Bronisław Biliński: a Bolshevik without a Party Card (translated by Lara Unuk)

Abstract

Bronisław Biliński, a brilliant classical scholar from Lvov, quickly became a rising star of the post-war Polish academia, proclaiming Marxism as the only basis for modern scholarship without actually joining the Party. Honours multiplied — professor and Deputy-Rector at the University of Wrocław, Academy of Sciences Secretary, professor at the University of Warsaw, Deputy- President of the Philological Society — and his ambition to replace Kazimierz F. Kumaniecki, mistrusted by the Communist authorities, as the Chair of Classics at the University of Warsaw flared up; yet the political upheavals of 1956, combined with a highly desirable opening in Rome at the PAN Research Station, completely changed Biliński’s future.