Timothy Snyder
Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe:
A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz (1872-1905)
Winner Oskar Halecki Polish and East Central European History Award, awarded by the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America
Timothy Snyder presents the often overlooked life and thought of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, an important Polish intellectual at the beginning of this century, and thereby opens a new path in the understanding of modern nationalism and twentieth-century socialism. During his brief life in Poland, Paris, and Vienna, Kelles-Krauz influenced or infuriated most of the leaders of the various socialist movements of Central Europe and France. His central ideas ultimately were not accepted by the socialist mainstream at the time of his death. However, ninety years later, we see that his theories anticipated late twentieth-century thought on the importance of nationalism as a social force and the parameters of socialism in political theory and praxis. Kelles-Krauz was one of the only theoreticians of his age to advocate Jewish and Ukrainian national rights as being equivalent to, for example, Polish national rights, and he correctly foresaw the struggle for national sovereignty as being central to future events in Europe.
"In his magisterial Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe...Timothy
Snyder re-evaluates an intellectual prodigy whose death from tuberculosis at the
tragically early age of thirty-three robbed Polish socialism of a political
talent to rival that of more long-lived luminaries...Employing the collected
letters of Kelles-Krauz published in 1984, together with primary sources located
in archives from Warsaw to Stanford, Snyder has set out to provide a corrective
to [earlier biographies], throwing a spotlight on his shadowy subject without
exaggerating his ideological and historical stature...Snyder has been
indefatigable in his original research and scrupulous in his overall
judgement...[His] thoughtful investigation into the world so briefly inhabited
by Kelles-Krauz is richly informative, with illuminating insights into, in
particular, the divisive but ineffectual squabbles endemic to the international
socialist intelligentsia and the lonely, suicide-prone existence of the
political emigrĂ"
- Raymond Pearson, English Historical Review
"This work is an impressive intellectual biography of a Polish socialist,
Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz. While little known outside of Poland, his writings
occupy a key position in the Marxist debates from the turn of the century
concerning nationalism and the aspirations for national independence of
different nationalities in the large European empires...In writing this
biography of Kelles-Krauz, Snyder has given us a comprehensive intellectual
portrait of an entire age. His discussion of the main issues of the time is
sweeping in scope, and he has provided meticulous references to guide the reader
to the source material. The book presupposes some familiarity with the topic,
but will be very useful to any serious reader interested in a more complete
understanding of the emergence of modern nationalism, as well as of the debates
within the socialist movement in response to this phenomenon."
- James H. Satterwhite, Slavic and East European Journal
"What Snyder offers is a stimulating political and intellectual biography of
an
overlooked theoretician from the gentry intelligentsia. This political class
brought modern political parties to Russian Poland, led these parties, and built
the Second Republic...Snyder establishes Kelles-Krauz's place within Polish
political history alongside Pilsudski, Luxemburg, Max Weber, and Gyorgy
Lukacs...The biography is intellectually rich and challenging scholarship. It
rests upon an extensive reading of politics, history, sociology, philosophy, and
economy and enlarges our knowledge of European and Polish socialism."
- Stanislaus A. Blejwas, Slavic Review
Harvard University Press, 1998
