DZHERZHINSKY - PARTY WORK ON THE EVE OF AND DURING THE FIRST RUSSIAN REVOLUTION (1899-1907)
By the time Dzerzhinsky had arrived in Warsaw, the major industrial and cultural centre of the Kingdom of Poland,[1] the revolutionary Polish working-class movement had gained substantial experience in its class struggle. In March 1893, a Marxist workers’ party had been formed—the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland (SDKP). Its organisers and theoretical leaders were Rosa Luxemburg, Julian Marchlewski, Leon Jogiches (Jan Tyszka) and Adolf Warski.
Its central organ, Sprawa Robotnicza (printed in Paris), as well as leaflets and appeals urged the Polish workers to fight the autocracy and capitalism in collaboration with the Russian proletariat, popularised the Marxist principles of the class struggle and of proletarian internationalism, and directed sharp criticism against the nationalist programme and tactics of the PSP, whose leadership was spreading mistrust and hostility against the revolutionary working-class movement in Russia and substituting the ideas of socialism and proletarian internationalism with a bourgeois chauvinistic programme.
After 1896, the work of the SDKP was seriously crippled as a consequence of mass arrests and the
effective banning of the activities of most of its branches.
Propaganda work among the workers was conducted by the PSP and the Bund.[2] The Social-Democrats who had escaped arrest did not carry out any organisational activities among the masses but confined themselves to working in isolated workers’ and students’ groups. Dzerzhinsky soon found his bearings in the situation, got in touch with the leading social- democratic workers (specifically, shoemaker Jan Rosol and his son Antek), and set out to restore the Social-Democratic organisation. His very first talks, which he gave under the name of the Astronomer, demonstrated that many worker members of the PSP did not really support that party’s programme and tactics. They had joined it only in the absence of a social- democratic organisation and because they could have access to banned literature. Together with Jan and Antek Rosol, Dzerzhinsky initiated a campaign among the working-class members of the PSP to win them over to the side or Social- Democracy.
Their efforts were the most successful among shoemakers, who numbered about 45,000 in Warsaw at the time.
The shoemakers worked mostly at home, taking the finished footwear to their contractor once a week.
Generally the whole family was involved with the work. The conditions of their life and labour were abysmal. They worked 14-18 hours a day but earned barely subsistence wages. Given this sort of exploitation, even the workers’ most elementary needs were not being met. Dzerzhinsky studied the conditions of their life and work and. gathered them for talks. One such gathering attracted some 200 people (during a strike at Eisenhorn’s company). In his speech Dzerzhinsky tried to explain in simple and concrete terms the essence of capitalist exploitation. He suggested ways in which the workers should conduct talks with the management and talked about the need to link the workers’ campaign for better wages with the struggle to overthrow tsarism.
One of the men at the gathering, Jan Lesniewski, wrote later: “The meeting has forever remained in
my memory. It was the first such large-scale meeting between Felix Dzerzhinsky and the shoemakers
of Warsaw. He won the confidence and affection not only of shoemakers but other workers of Warsaw.”
After four months of propaganda work, Dzerzhinsky and the Rosols managed to get away from the PSP a large number of workers—carpenters, metalworkers, shoemakers and bakers and, in the autumn of 1899, to restore the Social-Democratic organisation under the name of the Working-Class Union of Social-Democrats.
The principal goal was to win over the rest of the working-class members of the PSP. With this end in view, Dzerzhinsky wrote a popular essay containing well-considered criticism of the nationalist programme advanced by the PSP and set forth the goals of Social-Democrats. He also touched on the
question of Poland’s independence, which the PSP liked to play up, and proved that PSP leaders were employing the slogan of Polish independence as a smoke-screen for their activities, that they were intentionally silent on the issue of political rights that the “independent democratic Polish republic" was supposed to grant the workers.
Dzerzhinsky wrote: “Consequently, it is the socialist system that is the ultimate objective of our
struggle, and it would be Utopian to think about its establishment in Poland now.”
Under the conditions prevailing in the country at that time, the call to establish an independent Poland could only have an adverse effect on the working-class movement in Lithuania and Poland, where the working population was made up of Poles, Jews, Lithuanians, Letts, Germans and Russians.
Working-class agitators copied the essay in longhand and distributed it through the city in an
attempt to acquaint the workers with the goals of the revolution.
The Warsaw Social-Democratic branch headed workers’ strikes and meetings, mimeographed leaflets, and set up five study groups to train agitators—three among shoemakers and bakers and two among carpenters and metalworkers. The classes, which were conducted by Dzerzhinsky, studied the Party programme and tactics and discussed current affairs.
The organisation was in dire need of banned Marxist literature. Therefore, oral propaganda became very important. Despite the constant threat of arrest, Dzerzhinsky took an active part in this work. Daily, he spoke at workers’ clandestine meetings. “I myself had to write, conduct propaganda, establish contacts with the intelligentsia and mimeograph,” he wrote later. “Arrest was imminent, but I could not stop my work, for the workers’ needs had to be satisfied.”
