Jan Kott

Jan Kott (October 27, 1914 – December 23, 2001) was a Polish political activist, critic and theoretician of the theatre. A leading proponent of Stalinism in Poland after the Soviet takeover, Kott in 1957 renounced his Communist Party membership and defected to the United States in 1965. He is regarded as having been a major influence upon Shakespeare production in the second half of the 20th century.

Born in Warsaw in 1914 to a Jewish family, Kott was baptized into the Catholic Church at the age of five. He became a communist in the 1930s, and took part in the defense of Warsaw. He spent the war years in the Soviet Union where he joined the communist partisans People's Army (Armia Ludowa). After World War II he became known initially as the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine Kuźnica and as Poland's leading theorist of Socialist realism. In 1949, as the communist authorities tightened their control over all aspects of life, Kott obtained a position as a professor in Wrocław and moved away from political life. He praised Joseph Stalin, but mostly concentrated on theater. In 1951, during the darkest period of Soviet terror, Kott published an ideological manifesto about the role of theater, entitled "O teatr godny naszej epoki" (For theater worthy of our times), in which he demanded a "new" theater subservient to the Party and its ideology. Historian Teresa Wilniewczyc noted, that his zeal for totalitarian control over the world of Polish culture was "far more than was required". Only after the Stalin era came to an end, did he become its ardent critic (March 1956). He renounced his membership of the communist party in 1957.