You open your obituary of Leszek Kolakowski, a Polish-born Oxford philosopher, with the claim that he was one of the great minds of the modern era (August 1, 2009). According to you, his greatest contribution was the three-volume Main Currents of Marxism: Its Rise, Growth, and Dissolution (1976-1978), in which he “expertly demolished the pillars of Marxist thought: the labor theory of value, the idea of class struggle, historical materialism, and the like.” What a man to achieve all this single-handedly! But Kolakowski’s biography shows clearly enough why he has become such a celebrity in spite of his minor achievements as a philosopher. Having been an ardent Marxist in his youth, he became an even more ardent opponent of his former faith after he turned to religion. The conversion unfolded between 1956 and 1968, when the Soviet Union first clobbered Poland and then Czechoslovakia for their attempts to forge their own versions of socialism with a human face. He went to McGill University in Montreal in 1968, Berkeley in 1969, and Oxford in 1974. Having arrived in the west at the right political moment, when the Soviet Union started showing first signs of structural weakness, he enjoyed all the benefits of his earlier conversion. But one of the great minds of the modern era he never was. And the pillars of Marxist thought are still standing among the ruins of Soviet-style socialism.