The Development Trajectory of Communism in Poland: The Life of Wladyslaw Bienkowski, Communist Leader and Socialist Thinker

by Bartlomiej Kapica

Overview

Charting the life and writings of Władysław Bieńkowski, a leading politician and writer in communist Poland and sometime right-hand man and ideologue of the Polish leader Władysław Gomułka, this book outlines the shifts in the nature of communism in Poland throughout the period of communist rule.

It considers the shaping of Bieńkowski’s ideas in eastern Poland, later occupied by the Soviet Union, during the economic depression, the development of his great hopes for socialist socio-economic transformation as the right way forward, and his attempts as Gomułka's aide to enact “people’s democracy” and “socialist humanism” in the period 1945 to 1948, attempts which failed, Stalinist repression coming to the fore instead. This book further discusses Bieńkowski’s role as a minister in the period following Stalin’s death, when Bieńkowski was a leading “revisionist”, warning of the dangers of the “petrification of the system”, and explains how with a sense of shattered hopes he resigned from power and became a dissident, publicly critical of the regime. This book concludes by examining Bieńkowski’s writings in late communist times when, now just an observer, he continued to reflect on and write about the future of socialism. Overall, the book demonstrates to what extent communism in Eastern Europe was flexible and adaptable and not rigidly monolithic as it is often portrayed.

The book will be of interest to academics and scholars interested in the history of communism and Europe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781032790039
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	06/30/2025
Series:	BASEES/Routledge Series on Russian and East European Studies
Pages:	268
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Bartłomiej Kapica is an assistant professor at the Research Centre for Totalitarianism at the Pilecki Institute in Warsaw. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the Faculty of History, Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznań, in 2015. He was an assistant professor at the Institute of History of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw (from 2016 to 2018 under the NCN FUGA Fellowship) and a scholar at the Universita di Roma, La Sapienza, in Rome (2013). His research interests include Biographical studies, history of the communist movement in Poland, Polish political history and intellectual history.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. A dreamer: Władysław’s formative days (1906-1939)

2. “How the steel was tempered”: A communist in the East and in the underground (1939–1945)

3. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: A demiurge of the “gentle revolution” (1945–1948).

4. “The neck that turned Gomułka’s head”: The Stalinist purgatory (1948–1953)

5. A revolutionary (1953–1959)

6. Contesting the drab “real socialism” (1959–1968)

7. A dissident (1968-1980)

8. Faust in an ivory tower. What has remained of socialism? (1980-1991)

Concluding remarks

Index