He also kept in touch with Lithuanian Social-Democrats who held internationalist views in the hope
of eventually uniting the Social-Democrats of Poland and Lithuania into a single party. In late December 1899 Dzerzhinsky held a meeting in Wilno with local Social-Democrats Mieczyslaw Kozlowski, Edward Sokolowski, and Piotr Sunkielewicz. There he set forth his plan of party unification and explained why he felt there was a need to decisively combat the PSP and consolidate the links
between the working-class movement in Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland on the one hand and the Russian proletarian movement on the other. It was also decided at this meeting that the Warsaw organisation of the SDKP, the Working-Class Union of Social-Democrats, would prepare and publish a draft programme of the united party, and an inaugural congress was mapped out for early 1900.
A provisional organisational centre was elected. It was headed by Dzerzhinsky and also included Jan
Rosol, Mieczyslaw Kozlowski and Edward Sokolowski.
Upon his return to Warsaw, Dzerzhinsky mimeographed the draft programme. Thus work began to set up a party— the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDPKP and L). The congress of the Party’s groups abroad held in Leipzig in February 1900 approved the establishment of a united party.
In January 1900 Dzerzhinsky and his comrades set out to organise an underground printing press. However, their efforts were stopped short due to Dzerzhinsky’s arrest. On the morning of January 23, 1900, at a meeting of one of the workers’ groups, Dzerzhinsky was seized and locked up in No. 10 Blockof the Warsaw Citadel. On the night of the same day, 18-year-old Antek Rosol, Dzerzhinsky’s friend and associate, was arrested at his parents’ flat.
The arrest of Dzerzhinsky and other active Social- Democrats dealt a severe blow to the young and still not very stable party. However, Jan Rosol and the activists who had managed to escape arrest soon relaunched the work of the Warsaw Social-Democratic branch. In June 1900, the Party committee consisting of five members was set up and prepared for its second congress.
In August of the same year, a congress of the Social-Democratic branches of the Kingdom of Poland
and Lithuania was convened in Otwock (not far from Warsaw). It announced the establishment of a
united party, the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. It also adopted a decision to establish closer contacts with the Russian Social-Democrats, and elected the Party’s Main Board of five members.
According to the Rules, branches in the Kingdom of Poland and in Lithuania were autonomous, with
each electing its own Central Committee of five members.
In the meantime Dzerzhinsky remained in prison (first in Warsaw and later in Siedlce) undergoing a
preliminary investigation. Every effort was made to gather enough evidence to incriminate him.
His prison dossier reads, in part: “The leader of the gathering was aristocrat Felix Dzerzhinsky known as the Bookbinder, who delivered a speech on the need to unite the Polish workers’ party with
the Russian Social-Democrats in order to overthrow tsarism, and promised to supply those present with banned literature printed in St. Petersburg.” The investigators tried to break the political prisoner, who was ill with tuberculosis, not only physically but morally, to make him “lose his illusions" and give up the revolutionary struggle. But they reckoned without sufficient knowledge of Dzerzhinsky’s character.
Although only 23 years old, he behaved with courage and dignity, and openly admitted that he was a
convinced Social-Democrat and opponent of the autocracy, that he lived in Warsaw illegally and was
engaged exclusively in popularisation activities among workers.
Proof of his moral strength and indomitable spirit is found in his letter to Aldona written from the Siedlce prison on October 8, 1901: “I am much younger than you are, but I think that in my short life I have absorbed so many different impressions that they would suffice for an old man...
I cannot either hate or love half-heartedly. I cannot give away only half of my soul. I will either give it all, or give nothing. I have drained not only the bitter cup of life but its sweet cup, too, and if somebody says to me: look at your wrinkled forehead, your exhausted body, your present life, look and realise that life has broken you, I will reply: it is not life that has broken me but I who have broken life; it is not life that has drained me but I who have taken all I could from it.”
These words accurately characterise the young revolutionary. Even as a child, he had never tried to
appear anything than what he really was. “In this revolutionary," wrote Clara Zetkin,[3] “everything was genuine and honest: his love and his hatred, his enthusiasm and his wrath, his words and his deeds.”
When the investigation was over, the Minister of Justice suggested that Dzerzhinsky be exiled to Archangel Gubernia under police surveillance for four years, counting the time of the preliminary investigation. However, the police department did not agree with this “lenient” sentence.
In early January 1902 Dzerzhinsky was transferred from the Siedlce prison to the Moscow central deportation prison, whence, following an Imperial decree, he was transported to Eastern Siberia for five years. The place of his exile was to be the town of Vilyuisk, 610 km north of Yakutsk. While in the Moscow prison, Dzerzhinsky had taken part in a manifestation of political prisoners to mark their solidarity with a group of political exiles being deported to Siberia. For this he was deprived of the right to write to his relatives and receive letters or visits from them for one month.
