The Socialists of The Polish ‘Great Emigration’

The history of socialism during the seventy-five years which elapsed between the outbreak of the French Revolution and the founding of the First International has received much attention during recent years. Books and articles in plenty have been written on the theories of the French Utopians and their disciples who, from the eighteen-thirties onwards, were active in the United States, Germany, Belgium, Italy, and Spain. The early British socialists and the German pre-Marxians have also been studied in detail; while the representatives of socialist ideas in Russia during this period are becoming increasingly well known in the West. Among the Poles, too, contemporary schools of socialist thought had many adherents who in books, pamphlets, and journals, sought to spread the new gospel, adapting it in the process to Polish conditions. Studies of their lives and works have been published by later writers, especially since the last war. But the fact that almost all this material is in the Polish language has unfortunately meant that it is virtually unknown in the West.