„Self-contradiction with the aim of remaining a consistent lecturer” – Juliusz Makarewicz on the method of conducting a lecture on the criminal law of the bourgeois countries in 1949

The article is devoted to the last years of the life of the outstanding Polish lawyer Juliusz Makarewicz. After 1944, he stayed in Lviv, despite incentives to leave for Wrocław. The memories of his pupils and letters to his family show that he did not see any difference between post-war Poland and Soviet Lviv. In 1946, he made efforts to teach at the Faculty of Law of the sovietised University of Lviv. He was accepted as a non-regular professor. He lectured on the criminal law of the bourgeois countries. Soon after, proceedings were initiated against him, accusing him of not evaluating the bourgeois criminal law from the point of view of the communist criminal law. In a letter addressed to the Ministry of Education in Moscow on 7 April, 1947, Juliusz Makarewicz explained why he had been lecturing using an encyclopaedic method rather than a comparative one. Throughout his life, he had been conducting comparative research on criminal law, giving lectures using the comparative method, and in Soviet Lviv he had discussed the criminal law of the so-called bourgeoisie, i.e. the democratic west, in an encyclopaedic way. Only in this way could he remain true to his views. The appendix to the article constitutes the content of the letter written by Juliusz Makarewicz to the Ministry of Education in Moscow.