In late February, he was brought to the Alexandrovskoye deportation prison near the city of Irkutsk. On March 5, he wrote to Aldona that he was in Eastern Siberia, more than 6,000 km away from home, and that in spring, when the rivers would become navigable, he would be taken to Vilyuisk, another 3,000- 4,000 km to the north. A large number of prisoners at the Irkutsk prison were waiting for the authorities to name their destination.
The time passed slowly, and the gendarmes were in no hurry. Finally, Dzerzhinsky’s patience came to
an end. Together with a group of political exiles, he addressed a written appeal to the prison superintendent demanding to know where they were to be sent, and to be transported there immediately. The superintendent forwarded the letter to the Governor of Irkutsk.
It was almost May, but no reply was forthcoming. The prisoners, headed by Dzerzhinsky, demanded
that their appeal be answered. Instead, the authorities sent in a group of rapists and murderers sentenced to penal servitude for life to deal with the political exiles. The political prisoners were not intimidated and surrounded the criminals. Dzerzhinsky knocked down the most formidable-looking man and wrenched a knife away from him. Having arrived at the scene, the prison superintendent ordered the criminal to be put in the punishment cell and “apologised” to the political prisoners for the “misunderstanding”.
After the incident, the political prisoners were worse off than ever. Dzerzhinsky conceived a bold plan. Next morning, during their walk, the prisoners were to attack the wardens, disarm them and drive them outside the prison gates, thus placing themselves in charge. On the morning of May 6, 1902, the plan was brilliantly executed under Dzerzhinsky’s leadership, and a red flag was hoisted over the prison, with the word “Freedom!" written on it. The territory of the prison was declared a “free republic”, and Felix Dzerzhinsky elected its chairman.
In fright the prison authorities summoned the troops and mounted police, and the Irkutsk Vice-Governor arrived in the village of Alexandrovskoye.
News of the event reached St. Petersburg. The orders received were to deal with the conflict by peaceful means. For two days the authorities conducted talks with the prisoners over the prison fence. They were told to remove the barricade blocking the prison gates, take down the red flag, and return to their cells. But the prisoners, showing a great deal of courage and determination, refused to obey.
On the third day, special messenger informed Dzerzhinsky that the Governor had agreed to meet some of the insurgents’ demands. However, Dzerzhinsky turned the offer down.
“There are 44 of us here,” he replied, “and each would rather die than surrender until all our terms are met.”
Fearing publicity, the prison authorities were obliged to give in and comply with the major demands
of the political prisoners. Only after that, at 2 p.m. on May 8, the prison gates were opened, and the uprising was over.
On May 12, 1902, Dzerzhinsky and the other political prisoners temporarily detained at the Alexandrovskoye prison were transported to Verkholensk via the Yakutsk road. On the way, they made a stop at the village of Kachug, about 25 km from Verkholensk. From that point, the Lena was
navigable, so the exiles boarded a steamer which took them further north to Yakutsk. The men disembarked at the places to which they had been assigned by the authorities.
While still en route to his destination Dzerzhinsky was already considering an escape plan. He confided his intention to Henryk Walecki, a PSP member, and later a Social- Democrat, whom he had met during his imprisonment, in No. 10 Block in Warsaw and who met him in Kachug. It was decided that Dzerzhinsky and Sladkopevtsev, an SR,[4] would stay on in Verkholensk feigning illness and supposedly awaiting the arrival of the next group of exiles. Preparations began. The men bought a boat which they would use to sail down the river at night to the village of Zhigalovo, from whence
they would make their way to the Siberian railroad by the highway.
The escape was carried out on June 12, 1902. Dzerzhinsky and Sladkopevtsev left Verkholensk forever, and, having surmounted grave difficulties, were free once again. On the 17th day after the escape from Verkholensk, Dzerzhinsky was back in Warsaw. Then he went to Berlin, where the leaders of the Social- Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania were residing. That was the first time Dzerzhinsky met Rosa Luxemburg, Julian Marchlewski, Jan Tyszka, Adolf Warski and Jakub Hanecki.
In Berlin, he had a chance to read the Russian Bolsheviks’ newspaper Iskra, Lenin’s work What Is to
Be Done? and other literature. Since he had been unable to read contemporary political writings during his two years of imprisonment, Dzerzhinsky, in the words of Adolf Warski, attacked with gusto “the latest Marxist literature, swallowing books in Polish and Russian”.
In August 1902, a conference of the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania was held in Berlin. Among the proposals put forward by Dzerzhinsky and adopted by the conference were those to establish a Committee of the Party Abroad, found a Party newspaper, Czerwony Sztandar, build up Party branches in Warsaw, Lodz, Bialystok and other towns of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, and step up Party activities among young people. The conference elected Dzerzhinsky a member of the Party Committee Abroad and appointed him its secretary. He had become one of the acknowledged and most popular leaders of the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania.
