Following retirement, in 2001 he unsuccessfully stood in Polish parliamentary elections as an SLD-UP candidate to the "Senat". He received 93,783 votes, which translated to 32.46% of the vote in his electoral region. In the 2002 Polish local elections, again as a candidate of the social-democratic SLD-UP party, he was successfully elected into the Mazovian Regional Assembly with 10,463 votes. He then became a member of the SLD party and ran once again in Polish parliamentary elections in 2005, with 5,223 votes but no mandate. In 2009, Universitas published his autobiographical story "Ciężar nieważkości. Opowieść pilota-kosmonauty" ("The Weight of Weightlessness. Story of a Pilot-Cosmonaut") to positive reception from readers, leading to reprints and several expanded versions being published in the decade that followed.