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

communist Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...

movement in Poland. Warski was born in Warsaw 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 (; ; pl, Róża Luksemburg or ; 5 March 1871 – 15 January 1919) was a Polish and naturalised-German revolutionary socialist, Marxist philosopher and anti-war activist. Successively, she was a member of the Proletariat party, ...

, 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; in , ''Rossiyskaya sotsial-demokraticheskaya rabochaya partiya (RSDRP)''), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or the Russian Social Democratic Party, was a socialist pol ...

, 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,. occurred on 22 January 1905, and was a wave of mass political and social unrest that spread through vast areas of the Russian Empire. The mass unrest was directed again ...

, 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 (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 Central committee is the common designation of a standing administrative body of Communist party, communist parties, analogous to a board of directors, of both ruling and nonruling parties of former and existing socialist states. In such party org ...

(1919–29) and

Politburo A politburo () or political bureau is the executive committee for communist parties. It is present in most former and existing communist states. Names The term "politburo" in English comes from the Russian ''Politbyuro'' (), itself a contraction ...

(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 Maksymilian Horwitz (pseudonym: ''Henryk Walecki''; 6 September 1877 – 20 September 1937) was a leader and theoretician of the Polish socialist and communist movement. Biography Maksymilian Horwitz was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw, the s ...

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 and the chairman of

Comintern The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet Union, Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to ...

Grigory Zinoviev Grigory Yevseyevich Zinoviev, . Transliterated ''Grigorii Evseevich Zinov'ev'' according to the Library of Congress system. (born Hirsch Apfelbaum, – 25 August 1936), known also under the name Ovsei-Gershon Aronovich Radomyslsky (russian: Ов ...

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." 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'' 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), but in March 1929, he was forced to emigrate to the Soviet Union 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. It was rumoured that under interrogation by the NKVD, he went mad, and imagined that he was in the hands of the Gestapo. He was shot on 21 August 1937. He was fully rehabilitated in 1956, during the

De-Stalinization De-Stalinization (russian: десталинизация, translit=destalinizatsiya) comprised a series of political reforms in the Soviet Union after the death of long-time leader Joseph Stalin in 1953, and the thaw brought about by ascension ...

process that followed Joseph Stalin's death, and the

Szczecin Szczecin (, , german: Stettin ; sv, Stettin ; Latin: ''Sedinum'' or ''Stetinum'') is the capital and largest city of the West Pomeranian Voivodeship in northwestern Poland. Located near the Baltic Sea and the German border, it is a major s ...

shipyard A shipyard, also called a dockyard or boatyard, is a place where ships are built and repaired. These can be yachts, military vessels, cruise liners or other cargo or passenger ships. Dockyards are sometimes more associated with maintenance a ...

, 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 ( pl, Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL) was a country in Central Europe that existed from 1947 to 1989 as the predecessor of the modern Republic of Poland. With a population of approximately 37.9 million nea ...

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