Jacek Hugo-Bader


Jacek Aleksander Hugo-Bader is a Polish reporter and journalist fascinated by Russia and the former Soviet Republics. Since 1990 he has worked for the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper.
He also used to work as a teacher, train loader, scale operator at a pig market, head of a distribution company, a part of the underground structure of Solidarity and a shopkeeper.
He travelled by bike through Central Asia, the Gobi Desert and China, and sailed through Lake Baikal in a canoe. In winter 2007 he made a lonely car journey from Moscow to Vladivostok which was the background of his first book White Fever: A Journey to the Frozen Heart of Siberia.
In 2011 he made a solitary hitchhike across Russia – from Magadan to Yakutsk. Reports describing encountered people's everyday lives were published in Gazeta Wyborcza during the journey and later gathered and released in the book Kolyma Diaries: A Journey into Russia's Haunted Hinterland.
In 2016 Jacek Hugo-Bader put on blackface and took part in March of Independence, a large event organized by Polish right-wing organizations on Polish National Independence Day in Warsaw. The journalist wanted to experience the March from perspective of a black person and described it later in an article. The incident was protested by actual black participant, Dr Bawer Aondo-Akaa who, represented by lawyers of Ordo Iuris conservative Catholic organization, has reported the situation to Polish Media Ethics Council.
He is a two-time laureate of Polish prize for the best journalists - Grand Press.
Most of his works are about Russia: " he describes the imperium from prospect of loitering dog, grasps mechanisms of thinking, behaviour, processes and a rat by its tail it addition."

Books