The House paid tribute to the great contemporary man of letters with a minute of silence at its morning session Wednesday.

Speaker Marek Jurek recalled Kapuscinski's extraordinary literary output, emphasizing his position as an authority and the high esteem for his work. At the same time Kapuscinski was an example of personal modesty.

Among readers worldwide, Ryszard Kapuscinski was perhaps best associated with "Empire", a book on social transformations and their consequences for the individual on the vast territories of the former Soviet Union, after the fall of Communist rule there.

As all of Kapuscinski's works, it was translated into many languages, but no Russian version of the title has appeared to date.