Andrzej Korbonski, UCLA Professor

Andrzej Korbonski, a longtime Palisadian and UCLA professor of political science, died May 13 after suffering from declining health for several years.
Born in Poznan, Poland, in 1927, Korbonski moved to Warsaw after the German invasion of Poland in 1939.  As a teenager he served as a lance corporal in the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa), the Polish underground resistance to the Nazi occupation. Following the Warsaw Uprising in the summer of 1944, he was taken prisoner of war by the Germans and sent to Stalag IVb prison, where he witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden by the Allied forces in February 1945.
After Liberation, Korbonski joined the Polish Armed Forces in the West in Britain between 1945 and 1947. He earned his B.A. from the University of London in 1950, and thereafter came to the United States where he was drafted by the U.S. Army for two years. He then earned his M.A. from Columbia University, where his Ph.D. dissertation, which he wrote under Zbigniew Brzezinski, won the Ansley Prize in 1963.
Korbonski joined the UCLA Political Science Department in 1963 and for the next 45 years led courses on West and East European government, serving as associate professor and for four years as Department chairman, and continuing for more than 10 years after transitioning to emeritus status.
During his long career, Professor Korbonski amassed over 100 publications, writing widely on a variety of aspects of the politics of Poland and Eastern Europe.  His books include “The Politics of Socialist Agriculture in Poland: 1945 to 1962” and “Soldiers, Peasants, and Bureaucrat: Civil-Military Relations in Communist and Modernizing Societies.”
His scholarly articles and reviews appeared in numerous leading outlets including the American Political Science Review, World Politics, International Organization, Comparative Politics, and Slavic Review; and also Communist and Post-Communist Studies, of which he served as editor up to the time of his death. He served the profession as an active participant in the affairs of the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS), and remained a fixture of his department at UCLA until early this year.
Friends, colleagues and family remember Korbonski not only for his scholarship but for his warmth, sense of humor and readiness to listen to anyone, a quality which earned him the nickname of “Uncle Andrzej” both at UCLA and in the academic world in general.
He married Betsy Glendinning of Philadelphia in 1955. She survives him, with his daughters Holly (who follows her father’s teaching example as an English teacher at Palisades Charter High School), and Ellen, son-in-law Helio Alves, and grandchildren MacLeod, Morguinn, Anna and Sofia.
There will be a memorial service June 29 at the UCLA Faculty Center.  In lieu of flowers please consider a donation to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles or Doctors Without Borders.