Career
At the time of the Great Purges Staszewski was arrested by People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs and sentenced to eight years in Kolyma. On his release in 1945 he returned to Poland under the protectorate of Bolesław Bierut. He later became editor-in-chief of the Polish Press Agency, a post he held until 1958.
After a career in the propaganda apparatus, he was appointed First secretary of the Warsaw party committee but was forced out of that position at the end of the 1950s.
Staszewski supported Władysław Gomułka during Polish October of 1956 but, in spite of this, was soon removed from power and, finally, expelled from the party in 1968.