After the conference, friends persuaded Dzerzhinsky to go to Switzerland for a while to build up his health which had greatly deteriorated during his years in prison and exile. He reluctantly agreed, but even in Switzerland he continued his political education. “I don’t do too much,” he wrote to Aldona, “just work for about 6 or 8 hours a day, so there’s plenty of time for walks, reading and taking it easy.” When is health had improved somewhat, he moved to Krakow, a town on the border of the Russian Empire on the side of Austro-Hungary. Here he again became engrossed in Party work. His autobiography states: “I moved to Krakow to act as a liaison and assist the Party from abroad. Since that time I came to be known as Jozef."
While in Krakow and acting on Party orders, Dzerzhinsky launched the Czerwony Sztandar.[5] He also arranged for the newspaper and other banned literature to be smuggled into the kingdom of Poland, although this was certainly no easy matter. He established contacts with underground groups of the Party, and himself made frequent trips to Warsaw and other cities to recruit and train agitators on the spot, hold Party meetings and conferences, and conduct other preparations for forthcoming evolutionary activities. In Krakow, he set up a Party section embracing the Social-Democrats and engaged in propaganda work among the Polish émigrés. A heavy work schedule (18-20 hours a day) and the wet autumn weather, which was always a bad time for Dzerzhinsky, aggravated his tuberculosis.
His old friend Bronislaw Koszutski, who at that time was employed as an assistant at the Fraernal Help sanatorium for students in the town of Zakopane, asked him to take a treatment there.
Dzerzhinsky agreed and was admitted under the name of Yuzef Domansky, a dentist college student.
Dzerzhinsky stayed in the sanatorium for two months, till late December 1902. Then, feeling somewhat better, he returned to Krakow and once more plunged into work.
At the order of the Party Main Board, he visited Party groups abroad to gain an idea of their work and to allocate tasks. He continued to keep an eye on the Czerwony Sztandar, attended sessions of the editorial board, suggested subjects, looked for suitable material, often worked as a proofreader, and found reliable ways to smuggle the newspaper across the border into the Kingdom of Poland.
Dzerzhinsky corresponded with underground Party groups and provided the ciphers and new addresses.
He worked from dawn till the early hours of the morning. It often happened that he had no time to write even a few lines to Aldona. When he did manage to write, he sometimes complained that he was homesick and that he would have been glad to leave Krakow; however, work required “that I be here, so I will be here”.
During this time, Lenin, still in exile, and the newspaper Iskra he had founded, were conducting vigorous preparations for the Second RSDLP Congress. The Organising Committee asked the SDKP and L Main Board to send its delegates and acquainted them with the agenda.
A consistent advocate of joint action among all Russia’s Social-Democrats, Dzerzhinsky, acting on his own and Warski’s behalf, sent a letter on July 7, 1903 to the Committee of the Social-Democratic Party Abroad proposing that a congress be convened to discuss the union of the Social- Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania with the RSDLP and to elect delegates to the Second RSDLP Congress. His suggestion was accepted, and the Fourth Congress of the Social-Democratic Party, held in July 1903, adopted the following decision concerning the RSDLP:
“It is desirable to have a joint Social- Democratic organisation for a whole Russian state. This is the major task of the given moment and is of fundamental significance, in relation to which the organisational forms are a matter of detail.”
The congress also stated that in all intra-party matters concerning agitation and organisation within the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, the Polish Social-Democrats should enjoy complete independence, and that the Central Organ (CO) of the RSDLP should include a Polish member. The decisions of the congress were to be outlined to the RSDLP Second Congress by Warski, Hanecki, and Dzerzhinsky. Dzerzhinsky was elected to the Main Board of the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania.
In July and August 1903, Brussels, and later London, became the site of the Second RSDLP Congress, which completed the unification of the revolutionary Marxist organisations of Russia along the ideological, political and organisational principles evolved by Lenin. A party of the new type was
formed, a party of the working class, whose work was based on the principles of scientific communism and whose aim was to accomplish a socialist revolution and build a socialist and then communist society.
However, the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania and the RSDLP failed to unite due to the faulty position adopted by Warski and Hanecki on the nationalities question.[6] They
protested against including the point on the right of nations to self-determination into the Party Programme.
Afterwards they left the congress, having submitted a statement substantiating their point of view.
The Second RSDLP Congress instructed the newly elected Central Committee to resume talks with the
Social-Democrats of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania on the issue of uniting the two parties.
In 1903 and 1904 Dzerzhinsky continued his work in Krakow as a representative of the Party’s Main Board. He made trips to Warsaw, Lodz and the Dabrowa coal-mining basin, where he headed Party conferences, spoke at workers’ meetings, and frequently carried banned literature. Throughout this period, he persistently advocated uniting the Polish Social-Democrats with the RSDLP. He stated that the country was in great need of a single social-democratic party built on the principle of proletarian internationalism. He wrote that “there cannot exist a proletarian movement of individual nationalities, but must be a single proletarian movement, a single social-democratic party, which will strive to embrace all the proletariat irrespective of nationalities.”
