WARSKI-WARSZAWSKI, ADOLF

WARSKI-WARSZAWSKI, ADOLF (1868–1937), Polish Communist leader. Born in Cracow into an assimilated family   which favored Polish independence, he was connected from early youth with the Polish workers' movement. Warski-Warszawski was one of the founders of the Polish Labor Union, and organized the Social Democratic Party of Poland and Lithuania. He took an active part in the Russian revolution of 1905 and was arrested by the czarist authorities on several occasions. During World War I Warski-Warszawski represented the Polish Democrats at the anti-war conferences of Zimmer-Wald and Kiental (Switzerland). After the war he was one of the founders of the Polish Communist Party and was a member of its central committee and political bureau. He was elected as a Communist member of the Sejm, and won a reputation for his courageous speeches and sharp criticism of the authorities. When the Communist Party was made illegal in 1930 he emigrated to the Soviet Union, where he became a prominent figure in the Polish section of the Communist International. In 1937, during the great purges in the U.S.S.R., he was accused of treason and of being a counterrevolutionary, and he was imprisoned and executed. (Abraham Wein)