Adolf Warski ( Ru: Адольф Варшавский) (born Adolf Jerzy Warszawski; 20 April 1868 – 21 August 1937), was a Polish communist leader, journalist and theoretician of the

communist Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

movement in

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. During Stalin's

Great Purge The Great Purge, or the Great Terror (), also known as the Year of '37 () and the Yezhovshchina ( , ), was a political purge in the Soviet Union that took place from 1936 to 1938. After the Assassination of Sergei Kirov, assassination of ...

he was arrested and executed.

Biography

Warski was born in

Warsaw Warsaw, officially the Capital City of Warsaw, is the capital and List of cities and towns in Poland, largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula, River Vistula in east-central Poland. Its population is officially estimated at ...

into an assimilated Polish Jewish family. His father Saul, a commercial clerk, changed the name to Stanisław. The family was of pro-independence and patriotic traditions. Warski was active in the

movement from 1889, when he co-founded the Union of Polish workers, with Julian Marchlewski and Bronislaw Wesolowski. In 1893, he was one of the four founders of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL), with

Rosa Luxemburg Rosa Luxemburg ( ; ; ; born Rozalia Luksenburg; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary and Marxist theorist. She was a key figure of the socialist movements in Poland and Germany in the early 20t ...

, Leo Jogiches, and Marchlewski. In 1897, he moved to Munich, where he became close to leaders of the

Russian Social Democratic Labour Party The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party (RSDWP) or the Russian Social Democratic Party (RSDP), was a socialist political party founded in 1898 in Minsk, Russian Empire. The ...

, In July 1903, during the second congress of the RSDLP in Brussels, Warski pleaded for the SDPKiL to be recognised as the autonomous Polish section of the Russian party. Warski returned to Poland during the

1905 Russian Revolution The Russian Revolution of 1905, also known as the First Russian Revolution, was a revolution in the Russian Empire which began on 22 January 1905 and led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy under the Russian Constitution of 1906, th ...

, but emigrated again after it was suppressed. In 1907, during the London Congress of the RSDLP, he was elected as the Polish representative on its Central Committee. In 1918, Warski was one of the founders of the

Communist Party of Poland The interwar Communist Party of Poland (, KPP) was a communist party active in Poland during the Second Polish Republic. It resulted from a December 1918 merger of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) and the ...

(KPP), formed by a merger of the SDPKiL and the left faction of the Polish Socialist Party. Warski held positions in the KPP's Central Committee (1919–29) and

Politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the highest organ of the central committee in communist parties. The term is also sometimes used to refer to similar organs in socialist and Islamist parties, such as the UK Labour Party's NEC or the Poli ...

(1923–29, with an interruption). He was the senior member of the triumvirate known as the 'three Ws' who ran the party for its first six years. The other triumvirs were Henryk Walecki and Wera Kostrzewa. After the failure of the 1923 communist uprising in Germany, and similar but smaller-scale disturbances in Poland, the three Ws vigorously defended the leaders of the German party, who were accused of passivity, and as a power struggle developed in the Kremlin between during

Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov ( 187021 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, politician and political theorist. He was the first head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until Death and state funeral of ...

's terminal illness, pitching

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

and the chairman of

Comintern The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern and also known as the Third International, was a political international which existed from 1919 to 1943 and advocated world communism. Emerging from the collapse of the Second Internatio ...

Grigory Zinoviev Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev (born Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky; – 25 August 1936) was a Russian revolutionary and Soviet politician. A prominent Old Bolsheviks, Old Bolshevik, Zinoviev was a close associate of Vladimir Lenin prior to ...

against Trotsky, they issued a statement in December 1923 declaring that the name of comrade Trotsky is for our party, for the whole International, for the whole revolutionary world proletariat, indissolubly bound up with the victorious

October Revolution The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution (in Historiography in the Soviet Union, Soviet historiography), October coup, Bolshevik coup, or Bolshevik revolution, was the second of Russian Revolution, two r ...

." Warski and his allies then under attack from a left wing faction, led by Julian Lenski. The record of the Polish leadership was subjected to a three-day examination during the Fifth Comintern Congress in June 1924, chaired by Stalin, after which Warski capitulated and wrote a recantation, published in ''

Pravda ''Pravda'' ( rus, Правда, p=ˈpravdə, a=Ru-правда.ogg, 'Truth') is a Russian broadsheet newspaper, and was the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most in ...

'' in January 1925. Unlike Walecki and Kostrzewa, he was allowed to continue as an active member of the Polish CP. In 1926 was elected as a member of the Polish Parliament (

Sejm The Sejm (), officially known as the Sejm of the Republic of Poland (), is the lower house of the bicameralism, bicameral parliament of Poland. The Sejm has been the highest governing body of the Third Polish Republic since the Polish People' ...

), but in March 1929, he was forced to emigrate to the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

where he worked in the Marx-Engels-Lenin Institute on the history of the Polish labour movement. He was an atheist. At the age of 69, Warski was one of the oldest victims of the

. In June 1937, the head of the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) se ...

Nikolai Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Николай Иванович Ежов, p=nʲɪkɐˈlaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪtɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940), also spelt Ezhov, was a Soviet Chekism, secret police official under Joseph Stalin who ...

told a plenum of the Central Committee that the police had uncovered a 'Polish Military organisation', whose members had infiltrated the USSR by posing as political refugees. Warski was arrested and accused of being a leader of this fictitious organisation. Under interrogation, he admitted to having made political errors during the 1920s but categorically denied belonging to any organisation working for the Polish government. It was rumoured that under interrogation by the

, he went mad, and imagined that he was in the hands of the

Gestapo The (, ), Syllabic abbreviation, abbreviated Gestapo (), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of F ...

. He was shot on 21 August 1937. Warski was fully rehabilitated in 1956, during the

De-Stalinization De-Stalinization () comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and Khrushchev Thaw, the thaw brought about by ascension of Nik ...

process that followed Joseph Stalin's death, and the

Szczecin Szczecin ( , , ; ; ; or ) is the capital city, capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the Poland-Germany border, German border, it is a major port, seaport, the la ...

shipyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are shipbuilding, built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Compared to shipyards, which are sometimes m ...

, Stocznia Szczecińska Nowa, was renamed in his honor (''Stocznia im. Adolfa Warskiego'') by the authorities of the

People's Republic of Poland The Polish People's Republic (1952–1989), formerly the Republic of Poland (1947–1952), and also often simply known as Poland, was a country in Central Europe that existed as the predecessor of the modern-day democratic Republic of Poland. ...

References

External links

Adolf Warski, ''Rosa Luxemburg’s Position on the Tactical Problems of Revolution''
(1922) {{DEFAULTSORT:Warski, Adolf 1868 births 1937 deaths Members of the Central Committee of the 4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party Members of the Central Committee of the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party Politicians from Warsaw 19th-century Polish politicians 20th-century Polish politicians Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania politicians Communist Party of Poland politicians Members of the Sejm of the Second Polish Republic (1922–1927) Great Purge victims from Poland Jews executed by the Soviet Union Jewish Polish politicians Jewish socialists Polish revolutionaries Polish emigrants to the Soviet Union Executed people from Masovian Voivodeship Soviet rehabilitations Jews from the Russian Empire Jewish atheists 19th-century pseudonymous writers 20th-century pseudonymous writers People from Congress Poland