Leszek Kołakowski on democracy and not only…

The article describes life and work of Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009), a Polish phi losopher and historian of ideas. Kołakowski is best known for his critical analyses of Marxist thought, especially his three-volume history, Main Currents of Marxism (1976). In his later work, Kołakowski increasingly focused on religious questions. Due to his criticism of Marxism and Communism, Kołakowski was ezectively exiled from Poland in 1968. He spent most of the remainder of his career at All Souls College in Oxford. Despite being in exile, Kołakowski was a major inspiration for the Solidarity movement in Poland in the 1980s and helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union. Kołakowski is known to have been a keen analyst of totalitarianism, later also of democracy. Leszek Kołakowski was surely right that our liberal, pluralist democracy depends for its survival not only on the continued existence of its institutions, but also „on a belief in their value and a widespread will to defend them”