Civitas University is pleased to announce that the English-language edition of Professor Jan Skórzyński’s book The Power of the Powerless. Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) has been released by the renowned academic publishing house Brill. The print edition will follow later this year. Both the e-book and the printed edition are now available.

The publication is a comprehensive monograph devoted to the Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) — an organization established in Poland in 1976 to support those persecuted by the communist regime. The KOR’s founders introduced a new model of opposition: open, nonviolent, and grounded in human and civil rights. Their evolutionary approach to rebuilding civil society and fostering social activism laid the foundations for Poland’s democratic transformation.

Professor Skórzyński’s book follows the successive stages of KOR’s history and political thought, portraying its leading figures, internal debates, and the movement’s enduring influence on the emergence of Solidarity and other opposition groups in Poland.

The Polish edition, The Power of the Powerless. The History of the Workers’ Defense Committee/Siła bezsilnych. Historia Komitetu Obrony Robotników (2012), was nominated for the Kazimierz Moczarski Historical Award.

The book is available via Brill.