Stanisław Swianiewicz (7 November 1899 – 22 May 1997) was a Polish economist and historian. A veteran of the Polish-Soviet War, he was during World War II a survivor of the Katyn massacre and an eyewitness of the transport of Polish prisoners-of-war to the forests outside Smolensk by the NKVD. Biography Stanisław Swianiewicz was born on 7 November 1899 in Dvinsk, in Imperial Russia (now Daugavpils, Latvia), to a Polish szlachta family. Brought up in the multicultural society of Livonia, he spoke Polish, Russian and German as his native tongues. After graduating from a trade school in Orel, he attended Moscow University's Law Faculty, which then included all social sciences. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, he left Moscow and returned to his homeland, where, in 1919, he became a commander of the Polska Organizacja Wojskowa in the area of Livonia. During the Polish-Soviet War, he crossed the front lines and reached Vilna (now Vilnius), where he took part in the defense of the city against the Russians. He also took part in the seizure of Vilnius by the forces of Genetal Lucjan Żeligowski. Demobilized, he attended the Stefan Batory University, in Wilno, where he continued his studies. He graduated in 1924 and then spent several years on various scholarships in Paris, Breslau (modern Wrocław) and Kiel. A specialist in the Soviet economy and a liberal, Swianiewicz attended lectures by Władysław Zawadzki, who also became his tutor. In April 1939, Polish President Ignacy Mościcki awarded him a professorship. Apart from his work at his alma mater, Swianiewicz was also active in several NGOs that promoted links between various nations of Central and Eastern Europe and studied the peculiarities of that part of the continent. In 1938, he published his Polityka gospodarcza Niemiec hitlerowskich (Economical Policies of Nazi Germany) in which he was the first economist to compare the Nazi and the Soviet socialist economies. He was also a journalist on various newspapers, including the Kurier Wileński. On 2 August 1939, he was mobilized in the Polish Army as a reserve officer. He took part in the Polish Defensive War, at the onset of World War II. After the Soviet invasion of Poland, his unit attempted to reach the Hungarian or Romanian borders to evade being captured and to find its way to France, where the Polish Army was being recreated. However, after the Battle of Krasnobród on 23 September, he