhD?
A one-page document from the Department of Engineering and Management dated 2015, sheds some light.
One of the departments created at that time was the Department of Economics and Industrial Enterprises Planning, initiated by Prof. Teobald Olejnik, who also headed the Institute of Organisation and Management, established in 1970.
In Communist-speak, “initiated by” does not have the usual meaning. It means rather that the person was the designated initiator.
We learn from a short biographical note that Teobald Olejnik received an honorary doctorate from the Poznań University of Technology. He was also described as a “social activist”, which can be read as a somewhat veiled reference to his serving the Communist dictatorship. We can also see that immediately following his professorial nomination, he held the post of a deputy rector from 1963 until 1972. Again, this type of professorial just-in-time nomination, is a clear mark of Communist privilege.
The 2015 biographical note does not address doubts about Olejnik’s Communist turbo-nomination and an apparent lack of a PhD. A casual reader would not realize the extent of the dictatorial mechanics and engineering behind the man’s career and academic honors.
A search of the Scopus database does not reveal any of his publications.
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