This history of Russian thought was first published in Polish in 1973 and subsequently appeared 2005 in a revised and expanded publication. The current volume begins with Enlightenment thought and Westernization in Russia in the 17th century and moves to the religious-philosophical renaissance of first decade of the 20th century. This book provides readers with an exhaustive account of relationships between various Russian thinkers with an examination of how those thinkers relate to a number of figures and trends in Western philosophy and in the broader history of ideas.

Is there a sharp dividing line separating Europe into East and West? This volume brings together prominent scholars from the United States, France, Poland, and Russia to examine the evolution of the conception of Europe over the two centuries since the French Revolution. Inspired by the ideas of Martin Malia, Evtuhov and Kotkin take a flexible view of the cultural gradient of ideas throughout Europe, examining the emergence, interaction, and reception of ideas in different places. The essays address three dimensions of the cultural gradient: the history of ideas, regimes and political practices, and the contemporary political and intellectual scene. In exploring the movement of ideas across Europe, The Cultural Gradient brings a new historical perspective to the field of European studies.

This book introduces the English-speaking reader to the thought of Stanislaw Brzozowski (1878-1911), the outstanding Polish philosopher and literary critic. Although practically unknown in the West, Brzozowski is an important but neglected forerunner of the intellectual tradition of `Western Marxism', most commonly associated with Georg Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci. Concentrating first on the early phase of Brzozowski's thought, Professor Walicki goes on to analyse his ideas on the working class and its relation to the intelligentsia and contemporary working-class ideologies. Finally he deals with aspects of his thought which go beyond the Marxian problematic and round off the intellectual portrait of the man. Brzozowski's anti-naturalistic approach resulted in a radical reinterpretation of Marxism which dealt with many of the problems of the revolt against positivism in European philosophy. Professor Walicki argues that the retrieval of the philosophical and humanist aspect of Marxism, and its separation from the Engels-inspired `scientific Marxism', was the achievement of Brzozowski and not, as frequently assumed, of Lukacs, who came to similar conclusions only some ten years later. By placing Brzozowski within the cross-currents of the various philosophical, sociological, literary, and political streams of Western and Eastern European thought in which Marxism was situated, Professor Walicki produces a fascinating study of an early East European challenge to orthodox Marxism.

This book covers virtually all the significant Russian thinkers from the age of Catherine the Great Down to the eve of the 1905 Revolution.

The aim of this book is to carefully reconstruct Marx and Engels's theory of freedom, to highlight its centrality for their vision of the communist society of the future, to trace its development in the history of Marxist thought, including Marxism-Leninism, and to explain how it as possible for it to be transformed at the height of its influence into a legitimization of totalitarian practices.
The relevance of the Marxist conception of freedom for an understanding of communist totalitarianism derives from the historical fact that the latter came into being as a the result of a conscious, strenuous striving to realize the former. The Russian Revolution suppressed "bourgeois freedom" to pave the way for the "true freedom" of communism. Totalitarianism was a by-product of this immense effort.
The last section of the book gives a concise analysis of the dismantling of Stalinism, involving not only the gradual detotalitarization but also the partial decommunization of "really existing socialism."
Throughout, Marxism is treated as an ideology that has compromised itself but that nevertheless deserves to be seen as the most important, however exaggerated and, ultimately, tragically mistaken, reaction to the multiple shortcomings of capitalist societies and the liberal tradition.

This book presents an analysis of classical Russian Populism, shown as an ideological structure within which many positions were possible. Walicki studies the confrontation of Populism and Marxism: changing attitudes toward Marxism in the Populist milieu and the controversy between Populists and Marxists over the future of Russia. The Controversy over Capitalism, available here in paper for the first time, reinterprets the ideology of Russian Populism. Andrzej Walicki argues that Populism is a reaction to the development of capitalism in Russia and a response to the capitalist economy and socialist ideologies of the West.

"Marxism and the Leap to the Kingdom of Freedom" reconstructs Marx and Engels' theory of freedom, and highlights its centrality to their vision of the communist society of the future. It traces the development of the theory of freedom in the history of Marxist thought (including Marxism-Leninism), and explains how it was transformed at the height of its influence into a legitimation of totalitarian practices. The author contributes to the explanation of the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe by showing the inherently utopian character of the idea of a marketless economy and by interpreting the Soviet communist experiment as a failed attempt to realize this utopia. Hence, he provides substantial arguments for the view that 'really existing socialism' has never been a viable, stable alternative to the market economies of the West.