Adolf Warski, (born Adolf Jerzy Warszawski, 1868-1937) was one most important activist and theoreticians of Polish workers’ movement. In the article below, Warski engages in a polemic with the social democratic critics of the dictatorship of the proletariat and defends of Marxist theory of the state.
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He joined the socialist movement in 1880s. He co-founded the Union of Polish Workers (Związek Robotników Polskich, in 1889) and the Social Democracy of Kingdom of Poland (SDKP, in 1893). He continued his activism after unification of SDKP with Lithuanian social-democrats into the Social Democracy of Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL); from 1902 he was member of party’s Main Executive. In 1915 he represented SDKPiL at the Zimmerwald Conference.
In December 1918 he coordinated SDKPiL unification with the Polish Socialist Party-Left (PPS-Lewica) into the Communist Workers’ Party of Poland (KPRP, later Communist Party of Poland (KPP)). Member of Central Committee until 1924, when he was temporarily removed as a result of factional struggles; again in the CC from 1925 to 1929. He was one of the main leader of the “majority” faction, which pushed for widening of party’s social base, especially through a united front with the refomist left.
From 1922 to 1927 he was editor-in-chief of “Nowy Przegląd” (“New Review”), party’s main theoretical organ. In 1919 he served as a delegate to the Warsaw Council of Workers’ Delegates; from 1926 to 1927 and from 1928 to 1929 he served as a deputy to Sejm (lower house of Polish parliament); during his second tenure he was also the chairman of the Communist Parliamentary Faction.
In 1929 he was purged from the party leadership with the rest of the “majority” from leadership. He moved to the USSR, where he worked for the Comintern. He was arrested and murdered as a “Polish spy” in 1937. He was officially rehabilitated in 1955.
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The article “Komuna Paryska, dyktatura proletariatu i jej «uczeni» pogromcy w Polsce” in Poland appeared under the pseudonym J. Jelski in the magazine “Nowe Społeczeństwo” No. 12, March-April 1919, pp. 1-16.
The basis of this translation: Adolf Warski, “Wybór pism i przemówień”, v. 2, Warsaw 1958, pp. 11-33. Text in square brackets and all footnotes added by the translator.
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