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Polish magnate living large under capitalism
Former Communist took advantage of free market to make his fortune
By Katherine M. Skibaof the Journal Sentinel staff
Last Updated: May 29, 1999
Warsaw - He has a huge home, a vacation idyll on the Cote d'Azur and bodyguards who mean business.
Some people sniff at Aleksander Gudzowaty, calling him nowo bogacki, Polish for nouveau riche
A big, gray-thatched man of 60, he doesn't care. Since communism's ouster, he's busied himself making a small fortune and living large.
He keeps a menagerie on his estate. He put up a pyramid, scaled after the Great Pyramid of Giza. He had a temple built, too.
At posh offices in Poland's capital, he keeps long hours, then sails home in a gleaming black Saab to his 16-acre, gated Shangri-La.
There, he turns from balance sheets and board meetings to Garo, his schnauzer, lavishing him with endearments.
"Jesus Christ, my love," he says, stroking its black fur. "My dearest one, my love."
Seven years ago, Gudzowaty wasn't living the good life. He, in fact, was out of work.
Gudzowaty for years had been an official in Kolmex, a Polish foreign-trading giant. Thrown into the street as the nation lumbered toward a free-market economy, he says his nominal Communist credentials may have been to blame. Or big commissions. Or a "misunderstanding," as a government minister later told him.
"The biggest disaster in this misunderstanding," he says now, "would have been if they didn't fire me."
Born from his dismissal was Bartimpex, an import-export business that has branched into banking, insurance, hotels and highways. It also has a piece of a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline.
Gudzowaty coined its name to signal "barter, import, export." Founded in 1992, the firm routinely is cited among the top private businesses in Poland. He, his son and estranged wife own it.
Tough Early Days
Born to humble but educated parents, he had modest beginnings, charged with peril.
He entered the world in September 1938 in Lodz, about 80 miles southwest of Warsaw, and as his first birthday neared the Germans unleashed a blitzkrieg from the west. Within days, Russian troops made a land-grab in the east and Poland, again, was on its knees.
Some would be tortured by the Gestapo, turned into slave labor, put behind bars or shot dead. Bombs shook cities. Millions drew their last breaths in death camps.
His parents ordered their only child to stay within the house. He saw little of the war, understanding less.
He remembers the schnauzer he grew up with stealing the feathered hats worn by German police, who castigated his mother by "shouting and making threats."
After Poland's liberation in 1945, a Russian soldier searching their home for sugar killed the pet. Gudzowaty was 7. "The dog was barking and hollering and the soldier shot this dog in front of my eyes. I remember the pool of blood flowing from the dog. I still remember this incivility."
Mostly, though, he rhapsodizes about his youth, except to be plain about Poland's loss. "It became a place of general mourning, because every fifth person died," he says. "There was not a single family that didn't lose a member or two, including mine."
His home, while impoverished, brimmed with love. His parents were so strapped they forced tea from apple rinds. No piece of bread was wasted. His pleasures were small: filching a little cake strung to the Christmas tree or taking an apple from the larder when his mother wasn't looking.
An indifferent student, he loved to read. Poetry, literature, stories of heroic figures, these filled his days; there was no television.
Not a Good Socialist
Initially he studied metallurgy but dropped out, unable to imagine himself in a red-hot steelworks. He later went to Lodz University, studying foreign trade, working odd jobs and joining the Party. He earned a degree in 1968.
Poland, by then, was in the Soviet vise and forced to produce vast sums of raw materials and goods for the Eastern bloc. But as he tells it, he never fell under socialism's spell.
"When I was told to learn the subject called 'The Political Economics of Socialism' it was absolute idiocy," he says. "We had these theories and we had to memorize these things and nobody understood what it was about."
Before joining Kolmex, he worked for a firm as a go-between dealing with Polish textile makers filling orders from Moscow central planners. Millions of suits, millions of dresses, perhaps 20,000 suits in an identical cut and color. "The Polish factories would go berserk," he says. "Producing the same type of garment, for months and months, was damaging the equipment."
