Professor Andrzej Nowak teaches at Natolin a course titled "Russian Ideologies: The Last Two Centuries (from Pushkin and Karamzin to Dugin and Putin)." The course enables students to understand the cultural background of political developments in Russian history and contemporary Russia. It examines the Russian Federation's expansionist policies and the authoritarian tendencies of Vladimir Putin’s regime by exploring their ideological foundations. The goal of the course is to provide a platform for discussing these foundations and their evolution over the past two centuries. It is centered on discussions of literary and historical texts, as well as films (both Soviet and Russian).
Professor Nowak is a Polish historian and public intellectual, born in Kraków (1960), professor of Eastern European history in Jagiellonian University and in the Institute of History (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw). He published over 30 monographies on Polish and Russian history (sold in more than 400 thousand copies), translated and published also in the UK, Germany, Ukraine, Romania, Czech Republic, Hungary, Croatia. Among his books are: History and Geopolitics. A Contest for Eastern Europe (2008); The History of Poland, Vol. I-VI (2014-2023, volumes I-V published also in English and in German), Metamorphoses of the Russian Empire: 1721-1921 (2018; published also in Croatia in 2023); How the “Empire of Evil” Was Created? An Eastern European Experience (published in Ukrainian, Kyiv 2021); The Forgotten Appeasement of 1920. Lloyd George, Lenin, and Poland (Routledge 2023, published also in German by De Gruyter, in 2024); Poland and Russia. The Neighborhood of Freedom and Despotism in the X-XXI Centuries (published also in German and in Romanian in 2024); “Evil Empire” is back. Ideologies in Contemporary Russia (Polish version in 2023, to be published in English and in Ukrainian - 2025).
He lectured as a visiting professor at several universities in the United States (Columbia, Harvard, Rice), Great Britain (Cambridge, University College of London), Canada, Ireland, Japan, Czech Republic. Between 1994 and 2012 he was the editor in chief of the leading cultural-political magazine in Poland: ARCANA – bimonthly. His commentaries and interviews on Eastern European history and contemporary issues appear regularly in Polish media, and occasionally in foreign journals, such as “Le Figaro”, “Les Échos”, “The New Yorker”, or “Die Welt”. He is currently the chairman of the Advisory Council of Mieroszewski Centre for Dialogue. He has received many awards and honors, including the Order of the White Eagle, Poland’s highest and oldest order.
He is currently the advisor to the President of Poland.