2017 Recipient

The Kulczycki Book Prize in Polish Studies (formerly the Orbis Book Prize), established in 1996 and sponsored by the Kulczycki family, former owners of the Orbis Books Ltd. of London, England, is awarded annually for the best book in any discipline, on any aspect of Polish affairs, published in the previous calendar year.

Winner: Paul Brykczysnki
Title: Primed for Violence: Murder, Antisemitism, and Democratic Politics in Interwar Poland (University of Wisconsin Press)

Primed for Violence takes a historical incident, the assassination of the first president of Poland, that had been formerly relegated to a brief aside in the historiography of the Second Republic and, through a careful and confident reading of its cultural context, shows how it is in fact central to understanding the pressures and ultimate failures of the new state. Paul Brykczynski demonstrates how the 1922 murder of President Narutowicz and the riots that followed became a bloody assertion for the radical right that only “ethnic Poles” should run the multiethnic state – a claim that the Polish left, despite its condemnation of the assassination itself, never really rebuffed. This explosion of violence and the rhetoric surrounding it thus anticipated the failure of democracy in the 1926 coup d’état, as well as the state’s descent into antisemitism in the 1930s. The book is beautifully written, tightly argued, and is a model of pacing and precision. It speaks not only to students of Polish history and politics, but also to anyone interested in antisemitism, nationalist violence, and radical right-wing politics.

Honorable Mention: John Kulczycki