"Cadres decide everything". Quote from Stalin at judiciary council meeting

The National Council of the Judiciary organized an academic conference on Tuesday (Sept. 12) titled "The Rule of Law Yesterday, Yoday, and Tomorrow". Jan Majchrowski, a University of Warsaw professor, was among the participants. In 2018, Majchrowski was appointed justice of the illegal and no-longer-existing Supreme Court's Disciplinary Chamber. He resigned from this function in 2021.

One of the segments of the conference, in which Prof. Majchrowski took the floor, was titled "The Rule of Law and the intriguing genesis of the National Council of the Judiciary". His speech in this segment, in turn, was titled "Cadres Decide Everything".

Majchrowski used this quotation from Stalin at the end of his speech. "The organizers asked that each presentation included a quotation. I have chosen the quote "cadres decide everything" ... I wanted to bring up the author of this quotation. 'It is time to realize that of all the valuable capital the world possesses, the most valuable and most decisive is people, cadres. It must be realized that under our present conditions cadres decide everything'. Josef Stalin, Foundations of Leninism. Ladies and gentlemen, nothing more true nowadays, cadres decide everything," the lawyer said.

"Because, like Lech Falandysz wrote, "let's try to remember the well-known juristic proverb saying that good judges can usually handle bad law, whereas even the best law will not function correctly in the hands of bad judges," Majchrowski concluded his presentation.

Lech Falandysz was a lawyer specializing in criminal law, director of the Institute of Justice in 1990–1991, and Secretary of State at the Chancellery of President Lech Wałęsa in 1991-1995.  

The spokesperson of Polish Judges Association "Iustitia" Bartłomiej Przymusiński, among others, commented on the fragment from Prof. Majchrowski's speech.

"With no beating about the bush at the #neoKRS conference, the central theme of this panel has been revealed. Its author is Josef Stalin. Cadres decide everything," he wrote on X, mentioning that Majchrowski was the speaker who used the quote.

Przymusiński added ironically that it would be best "if the neoKRS adopted such a name".

The KRS issued a brief comment on the X social media platform.

"A speaker quoting Stalin's words that "'adres decide everything' does not mean that members of the National Council of the Judiciary and participants of today's conference share views from the Communist era," the Council wrote.