Władysław Bieńkowski and his ideas in the interwar period

The paper describes the ideological evolution of Władysław Bieńkowski (1906–1991) in the interwar period – in the Polish People’s Republic, he was first a communist activist and then a dissident. The author reconstructs the process of radicalization of Bieńkowski as an intellectual who was not a member of the Communist Party of Poland, but who after the Second World War found himself among higher-ranking communist activists. The thesis of this paper is that the dichotomy between individual freedom and participation in the communist movement, which was characteristic of Bieńkowski in the period of the Polish People’s Republic, dates back to his prewar ideas. The paper also contributes to the discussion on the attitudes of the Polish intelligentsia towards communism.