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for printing| Kazimierz Kuratowski's father, Marek Kuratowski
was a leading lawyer in Warsaw. To understand what Kuratowski's
school years were like it is necessary to look a little at the
history of Poland around the time he was born. The first thing
to note is that really Poland did not formally exist at this
time. Poland had been partitioned in 1772 and the south was
called Galicia and under Austrian control. Russia controlled
much of the rest of the country and in the years prior to
Kuratowski's birth there had been strong moves by Russia to make
"Vistula Land", as it was called, be dominated by Russian
culture. In a policy implemented between 1869 and 1874, all
secondary schooling was in Russian. Warsaw only had a Russian
language university after the University of Warsaw became a
Russian university in 1869. From 1906, however, the Underground
Warsaw University was