Imperium on kapuscinski.info

Imperium. Polish editions and ISBNs.

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Below is a working list of Polish editions of “Imperium” by Ryszard Kapuściński. This is not yet a complete bibliography of all reprints, but it covers editions confirmed in library catalogues or in bookseller and publisher records.

Polish editions

First edition
Year: 1993
Publisher: Czytelnik
ISBN: 83-07-02333-5

1997 edition
Year: 1997
Publisher: Czytelnik
ISBN: 83-07-02603-2

2000 edition
Year: 2000
Publisher: Czytelnik
ISBN: 83-07-02776-4

Seventh edition
Year: 2001
Publisher: Czytelnik
ISBN: 83-07-02815-9

A Reader's Review of "Imperium"

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Ryszard Kapuściński is without doubt Poland’s greatest reporter. Although his figure has stirred controversy in recent years, I value his craft enormously, setting aside any judgement of him as a person — that is none of my business. I love (!) reading his books and the pleasure they bring is immense every time. This time I revisited Imperium, his study of the Soviet Union.

Imperium is divided into three parts. The first covers 1939–1967 and describes travels through the Soviet Union mainly in the 1950s and ’60s, including Kapuściński’s first encounter with the Empire — the entry of the Red Army into Pinsk, the city where he was born and grew up. The second part observes the disintegrating communist organism through expeditions to the outermost points of the USSR in 1989–1991. The third part offers the journalist’s impressions of the collapse of the Eastern Bloc and its consequences.

Life in the Empire — Reading Impressions

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

I

“Russia has seen a great deal in the thousand years of its history. The only thing it has never seen is freedom” — Vasily Grossman.

On the whole, nearly all of us know that our close neighbour to the east is Russia. We also know that this is a neighbour with whom we have rarely been bound by ties of friendship. We remember that tsarist Russia was the primary initiator and executor of all three partitions of Poland; that in 1939 it struck Poland in alliance with Hitler’s Germany, annexing part of Poland’s eastern territories; and that after the Second World War it stood guard over Poland’s membership in the socialist camp it controlled. There is also a common view that Russia the state is one thing and Russians as people are another: in direct contact we find in them a brotherly, Slavic soul — they are kind, hospitable, sincere. But Russians are only part of a multinational state. Unfortunately, we know far too little about Russia as a whole; we have no conception of what an unfathomable and varied organism it is. We do not understand clearly how this immense, Euro-Asian superpower functions.

"Scenes from Life in the Empire" — a review of "Imperium"

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Izabella Sariusz-Skapska. Source: Znak no. 3/1994. Published: 1994-03-01

The material for describing the Empire was supplied to Ryszard Kapuściński by notes from several journeys, begun at a time when even the greatest dreamers had not dared imagine they would live to hear the Soviet Union referred to in the past tense. Kapuściński describes his encounters with that world in three acts, so to speak. The First Encounter (1939–1967) begins with the entry of Soviet troops into the author’s hometown, Pinsk in Polesie. The Second Encounter contains the section A Bird’s-Eye View (1989–1991), set at the twilight of the communist colossus, when Kapuściński, like “an ubiquitous reporter,” traversed many republics — the counter on those expeditions clicking over “some 60,000 kilometres.” And finally — the third act: The Sequel Continues (1992–1993). In other words: is the succession after the Empire still up for grabs? Or is this ending simply a journalist’s trick — never closing a topic? A threatening memento…

"Why Did the World Flash Past Me So Fast" — a review of "Imperium"

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Author: Ryszard Pietrzak. Source: Nowe Książki no. 6, 1993. Published: 1993-01-01

This is a line from a poem by Ryszard Kapuściński, contained in his Notebook. That poem speaks more penetratingly than any of his statements or interviews about the problems bound up with his reportage prose. It is short and worth quoting in full: “Why / did the world / flash past me / so fast / would not let itself be stopped / come closer / be addressed as thou / it rushed off / a vanishing point / in fire and smoke.”

Excerpts from "Imperium"

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Trans-Siberian, ‘58

The place of my second encounter with the Empire: far away, in the steppes and snows of Asia, in a barely accessible land whose entire geography bears alien and strange names — rivers called Argun, Unda, Chaykhar; mountains called Chingan, Ilchuri, Dzhagdy; and towns called Kilkok, Tungir, and Bukachacha. From these names alone one could compose resonant, exotic poems.

The Trans-Siberian Railway train, which set out the previous day from Beijing on its nine-day journey to Moscow, approaches from the direction of Harbin and enters the Soviet border station of Zabaikalsk. Drawing near any border heightens tension in us and stirs emotion. Human beings are not made for life in border situations; they avoid them or try to free themselves from them as quickly as possible. And yet a person encounters them everywhere, sees and feels them everywhere. Take an atlas of the world: nothing but borders. Of oceans and continents. Of deserts and forests. Of rainfall, monsoons, typhoons, arable land and wasteland, permafrost and peat bogs, shale and conglomerate. Add the distribution limits of Quaternary sediments and volcanic flows, basalt, chalk, and trachyte. We can see the boundaries of the Patagonian Shield and the Canadian Shield, the tropical and arctic climate zones, the erosional forms of river basins, the Adige and Lake Chad. The ranges of various mammals. Of various insects. Of various reptiles and amphibians, including the highly dangerous black cobra and the fearsome yet fortunately lethargic anaconda.

Imperium

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

Edition I Year: 1993 Print run: 85,000 copies

Edition II Year: 1994 Print run: 10,000 copies

Edition III Year: 1996 Print run: 8,000 copies

Edition IV Year: 1997 Print run: 7,000 copies

Edition V Year: 1999 Print run: 8,000 copies

Edition VI Year: 2000 Print run: 6,000 copies

Edition VII Year: 2001 Print run: 5,000 copies

Edition VIII Year: 2001 Print run: 3,000 copies

Edition IX Year: 2002 Print run: 5,000 copies

Press reviews of "Imperium" — a bibliography

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

• 1991 Rzeczpospolita no. 54 — Peregrinations. Review by K.M.

• 1993 Debata no. 1, pp. 119–21 — Review by Jerzy Nowakowski.

• 1993 Puls no. 3, pp. 118–22 — Can One Understand the Twilight and Fall of the Empire? Review by Marek Karpiński.

• 1993 2B no. 5–6, pp. 58–59 — What Do We Have to Offer? Review by J. Kott.

• 1993 Nowe Książki no. 6 — “Why Did the World Flash Past Me So Fast.” Review by Ryszard Pietrzak.

Ryszard Kapuściński on the book "Imperium"

Thu, 02 Dec 2010 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote Imperium instead of a different book. In the mid-1980s I had an idea to write a trilogy about dictators. The first volume was “The Emperor,” the second “Shah of Shahs,” and the third was meant to be about Amin — an extraordinarily cruel military dictator in Uganda in the 1970s. I had been there many times, gathering material and was preparing to write that book, when in 1985 Perestroika began in the USSR. It was a major world event. Amin was a completely marginal topic compared with what was happening in the East. I could not stay away — I knew I had to go there, see the USSR and try to describe it.