the kind of intellectual honesty and depth that we have sought to honor with the John W. Kluge Prize."

When he was 10 years old, Kolakowski's family was deported by the Germans to central Poland. He did not attend school, but read books with occasional private lessons and took his final exams as an external student in the underground school system. He eventually studied philosophy in Lodz and earned his doctorate from Warsaw University in 1953, later becoming a professor and chairman of its section on the history of philosophy (1959-68). An orthodox Marxist at first, he was sent by the party in 1950 to Moscow on a course for promising communist intellectuals. It was there that he initially became aware of "the enormity of material and spiritual desolationcaused by the Stalinist system."

The death of Stalin in 1953 stirred ferment in Poland with calls for democratization and conflict in the party ranks. In June 1956 worker riots in Poznan resulted in many deaths, and in October of that year Golulka was chosen as party leader in defiance of Moscow. Kolakowski had by then become one of Poland's leading revisionist Marxists. His publication of "What Is Socialism?" -- a short, incisive critique of Stalinism -- was banned in Poland, but circulated privately and was translated into English the next year. Disillusioned with the stagnation of communism, he became increasingly outspoken. He was expelled from the party in 1966, dismissed from his professorship two years later, and went into exile. But his works, appearing in underground editions, continued