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

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...

. Warski was born in

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

into an assimilated

Polish Jewish The history of the Jews in Poland dates back at least 1,000 years. For centuries, Poland was home to the largest and most significant Ashkenazi Jewish community in the world. Poland was a principal center of Jewish culture, because of the lon ...

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 communist movement from 1889, when he co-founded the Union of Polish workers, with

Julian Marchlewski Julian Baltazar Józef Marchlewski (17 May 1866 – 22 March 1925) was a Polish communist politician, revolutionary activist and publicist who served as chairman of the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee. He was also known under the al ...

and Bronislaw Wesolowski. In 1893, he was one of the four founders of the

Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania The Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania ( pl, Socjaldemokracja Królestwa Polskiego i Litwy, SDKPiL), , LKLSD), originally the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP), was a Marxist political party founded in 1893 and ...

(SDKPiL), with Rosa Luxemburg,

Leo Jogiches Leon "Leo" Jogiches (Russian: Лев "Лео" Йогихес; 17 July 1867 – 10 March 1919), also commonly known by the party name Jan Tyszka, was a Polish Marxist revolutionary and politician, active in Poland, Lithuania, and Germany. Jogiche ...

, and Marchlewski. In 1897, he moved to Munich, where he became close to leaders of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, 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, 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 ( pl, Komunistyczna Partia Polski, 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 a ...

(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 (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's terminal illness, pitching

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

and the chairman of Comintern, Grigory Zinoviev 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,. officially known as the Great October Socialist Revolution. in the Soviet Union, also known as the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was a key mome ...

." Warski and his allies then under attack from a left wing faction, led by

Julian Lenski Julian may refer to: People * Julian (emperor) (331–363), Roman emperor from 361 to 363 * Julian (Rome), referring to the Roman gens Julia, with imperial dynasty offshoots * Saint Julian (disambiguation), several Christian saints * Julian (gi ...

. 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 Communist Party of the Soviet Union, when it was one of the most influential papers in the ...

'' 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 (English: , Polish: ), officially known as the Sejm of the Republic of Poland ( Polish: ''Sejm Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej''), is the lower house of the bicameral parliament of Poland. The Sejm has been the highest governing body of ...

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

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

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

Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...

. It was rumoured that under interrogation by the

NKVD The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (russian: Наро́дный комиссариа́т вну́тренних дел, Naródnyy komissariát vnútrennikh del, ), abbreviated NKVD ( ), was the interior ministry of the Soviet Union. ...

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

Gestapo The (), 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 Prussia into one orga ...

. He was shot on 21 August 1937. He was fully rehabilitated in 1956, during the De-Stalinization process that followed

's death, and the Szczecin shipyard, Stocznia Szczecińska Nowa, was renamed in his honor (''Stocznia im. Adolfa Warskiego'') by the authorities of the People's Republic of Poland.

References

1868 births 1937 deaths 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 {{Poland-bio-stub