This blog's first post on July 3, 2007, paid tribute to the role Poland has played in defending freedom and western civilization at times of maximum danger. That subject was chosen because, in our view, no people have fought for freedom more valiantly and persistently than the Polish. The following book review profiles one of those great freedom fighters.
When the great African-American educator and human-rights pioneer Booker T. Washington visited Krakow, Poland, in 1910, he made a special point of paying tribute to a dead white male with theA Book Review From The Wall Street Journal
By Aram Bakshian Jr.
The Peasant Prince
By Alex Storozynski
Thomas Dunne, 370 pages, $29.95
nigh-unpronounceable name of Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko.
“I knew from my school history what Kosciuszko had done for America in its early struggle for independence,” Washington would later write. “I did not know, however, until my attention was called to it in Krakow, what Kosciuszko had done for the freedom and education of my own people. . . . When I visited the tomb of Kosciuszko, I placed a rose on it in the name of my race.”
In his views on race, as in so many other matters, Tadeusz (Thaddeus in English) Kosciuszko (1746-1811) was a man ahead of his time. A freedom fighter on two continents, he did not hesitate to denounce the evils of slavery while playing a crucial role as chief engineer in America’s fledgling Continental Army. In his native Poland, he appealed to the patriotism of the privileged classes as he championed full civil rights for the disenfranchised majority of Poland’s peasants, Jews and city-dwelling commoners. But he also upheld the rule of law and opposed mob violence. He was, in the words of French historian Jules Michelet, “the last knight, but the first citizen in Slavic lands with a modern understanding of brotherhood and equality.”
Despite his heroic efforts, Kosciuszko’s fatherland had to wait a century after his death before regaining independence from Russia. The world would have to wait even longer for an accessible, soundly researched, English-language biography. With “The Peasant Prince,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alex Storozynski has filled the void.
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