Leopold Labedz was an anti-communist Anglo

English people

The English are a nation and ethnic group native to England, who speak English. The English identity is of early mediaeval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Anglecynn. England is now a country of the United Kingdom, and the majority of English people in England are British Citizens...

-Polish

Poland

Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

 commentator on the Soviet Union

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

.

Labedz was born to a Polish Jewish doctor in Russia. The family soon returned to Warsaw

Warsaw

Warsaw is the capital and largest city of Poland. It is located on the Vistula River, roughly from the Baltic Sea and from the Carpathian Mountains. Its population in 2010 was estimated at 1,716,855 residents with a greater metropolitan area of 2,631,902 residents, making Warsaw the 10th most...

 and the young Labedz decided to follow his father into the medical profession. He studied medicine in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

. In 1939, he fled to the Soviet zone of occupation and was imprisoned by the Soviets in the Gulag

Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

. Many of Labedz's relatives died in the Holocaust

The Holocaust

The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...

.

He left the Soviet Union in 1942 as part of the Polish Army led by General Władysław Anders. After the war he studied at Bologna

Bologna

Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...

 University before settling in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, where he studied at the London School of Economics

London School of Economics

The London School of Economics and Political Science is a public research university specialised in the social sciences located in London, United Kingdom, and a constituent college of the federal University of London...

. Strongly anti-communist

Anti-communism

Anti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...

, Labedz edited Survey journal and headed the London office of Committee for the Defense of Workers

Workers' Defence Committee

The Workers’ Defense Committee was a Polish civil society group that emerged under communist rule to give aid to prisoners & their families after the June 1976 protests & government crackdown...

 known by its Polish abbreviation as KOR.

Labedz often campaigned for the Solidarity union in Poland, and for political prisoners in the Soviet Union. Labedz was one of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...

's principal champions in the West and often defended the Russian writer against the charge of anti-semitism

Anti-Semitism

Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...

.

Works

• The future of communist society edited by Walter Laqueur & Leopold Labedz, New York : Praeger, 1962.
• Polycentrism : the new factor in international communism edited by Walter Laqueur
  Walter Laqueur
  Walter Zeev Laqueur is an American historian and political commentator. He was born in Breslau, Germany , to a Jewish family. In 1938, Laqueur left Germany for the British Mandate of Palestine. His parents, who were unable to leave, became victims of the Holocaust...
  
   and Leopold Labedz, New York : Praeger, 1962.
• Revisionism : essays on the history of Marxist ideas edited by L. Labedz, London : G. Allen and Unwin, 1962.
• Literature and revolution in Soviet Russia, 1917-62, a symposium, edited by Max Hayward and Leopold Labedz, London, Oxford University Press, 1963.
• The Sino-Soviet conflict : eleven radio discussions by L. Labedz & George Urban
  George Urban
  George Robert Urban was a Hungarian writer, best known as a broadcaster for Radio Free Europe ....
  
  , London : Bodley Head, 1965, 1964.
• International communism after Khrushchev edited by Leopold Labedz Cambridge, M.I.T. Press 1965.
• The State of Soviet Studies edited by Walter Laqueur and Leopold Labedz, Cambridge, Mass., M.I.T. Press 1965.
• Solzhenitsyn : a documentary record Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England ; Baltimore : Penguin, 1974.
• The use and abuse of Sovietology edited by Melvin J. Lasky
  Melvin J. Lasky
  Melvin Jonah Lasky was an American journalist, intellectual, and member of the anti-Communist left. He was the older brother of the influential entertainment lawyer Floria Lasky and Joyce Lasky Reed, the President and founder of the Faberge Arts Foundation and former Director of European Affairs...
  
  New Brunswick, N.J., U.S.A. : Transaction Publishers, 1989.