Rick Kuhn

Research Project

The following overview of my work on Grossman and the Jewish Social Democratic Party of Galicia is extracted from my article: ‘Henryk Grossman and the recovery of Marxism’, Historical materialism 13 (3) 2005 pp. 57-100.

Who was Henryk Grossman?

Henryk Grossman’s background was bourgeois and he was trained to be a traditional intellectual, serving the established order. He was born on 14 April 1881 in Kraków, to an upwardly mobile Jewish family, rapidly assimilating to the Polish high culture of Galicia, the Austrian-occupied sector of partitioned Poland. Although he gained an academic education and pursued a successful and conventional career, Grossman did not become a traditional intellectual. His outlook was not only sympathetic to the working class, it was formed through his involvement in the organised labour movement and engagement in working class struggles.

At school, he joined the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia (PPSD) and began to organise fellow students. At Kraków’s Jagiellonian University, he continued to assist t