Walter Kolarz
British scholar (1912–1962)

Walter Jean Kolarz (26 April 1912 - 21 July 1962) was a British-based scholar of the communist world who wrote widely on ethnic and religious issues.
Kolarz was born in Teplitz-Schonau, Kingdom of Bohemia, Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied at Charles University in Prague, then moved to Berlin to work as a journalist. However, he was expelled by the Nazis in 1936. He moved to Paris, before fleeing to London in 1940.
Kolarz worked as a journalist for United Press of America, before joining the BBC in 1949, specialising as an analyst on Soviet and East European affairs.
Kolarz married Alexandra Lipovsky in 1939 (she died in March 2000) and they had one son.
Kolarz died in hospital in Kensington, London, on 21 July 1962.
A number of Kolarz' books were compiled by others in the wake of his early death.
Books
Stalin and Eternal Russia, 1944
Myths and Realities in Eastern Europe, 1946
Russia and Her Colonies.
The public source identifies “Walter Kolarz” as british scholar (1912–1962). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Walter, Kolarz and British.
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This entry incorporates text from “Walter Kolarz” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.