Married then with a young son, he lived for four years in Moscow in the mid-'70s, learning Russian, traveling and flouting what rules he could.
He smiles as he remembers shows he organized, bringing in models and music to showcase Polish fashion. "We were sitting and drinking and the girls were parading and people were pointing, 'This one, that one.' They pointed not to a girl, but to the dress she was wearing."
Returning to Poland, the Kolmex post saw him exporting rail cars and locomotives - and bridling under Soviet minutiae. "A train's engine is composed of millions of parts, and at meetings every bit and piece was discussed: 'You are going to produce this' and 'That comrade is going to supply that.' "
The economy was in tatters, with prices skyrocketing, goods rationed and shop lines long. "Poland was not stupid," he says. "Everybody wanted change, including party members. It was a troubling situation. No one knew how to get out of this situation."
From Gdansk shipyards, Lech Walesa led Solidarity, the first free trade union - that is, not state-controlled - in postwar Eastern Europe. Widespread strikes led to a martial-law crackdown from 1981 to 1983, but within six years, Poland held semi-open elections and the Communist regime crumbled.
Walesa was Polish president from 1990 to 1995. Now he's on the outs, but a hero to Gudzowaty.
Ingenious Revolution
Gudzowaty had sensed that the mass strikes were significant. "In our hearts we realized very quickly that it had started, IT in capital letters.
"The question we couldn't answer was what price we would have to pay. The ingenuity of the Poles at the time was that we had a bloodless, but effective, revolution."
After he was fired, Gudzowaty opened his company and turned to Russia, even as other brand-new capitalists looked west for opportunity. (More recently he has launched ventures with German and Israeli partners.)
In the early days, when the Polish government owed more than $200 million to Moscow, Gudzowaty negotiated deals to allow the debt to be satisfied with Polish goods, such as porcelain, medicine and apparel. He exported huge quantities of Polish wheat to Russia. And he began importing its natural gas.
Bartimpex had sales of $876.5 million in 1998 and a net profit of $34.5 million, he says. During seven years ending last year, the firm's net profits reached $185.5 million.
It still imports gas from Russia and sells it to the Polish Oil and Gas Co. He says what he imports accounts for 10% to 13% of Polish consumption.
Bartimpex also has a hand in building and supplying construction materials for a natural gas pipeline from Russia's Yamal Peninsula through Poland into Germany.
Deloitte & Touche in 1997 placed his company 54th among the 100 best enterprises in central Europe.
A wealthy man, his flamboyant ways give him a high profile. Often he's called "the richest man in Poland." Is it true? He's not saying.
His estate, outside Warsaw, is named "Mariew" after the village surrounding it. Today he has instructed that two flags be flown: Poland's red and white flutters next to U.S. stars and stripes.
Sharing Mariew is his 89-year-old mother and his 39-year-old fiancee - his former French translator. Dropping in periodically is his son, Tomasz, 28, an award-winning wildlife photographer.
Showing Off
Driving a golf cart, Gudzowaty shows off his pets and pool and pyramid and indoor tennis court and two-lane bowling alley and temple. "The Little Temple of Mariew" has stained glass windows paying homage to the five major religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism.
Lounging around are 13 elk, 11 peacocks, a llama - none rivals to Garo. Not to forget two donkeys - Ferdinand and, named for the aging prostitute in "Zorba the Greek," Bouboulina.
As the tousle-haired magnate roams the grounds, feeding sugar biscuits to his herd, bodyguards never stray far.
His passions? Animals, classical music and art. His vacations? If not to his French home near Cannes (the property has a statue of Garo), then places such as Cape Horn.
His formula for success? A positive outlook, stubborn persistence, knowledge, abstract thinking, hard work and luck. "The limits of your imagination," he says, "are the constraints of your possibilities."
Money, he says, doesn't buy happiness. He knows. He says he was happy when poor. "First of all," he beams, "you must love life."
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