Leszek Kolakowski in 1956: From Marxist humanism to cold-war liberalism
Twentieth Century Communism - Print ISSN 1758-6437 - Online ISSN 2978-1329
Volume 2025 Number 28
Leszek Kolakowski in 1956: From Marxist humanism to cold-war liberalism
Artur Banaszewski pages 22‑49
Abstract
Before publishing his most famous work, The Main Currents of Marxism in 1976, Leszek Kolakowski gained recognition as one of the most prominent Marxists in the Eastern Bloc. Following Nikita Khrushchev’s Secret Speech in February 1956, Kolakowski published a series of articles where he sought to formulate a new theoretical framework for analysing democratic socialist politics. This Marxist ‘revisionism’ constituted a conscious intellectual effort to support the prospect of democratic reform in the Eastern Bloc in 1956. However, in the wake of the Poznan protests in June and the Hungarian Revolution in October-November, these efforts came to an abrupt halt and Kolakowski relinquished most of his earlier proposals. In subsequent publications, his theoretical focus irrevocably shifted from fostering collective perfectibility to resisting communist tyranny – in which he displayed a profound affinity with liberal thinkers of the same period. Drawing on Kolakowski’s articles and political commentaries written between 1955 and 1957, this paper argues that his intellectual evolution in this period should be understood as a shift from Marxist humanism to the key intellectual premises of cold-war liberalism. Revisiting the intellectual choices Kolakowski made in 1956 is crucial to understanding the international reception of his works and sheds new light on the significance of East European critiques of Marxism in the history of the Cold War.
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To cite this article
Artur Banaszewski (2025) Leszek Kolakowski in 1956: From Marxist humanism to cold-war liberalism, Twentieth Century Communism, 2025(28), 22-49