Wanda Rapaczynski, president of the Polish media conglomerate Agora, has long had a high tolerance for risk.

Back in 2002, she desperately wanted a national-television presence, but a new law essentially barred her print- and radio-based company from getting it. Enter Lew Rywin, a politically connected Polish film producer who reportedly claimed to be acting on behalf of the prime minister. Rywin assured Rapaczynski that the law could be amended or altered, but she’d have to grease the wheels with $17.5 million. "My eyes just bulged," says the 59-year-old executive. Before rejecting his offer, she got his bribery solicitation on tape and printed details of the entire incident in Agora's flagship newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza. Rywin went to jail, but not before a year of televised hearings gripped Poland, and Rapaczynski received at least one death threat. "The Polish F.B.I. that came to protect me thought I was crazy, because I thought [the whole thing] was so funny," she recalls.

Arguably Eastern Europe's most successful media mogul, Rapaczynski is used to being a target. Since "Rywingate," she and Agora have been the target of criticism from two governments and have staved off incursions by German media giants into the Eastern European market. Now, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is reportedly expanding its presence on Rapaczynski's turf.

Clearly, the job is beginning to take its toll. While no date has been set, Rapaczynski told Portfolio.com that she is eyeing retirement and that the Agora board has begun searching for her successor. Why leave now? Despite her reputation as a straight shooter, all Rapaczynski will say about her reasoning is that "none of us are getting any younger." She's also cagey about what her next step may be, though it's likely she'll linger on Agora's board.

One thing is clear, however. During her tenure at Agora, Rapaczynski helped transform Eastern Europe's politics and the medium of its public debate. Rapaczynski abandoned a New York banking career 17 years ago to return to Poland and help school friends transform an anti-Communist paper into an empire made up of two dailies, 14 magazines, 28 radio stations, an internet portal, and a billboard-advertising company. At the heart of Agora—whose revenues last year topped $397 million—is what Rapaczynski calls its "beloved firstborn child": Gazeta Wyborcza, the must-read newspaper for Poland’s chattering classes.

Rapaczynski's reputation rests on being unafraid of competition—and of powerful politicians. According to Pietr Stasinski, Gazeta Wyborcza’s deputy editor, Poland's prime minister recently quipped that "the weaker Gazeta Wyborcza, the better for Poland." Rapaczynski doesn't seem to mind. Her response: "Governments do get pissy."

Pissy and prohibitive. The legislation that led to the Rywin scandal was dubbed Agora Lex by Poland's media because its goal, according to market watchers, was to block Agora's expansion into television. Television still proves elusive for the company, but the rise of new media may make that less significant. On June 28, Agora announced it was setting up a company to produce digital-video formats via the internet.

Rapaczynski honed her business skills in Manhattan. She'd left Poland as a university student in 1968, when there were student strikes and a government-sponsored anti-Semitic campaign. After both her Jewish father and Catholic mother lost their jobs, she persuaded her family to emigrate. She made her way to New York, where she married, had a daughter, and earned a Ph.D. in psychology. "I fell in love with the concept of individual freedom in the United States and the ability to shape your own destiny," she says. "You were encouraged to take risks for personal rewards." She went to Yale for a degree in management, then to Citibank.

It was during a 1990 business trip to Poland that she met up with her childhood friend Helena Luczywo, a publisher of underground papers during the Communist era, who, along with philosopher and writer Adam Michnik, had started Gazeta Wyborcza. Inside a year and a half, Gazeta was Poland’s leading newspaper, and Rapaczynski was its publisher. Its headquarters were in a former nursery school, where staff crouched over children’s tables, but Rapaczynski brought capitalist tools to the enterprise. She banned the phrase "It can't be done in Poland" from meetings and drummed corporate discipline into ex-revolutionaries. She and another board member were nicknamed Procedure and Structure. "She gets irritated when you’re too eloquent on issues she doesn't think are crucial," says Stasinski. "In meetings, she'd say, 'Go to the point, then go to the conclusion.' "

In the early years, Rapaczynski faced 700-percent inflation and a cowboy business climate. "There were no banks that could lend you money," she recalls. "Things happened in ways you didn't want to know about, sometimes with big bags of cash." Agora stayed afloat in those early days thanks to the New York Review of Books, which supplied a $300,000 loan, and Atlanta-based Cox Enterprises, which bought a 12.5 percent share in the conglomerate. "I can only talk about them with tears of gratitude in my eyes," Rapaczynski says.

Agora's 1999 public offering was a solid success, raising $93 million. But today's Agora owes as much to its Solidarity roots as to Citibank-style efficiency. The pay structure is fairly flat; most of its 3,400 employees own shares. It rents out its printing presses but not to pornographers or the radical right. Agora "started as a bunch of intellectuals, and they still are," observes Jakub Benke, C.E.O. of the ad consultancy Starcom Media.

Gazeta Wyborcza remains committed to muckraking. Rywingate "was very, very costly to our image," Rapaczynski says. "A quality newspaper has to be like Caesar’s wife—beyond reproach." Her most recent challenge: fighting off an assault from the Germans in the form of Axel Springer, whose launch of the tabloid Fakt cut into Gazeta Wyborcza's circulation.

With Poland now a European Union member, competition will only get tougher. Moreover, fears Rapaczynski, the press will only become coarser and yellower. She’s wistful that the passionate interest in politics that helped build Gazeta Wyborcza is waning. "Only 40 percent of the population votes in parliamentary elections," she says. "You have to ask yourself about the future of democracy." Just as Gazeta Wyborcza rose on a wave of Solidarity-era political fervor, the media company it spawned reflects current Polish passions. Perhaps most telling are Agora's recent launches: a real estate magazine and a shopping glossy. Rapaczynski may be an idealist, but she's a hardheaded one.