In January 1904, the Russo-Japanese war broke out. The Russian tsar hoped that a victory would
bolster the autocracy and stifle the revolutionary movement. But things worked out differently.
Dzerzhinsky and other Party leaders shared Lenin’s position, believing that the best thing would be the defeat of tsarism in a war that was unjust on both sides. The Czerwony Sztandar and the printed appeals of the Main Board distributed in the Kingdom of Poland exposed the imperialist nature of the war and called on the Polish proletariat to use the weakening of the autocracy to overthrow it by acting jointly with the Russian workers. “Down with the autocracy! Long live socialism! Let us declare war on war! We want bread and work!"—these were the slogans printed by the illegal Polish Social-Democratic Party press at the time of the Russo-Japanese war.
Dzerzhinsky wanted to organise an exhibition of propaganda and cartoons of tsarism in connection
with its defeats in the war in the Far East. Ample material had been collected, but the Austrian
authorities banned the exhibition for fear of offending a “friendly government”.
Dzerzhinsky was anxious to join the front ranks of the revolutionary fighters. Early in 1905 he moved to Warsaw to directly guide the mass action. Warsaw workers remembered him from his work in 1899- 1900. “In the Party environment,” Sofia Dzerzhinskaya wrote, “he was known as the most fearless and selfless Party activist, and stories were told about his courage, about his daring escapes from exile.”
Dzerzhinsky attracted the workers and Social-Democrats of Warsaw by his seemingly inexhaustible energy, revolutionary enthusiasm, courage, selflessness, and unshakeable faith in the proletarian victory.
Adolf Warski wrote: “Jozef, like Rosa Luxemburg, became the most popular, the most beloved leader of the Polish working class. And since that time, Polish Social- Democrats could not even imagine
the Party without Jozef.
“Jozef never had enough time and strength to balance his profound ‘faith’ (in the victory of socialism – Auth.) and his deeds’; the day was too short for him, and human strength too limited. But as the movement advanced and the year 1905 drew nearer, Jozef demonstrated enormous reserves of will and energy. And when January arrived and he moved to Warsaw permanently, his strength increased tenfold; he was everywhere, filled with fresh initiative and energy; he was indefatigable and infected the others with his will and enthusiasm.”
That was what Dzerzhinsky was like on the eve of the first Russian revolution of 190507. He was performing a great service enhancing the political awareness of the Polish proletariat and prepare it for the decisive battle with the Russian autocracy.
* * *
January 9, 1905, marked the beginning of the first Russian revolution. The news that peaceful demonstrators had been shot down by government troops at the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg spread throughout the Kingdom of Poland. Revolutionary activities there were headed by the Social-Democratic Party, which remained loyal to its internationalist revolutionary commitments.
Dzerzhinsky, who had just arrived in Warsaw, found himself in the midst of the workers’
revolutionary action.
On Monday, January 10, Polish Social-Democrats had already issued a leaflet commenting on the events in St. Petersburg and urged support for the Russian revolution. In a show of solidarity, Polish workers stopped work at factories, railways and mines and announced a general strike in Warsaw, Lodz, Czestochowa and some other towns.
Lenin, who at that time was living in exile in Geneva, was closely following the revolutionary developments in Russia. “The uprising has begun,” he wrote. “Force against force... Moscow and the
South, the Caucasus and Poland are ready to join the proletariat of St. Petersburg. The slogan of the workers has become: ’Death or Freedom!’."[7] On January 12, 1905 he wrote: “The general strike is spreading to the provinces... The workers are demonstrating in Lodz, an uprising is being prepared in Warsaw."[8]
The revolutionary wave in Warsaw and other industrial centres was rising. At the end of January, Dzerzhinsky informed the Committee of the SDKP and L Abroad about the general strike in Warsaw. Specifically, he wrote that the proletariat was ready for the struggle, that smaller factories and workshops were joining larger ones, and that transport workers had gone on strike too. “The behaviour of the police indicates that the troops will follow tomorrow.”
Dzerzhinsky was the soul of the proletarian movement in Warsaw and the leader of Party work. Adolf Warski wrote later: “In the tide of the forces of the revolution, against this constantly growing field of action, Josef lived to the fullest: he was in his element, this was his life, seething, full, rich in the joys of Party successes and in the growing movement.” He seemed to forget what it was to be tired. He walked from one factory to another to talk to workers, give advice, and encourage them to be staunch and courageous in the fight against tsarism. He controlled all contacts, secret addresses, finances, and the keys for decoding cypher messages. The revolutionary wave was sweeping across the other industrial centres of the Kingdom of Poland; the movement was gaining momentum. On January 22, 1905, Dzerzhinsky arrived in Lodz, where he got in touch with the Party committee and with the central agitators’ group operating there. He saw with satisfaction that Party influence on the workers was growing.
