ALEXANDER BOCHEŃSKI: THE HISTORY OF STUPIDITY IN POLAND. HISTORY PAMPHLETS [1947].

“History of Stupidity in Poland. Pamphlets of History” is one of the most controversial and brilliant works of Aleksander Bochenski – a journalist, prose writer and political thinker, co-founder of the famous literary group “Art and Nation”. The book, published in 1947 by the Pantheon publishing house, is an uncompromising historical pamphlet, written with passion and erudition, in which the author exposes the mechanisms of stupidity, conformity and intellectual enslavement in the history of Poland.

Bochenski analyzes the Polish mentality, institutions and elites with extraordinary courage and perspicacity, not shying away from criticizing well-established national myths. His essays, combining stylistic swagger with profound historical and philosophical reflection, are part of the current of interwar catastrophism and postwar reckoning with Polish tradition. This work, overlooked in official circulation for decades, is today considered one of the most important testimonies to Polish independent thought of the 20th century.