He studied at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences of the Moscow University and then at the Stefan Batory University in Vilnius. He wrote his doctorate under the supervision of Władysław Zawadzki. In 1927, he published a study entitled Psychiczne podłoże produkcji w ujęciu Jerzego Morela [“Psychological basis of production as described by Jerzy Morel”]. Swianiewicz obtained a postdoctoral degree at the Stefan Batory University in 1930 on the basis of his dissertation entitled Lenin jako ekonomista [“Lenin as an economist”], in which he considered the influence of the Narodnik tradition on the Leninist understanding of Marxism. From 1930 to 1939, he lectured at the Eastern European Scientific and Research Institute in Vilnius and headed its Economic Department. He was also a lecturer at the School of Political Sciences at the Stefan Batory University and from 1939 Associate Professor of Political Economy at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences of the Stefan Batory University; he inherited his Chair from Zawadzki. In 1938, he published the book entitled Polityka gospodarcza Niemiec Hitlerowskich [“Economic policy of Hitler’s Germany”], in which he examined the application of J. M. Keynes’s theory to changes in business climate and armaments spending in the economy of the Third Reich. From 1939 to 1941, he was a prisoner in camps for Polish officers at Kozelsk (at the last moment, he was removed from the transport to Katyn where prisoners of war were murdered by the Soviets) and at Gryazovets. After leaving Soviet Russia, he worked at the Ministry of Information and Documentation. After World War II, he lectured at the University of Halifax. His research interests included the use of forced labour in the economies of totalitarian and backward countries. At that time, he published his most important work: Forced Labor and Economic Development. An Enquiry into the Experience of Soviet Industrialization (1965). He also published his memoirs entitled W cieniu Katynia [“In the shadow of Katyn”] (1976). He died in July 1997 in London.