Nearly every issue of the ’Bolshevik newspaper Forward, printed in Switzerland, featured articles about the general strikes in Warsaw and in Lodz, the working-class movement in the Dabrowa coal-mining basin, Katowice, Kalisz, and other towns.
Lenin was informed about the movement that had been launched in Poland as a sign of solidarity with the workers of St. Petersburg, and himself wrote a piece about the events in Warsaw and Lodz for the Forward. This and other articles which Lenin began to write after the first days of the revolution were designed to focus the attention on the struggle of the Polish proletariat, which, headed by the Social- Democratic Party, was advancing the same demands as those inscribed on the red flags of Russia’s workers.
Demonstrations, political strikes, and armed outbursts of the workers required that the Party exercise some sort of control over their struggle. Dzerzhinsky worked hard to consolidate local Party committees which were to lead the mass action of the people. He visited Party organisations, gave them useful tips on conducting agitation and propaganda, and urged them to involve more young people into the movement. He drew up a plan of Party work in the provinces and carefully studied the conditions of workers.
Jakub Hanecki, a member of the Party Main Board who was with Dzerzhinsky in Warsaw, later wrote:
“It is difficult to imagine the formidable, inexhaustible energy which he put into his work. Night rest was mostly non-existent for him. He sometimes had to be forced to eat. He worked 18- 20 hours a day. Today he would be in Warsaw, tomorrow in Lodz, the day after in Czestochowa, in the Dabrowa
area, Lithuania. He organised and built up local committees, spoke at workers meetings, wrote leaflets.” Each minute the threat of arrest hung over him.
Dzerzhinsky’s letters reveal how hard he was working. Many end with the words: “I must finish—it is already four in the morning, and tomorrow—well, today really—I’ve got to be up at eight.”
Dzerzhinsky helped set up new party committees, recruited new cadres, and did much to train and educate professional revolutionaries. In one of his letters he wrote about the establishment of a Russian Social-Democratic group consisting, as he put it, of “competent and energetic people”. He defined their objectives as follows: “political self-education, acquisition of practical work skills, agitation and organisational work among the Russian workers and the intelligentsia, material and technical aid”. He fell back on this group when the need arose for people to conduct propaganda work in the army in Russian.
He was pleased when local Party branches were successful in organising strikes, took up relevant revolutionary slogans, and displayed initiative, independence, and vigour.
He underscored the importance of the ideological education of Party personnel, expansion of the group of activists, agitators and propaganda workers, and their adequate training. He assisted committee members in setting up study groups of agitators in the same trade, which, together with teaching Marxist theory, discussed current political issues. In Warsaw, the most active section was that of the metalworkers. Its members formed Social-Democratic branches at factories and held meetings of their representatives. In this work Dzerzhinsky was guided by Lenin’s advice—to turn each factory into a stronghold of the proletarian party. Such groups also included masons, shoemakers, saddlers, carpenters.
Well-trained people were required to guide and organise the work of these groups. “With this end in view,” wrote Dzerzhinsky to colleagues abroad, “we must find for each of these groups a propaganda
worker from among the intelligentsia (who would accumulate some experience of Party work there and would later be able to become a leader).” At Dzerzhinsky’s suggestion, Party bodies concentrated more closely on work with the more conscientious workers and intellectuals and encouraged them to
join the Social-Democratic Party. The revolution of 1905-07 made a major contribution to the training of Zosia Muszkat (in future, wife of Dzerzhinsky), Edward Prochniak, Stanislaw Bobinski, and Stefania Przedecka, who later became prominent members of the Polish, Russian and international working-class movement.
Dzerzhinsky carefully and patiently selected and trained people for organisational and political work among the masses, and made sure that the Party activists had access to information.
He himself often spoke at classes of workers’ groups at the factories of Warsaw, Lodz, Czestochowa,
the Dabrowa coal-mining basin and at meetings and other gatherings. “It was rewarding to see how the people gain confidence,” wrote Dzerzhinsky of one of his meetings with workers, “to watch them
begin to acquire courage and faith in their strength when I started talking to them about the great goals set by the working class, the unity of the proletariat of different nationalities and states, the workers’ social- democratic party, and about the freedom and political rights that they need just as they need air or bread.”
The workers were attracted by the ease and simplicity of Dzerzhinsky’s manner and his reputation as
a brave and steadfast fighter for the proletarian cause. His example helped persuade many to become
Party activists.
In the first days of the revolution, when the social vigour of the working people was rapidly growing, there was a shortage of propaganda literature. “The general strike,” wrote Dzerzhinsky to his friends abroad, “has shown that we must start mass political agitation, which is quite impossible given the number of leaflets I receive here. I am convinced that we must launch local production in all towns; we are working hard to carry this out, and, I hope, with some success.”
