 For some four decades following World War II, in Poland, a disproportionately prominent official role was given to Marxist philosophy.This, and contemporaneous sociopolitical currents, stimulated Leszek Kołakowski (1927–2009), writing in exile, to publish influential critiques of Marxist theory and communist practice.Kołakowski also wrote a remarkable history of "Positivist Philosophy from Hume to the Vienna Circle".