Maria Karolina Sabina Koszutska (pseudonym ''Wera Kostrzewa'') (2 February 1876, Główczyn – 9 July 1939,

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

) was a leader and theoretician of the

Polish Socialist Party The Polish Socialist Party ( pl, Polska Partia Socjalistyczna, PPS) is a socialist political party in Poland. It was one of the most important parties in Poland from its inception in 1892 until its merger with the communist Polish Workers' P ...

"Left" faction ''(Polska Partia Socialistyczna, PPS — Lewica)'' and later 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). She joined the PPS in 1902 and was a member of the executive of the splinter PPS-Left, and was one of the founding members of the Polish Communist Party (KPP) from 1918, and was one of the triumvirate known as the 'three Ws' who ran the party for its first six years. The other triumvirs were

Adolf Warski 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. Warski was born in Warsaw into an assimilated Polish Jewish family ...

and Henrikh Walecki. With interruptions, she sat on the

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 ...

of the KPP 1918–29 and its

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. In the KPP, Koszutska led the more moderate "majority" faction.Jerzy Eisler, ''Siedmiu wspaniałych. Poczet pierwszych sekretarzy KC PZPR'' he Magnificent Seven: first secretaries of the PZPR p. 40. Wydawnictwo Czerwone i Czarne, Warszawa 2014, . In December 1925, she co-signed a declaration 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", which made her and her fellow triumvirs vulnerable to attack from the left wing of the KPP, 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 ...

as Trotsky lost the power struggle in the Kremlin in the mid 1920s. After 1929 she lived in the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

, working in a publishing house, and prevented from taking part in the affairs of the KPP. She opposed the Stalinization of the KPP and the

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

. In June 1937, during 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 Nikolay Yezhov, Yezhov'), was General ...

, the head of 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. ...

Nikolai Yezhov Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov ( rus, Никола́й Ива́нович Ежо́в, p=nʲɪkɐˈɫaj ɪˈvanəvʲɪt͡ɕ (j)ɪˈʐof; 1 May 1895 – 4 February 1940) was a Soviet secret police official under Joseph Stalin who was head of the N ...

claimed to have uncovered a 'Polish Military Organisation' made up of agents of the Polish government posing .as political refugees in the USSR. Koszutska was arrested as one of its supposed leaders. She was the only woman among those accused, and the only one not executed. Koszutska died in prison in 1939. She was rehabilitated in 1956.

References

1876 births 1939 deaths People from Kalisz County Polish Socialist Party politicians Communist Party of Poland politicians Great Purge victims from Poland {{Poland-politician-stub