Michał Heller, Aleksander Niekricz, Utopia u władzy. Historia Związku Sowieckiego, Vol. 1: Od narodzin do wielkości, Warszawa 2016, pp. 535; Vol. 2: Od potęgi do upadku, Warszawa 2016, pp. 723
Michał Heller, Aleksander Niekricz, Utopia in power. History of the Soviet Union, Vol. 1: From Birth to Size, Warsaw 2016, pp. 535; Vol. 2: From power to the fall, Warsaw 2016, pp. 723

Summary/Abstract: It is difficult to understand why we had to wait for the first official Polish edition of Utopia in Power for so long. The book, originally published in French and Russian in 1982, is known to Polish readers through more than 20 independent and emigration editions, today difficult to reach because many copies, printed on bad paper, scattered with time. I read this book for the first time as a barely readable copy of a copy of one of the underground edition, when we were preparing for an exam in the History of the Twentieth Century. We immediately understood the importance of this book, although many facts disclosed by Heller and Nekrich were then commonly known. That is great that I can put on my shelf a good Polish edition now, not only because it recalls academic period in my life, but because Utopia... is still one of the most important and necessary books to learn about and – equally important – to understand the Soviet Union and Russia. It is worth noting that the first Polish official edition of Utopia... is translated by Andrzej Mietkowski, who prepared this translation for the first time for the Polonia Publishing House in London as soon as it appeared in the original. Mietkowski could personally confront his efforts with Mikhail Heller, who was his neighbor in Paris.

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