Charting the life and writings of Władysław Bieńkowski, a leading politician and writer in communist Poland and sometime right hand man and ideologue of the Polish leader Władysław Gomułka, this book outlines the shifts in the nature of communism in Poland throughout the period of communist rule.

It considers the shaping of Bieńkowski's ideas in eastern Poland, later occupied by the Soviet Union, during the economic depression, the development of his great hopes for socialist socio-economic transformation as the right way forward, and his and Gomułka's attempts to enact "people's democracy" and "socialist humanism" in the period 1945 to 1948, attempts which failed, Stalinist repression coming to the fore instead. The book further discusses Bieńkowski's role as a minister in the period following Stalin's death, when Bieńkowski was a leading "revisionist", warning of the dangers of the "petrification of the system", and to explain how with a sense of shattered hopes he resigned from power and became a dissident, publicly critical of the regime. The book concludes by examining Bieńkowski's writings in post-communist times when, now just an observer, he continued to reflect on and write about the future of socialism. Overall, the book demonstrates that communism in Eastern Europe was flexible and adaptable, and not rigidly monolithic as it is often portrayed.

The book will be of interest to academics and scholars interested in the history of communism and Europe.