After two underground printing presses were opened in Warsaw and Lodz, Dzerzhinsky requested the
Party leadership abroad to send over leaflets written in code or in invisible ink for printing at the localpresses.
He also stressed the need for the people to quickly receive the leaflets. In his letter of March 30, 1905, he wrote: “The May Day leaflet must be distributed as early as the first half of April. Let us have the manuscript.”
Preparation for the celebration of May Day in Warsaw began well in advance. In mid- April 1905, a
special commission and detachments of armed workers were set up. “The banners are ready,” wrote
Dzerzhinsky. “So are the speakers and the detachments of armed workers. The May Day commission is
in charge of that.” The leaflet issued by the Main Board of the Social- Democratic Party “May 1! To all workers in the town and the country" was printed and distributed in good time, so the workers had a chance to read it and prepare for the celebration. Other May Day literature was also received by the committees in time.
On May 1, Warsaw workers staged a work stoppage and went out into the streets to take part in meetings and demonstrations. Preparing for the decisive battle against the autocracy and bourgeoisie, the Polish proletariat launched its most significant mass action led by Dzerzhinsky, Hanecki and Warski.
The demonstration of the Warsaw workers lasted two hours. They marched bearing red banners and
flags, sang revolutionary songs and chanted the slogans “Long live the general May Day strike!”, “Long live the eight-hour working day! Long live socialism!”, “Down with war!”, “Down with the
autocracy!”
When the demonstrators reached the Jerusalem Alleys, a pistol shot sounded, then the firing began. Tsarist troops shot at workers, women and children. Dzerzhinsky was among the demonstrators and saw the dead and wounded fall. Sofia Dzerzhinskaya wrote later: “Mindless of the danger, Josef helped carry away the wounded, hid them from the police and had the most severely wounded men taken to hospitals.”
The day after the shooting Dzerzhinsky summoned the Warsaw committee of the Party. A strike of protest against the shooting of the demonstrators was scheduled for May 4.
On May 2, the Warsaw committee published a leaflet under the heading “Long live the revolution!”, and on May 4, an organised strike was held. Factories, workshops, offices, theatres and shops stopped work.
The events of May 1-4 in Warsaw revealed the maturity of the Polish proletariat and the strength of
the Social- Democratic Party. They ultimately led to an armed uprising in Lodz, which took place in
June 1905.
The uprising of Lodz workers evoked a response throughout Russia. Dzerzhinsky and other Party members immediately printed a series of leaflets urging the workers to launch a general strike of solidarity with the workers of Lodz.
However, the Lodz committee of the Social-Democratic Party was caught unawares by the sweep of events, and failed to live up to its role as the organiser of the strike or to supply the insurgents with weapons. This demonstrated that the Polish Social-Democrats had underestimated the need to guide the movement politically and organisationally, and that their technical training was inadequate.
The lessons of the armed uprising in Lodz helped Dzerzhinsky to finally evolve a Leninist view of the function of the proletarian party in revolution as the organiser, leader and educator of the masses. Always in the thick of the revolutionary struggle, Dzerzhinsky greatly helped the Social-Democratic committees master all of its forms.
The Warsaw Committee of the Social-Democratic Party designated July 17, 1905, as the date of an inter- regional Party conference. Around noon, participants began to arrive to Dembe Velke station by the Warsaw train whence they made their way to a nearby forest where the conference was to be held. The police had received information that members of the Warsaw committee would be among those present, and sent troops and its men to the site of the conference where they surrounded the participants.
Dzerzhinsky, who was already there, commanded in a strong voice: “Comrades! Give me anything illegal you’ve got with you. I’ve nothing to lose in case of arrest.” The list of captured documents included the Bolsheviks’ newspaper Proletary (The Proletarian). Soon, the Warsaw police department found out that the prisoner who called himself Jan Krzeczkowski was in fact Felix Dzerzhinsky who had escaped from exile. Also arrested were Wincenty Matuszewski, A. Krajewski and some other leaders of the Social- Democratic Party. For the third time in his life, Dzerzhinsky was taken to prison.
In the meantime, the Bolsheviks were mustering forces for conducting mass political strikes and an armed uprising. The strike that began in Moscow on October 6, 1905 rapidly spread to Russia’s industrial centres and became general. Frightened by the mounting scope of the revolution, the tsarist government agreed to make concessions hoping to save the autocracy. On October 17, the tsar issued a manifesto which promised freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and some other rights, which, however, the authorities had no intention of observing. Under pressure from the revolutionary movement, the tsar declared an amnesty, and on November 2 Dzerzhinsky walked out of the prison gates into the streets of Warsaw. The strike was still on in the city. Neither the transport nor hansom cabs were running. Henryk Walecki, who was released at the same time as Dzerzhinsky, wrote that as the two were walking, Dzerzhinsky kept repeating: “Do not trust their constitutions, do not entertain illusions, do not come out of the underground.”
