Leopold Łabędź (22 January 1920 – 22 March 1993) was an anti-communist

Anglo Anglo is a prefix indicating a relation to, or descent from, the Angles, England, English culture, the English people or the English language, such as in the term ''Anglosphere''. It is often used alone, somewhat loosely, to refer to peopl ...

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

commentator on the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

. Łabędź was born to a Polish Jewish doctor in Russia. The family soon returned to

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

and the young Łabędź decided to follow his father into the medical profession. He studied medicine in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

. In 1939, he fled to the Soviet zone of occupation and was imprisoned by the Soviets in the

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

. He left the Soviet Union in 1942 as part of the

Polish Army The Land Forces () are the land forces of the Polish Armed Forces. They currently contain some 62,000 active personnel and form many components of the European Union and NATO deployments around the world. Poland's recorded military history stre ...

led by General

Władysław Anders ) , birth_name = Władysław Albert Anders , birth_date = , birth_place = Krośniewice-Błonie, Warsaw Governorate, Congress Poland, Russian Empire , death_date = , death_place = London, England, United Kingdom , serviceyear ...

. After the war he studied at

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label=Emilian language, Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 1 ...

University before settling in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

, where he studied at the

London School of Economics The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) is a public university, public research university located in London, England and a constituent college of the federal University of London. Founded in 1895 by Fabian Society members Sidn ...

. Strongly anti-communist, Łabędź edited ''Survey'' journal and headed the London office of Committee for the Defense of Workers known by its Polish abbreviation as KOR. Łabędź often campaigned for the '' Solidarity'' union in Poland, and for political prisoners in the Soviet Union. Łabędź was one of

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn. (11 December 1918 – 3 August 2008) was a Russian novelist. One of the most famous Soviet dissidents, Solzhenitsyn was an outspoken critic of communism and helped to raise global awareness of political repres ...

's principal champions in the West and often defended the Russian writer against the charge of

anti-semitism Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism. Antis ...

Bibliography

* *''Polycentrism : the new factor in international communism '' edited by

Walter Laqueur Walter Ze'ev Laqueur (26 May 1921 – 30 September 2018) was a German-born American historian, journalist and political commentator. He was an influential scholar on the subjects of terrorism and political violence. Biography Walter Laqueur was ...

and Leopold Labedz, New York : Praeger, 1962. *''Revisionism : essays on the history of Marxist ideas'' edited by L. Labedz, London : G. Allen and Unwin, 1962. *''Literature and revolution in Soviet Russia, 1917-62, a symposium'', edited by Max Hayward and Leopold Labedz, London, Oxford University Press, 1963. *''The Sino-Soviet conflict : eleven radio discussions'' by L. Labedz &

George Urban George Robert Urban (born Gyorgy Robert Ungar; 12 April 1921, in Miskolc, Hungary – 3 October 1997) was a Hungarian writer, best known as a broadcaster for Radio Free Europe (RFE). Early life Gyorgy Robert Ungar was born on 12 April 1921 in ...

, London : Bodley Head, 1965, 1964. *''International communism after Khrushchev'' edited by Leopold Labedz Cambridge, M.I.T. Press 1965. *''The State of Soviet Studies'' edited by Walter Laqueur and Leopold Labedz, Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press 1965. *''Solzhenitsyn : a documentary record'' Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England; Baltimore : Penguin, 1974. *"Chomsky Revisited", ''Encounter'', July 1980, pp. 28–35. *''The use and abuse of

Sovietology Kremlinology is the study and analysis of the politics and policies of the Soviet Union while Sovietology is the study of politics and policies of both the Soviet Union and former communist states more generally. These two terms were synonymous unt ...

'' edited by

Melvin J. Lasky Melvin Jonah Lasky (15 January 1920 – 19 May 2004) was an American journalist, intellectual, and member of the anti-Communist left. He founded the German journal '' Der Monat'' in 1948 and, from 1958 to 1991, edited ''Encounter'', one of many ...

New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A. : Transaction Publishers, 1989. ;Critical studies, reviews and biography * First published in the ''American Scholar''. * Shils, Edward, ''Portraits : A Gallery of Intellectuals'', University Of Chicago Press 1997.

References

* Shils, Edward ''Portraits : A Gallery of Intellectuals'', University Of Chicago Press 1997. {{DEFAULTSORT:Labedz, Leopold 1920 births 1993 deaths Soviet Jews Jewish historians Polish deportees to Soviet Union 20th-century British historians Polish expatriates in the Soviet Union Polish expatriates in France Polish expatriates in Italy Polish emigrants to the United Kingdom