This article is a review of three biographies of Zygmunt Bauman published between 2019 and 2021. Its aim is to juxtapose the concepts of three different perspectives on the life of Poland’s most famous sociologist, and to place them in the context of the Polish debate on his legacy. The article makes also an attempt to interpret Zygmunt Bauman in the light of the so-called „Leap into Modernity”, a concept created by Adam Leszczyński. As an attempt to interpret the reality of peripheral countries, which between 1943 and 1980 made efforts to catch up with the developed West, it becomes a framework for interpreting Zygmunt Bauman’s biography. This is due to his involvement in the creation of the structures of the Polish People’s Republic in the post-war era, which is the subject of Leszczyński’s book. This review also attempts to analyze the Polish discourse around the subject of the real-socialist past.