Together with other released Party members, Dzerzhinsky arrived at the conference held by the Warsaw committee of the Social-Democratic Party in connection with the revolutionary fervour which continued to mount in view of the October strike which had spread throughout Russia. (“The ovation that greeted them can easily be imagined,” wrote A. Krajewski. Jakub Goldenberg, who was chairing the conference, immediately passed his functions over to Dzerzhinsky.
Yu. Krasny had always vividly recalled one, very important part of Dzerzhinsky’s speech at the conference: ’The time has come to take up arms and act with arms in our hands. The word arms, or armed struggle, filled the entire speech, and it still rings in my ears.”
Dzerzhinsky advocated the proletarian forms of the revolutionary struggle that Lenin had developed.
He believed that the ultimate goal should be to overthrow the autocracy and establish a democratic republic by force of arms.
Dzerzhinsky frequently went further than his Party comrades outlining the goals of revolution. On a number of occasions he was known to criticise the leaflets and manuscripts brought in from abroad as not filling the needs of the moment. He thought not only the content important but the tone and clarity, did not want the literature to sound didactive. Dzerzhinsky’s experience—and he had an excellent knowledge of the make-up, needs, working conditions and life of the working people—convinced him that the men had to have clearly defined political goals. The past struggle revealed how best to encourage workers’ action by the printed word, to make the most efficient use of printed material. “We must publish this by all means,” he wrote abroad about the programme pamphlet. “All points of our programme must be supplied with an explanation of the historical process which will lead up to socialism, and an explanation of the concept of class and class character, political party, dictatorship, attitude to other parties, and thetactics of our party.”
Dzerzhinsky stressed the importance of oral and printed propaganda to liven up the strike movement,
and repeatedly requested Rosa Luxemburg and other Party members abroad to send more literature, particularly popular leaflets intended for peasants, intelligentsia and the army. He was aware that Party slogans make a stronger impact when they are addressed to workers in a particular trade or profession. “Each group, each trade will have professional agitators,” wrote Dzerzhinsky. He believed that the Party’s propaganda should reach workers of all nationalities living on the territory of the Kingdom of Poland.
The Social-Democratic Party had not advanced any agrarian programme, and its branches in the Kingdom of Poland had no clear-cut instructions as to work among the peasants. However, following
the events of January 1905, mass peasants’ movement began to unfold. On February 13, 1905, Dzerzhinsky asked Rosa Luxemburg to write and publish a manifesto intended for peasants. It was at
his suggestion that the Main Board of the Social-Democratic Party issued “A Word to Our Brothers the Peasants" and “To the Countryfolk!" urging the peasants to join the struggle of the workers against the autocracy. True, the Main Board had in mind mostly hired agricultural labourers, more or less ignored the poorer peasants, and completely disregarded the middle peasants.
Dzerzhinsky personally persuaded the local Party branches to extend their activities to rural areas and try to exercise leadership over the peasant movement. Speaking at the fifth Congress of the SDKP and L in June 1906 he stated that socialist ideas had reached the countryside, but that “a sound organisation of agricultural labourers is still nonexistent”, although the situation indicated that the Party should start mass agitation among the peasants so as to win them over to the side of the proletariat.
Dzerzhinsky was also concerned with reaching the troops. Revolutionary events and the Social- Democratic propaganda work had stirred up unrest among the garrisons stationed in Poland. The Bolsheviks considered conducting and agitation in the army and involving the troops in the revolutionary campaign a major objective in the overall struggle against the autocracy. On the territory of the Kingdom of Poland this work was conducted by the Revolutionary Military Organisation (RMO) of the RSDLP which had been set up back in 1904 and closely cooperated with the SDKP and L.
Dzerzhinsky was in fact the organiser and leader of revolutionary-military work among the troops, and was responsible for the contacts between the SDKP and L and the RMO of the RSDLP. He reported to the Party branch abroad that the Southern Committee of the SDKP and L was doing a great deal of work in the army, and had “revolutionised entire regiments”. Finally, in the summer of 1905, the SDKP and L and the RSDLP agreed on conducting joint work in the tsarist troops stationed on the territory of the Kingdom of Poland. Dzerzhinsky’s efforts were one of the factors that had made this possible.
Party work in the army was gaining in scope and was closely linked with the overall activities of the SDKP and L. Dzerzhinsky had become convinced as had Lenin before him, that the army would play
an important part in any armed uprising. At a regional Party conference held in November 1905 he remarked: “Our present work in the army should aim to organise the soldiers for an armed uprising.”
The conference was convened in Warsaw while the revolution continued to seethe. Taking part were Felix Dzerzhinsky, Julian Marchlewski, Adolf Warski, Jan Tyszka, Zdzislaw Leder, Josef Unszlicht, Jakub Hanecki, Bronislaw Wesolowski. The Polish Social-Democrats discussed the current situation and the tasks of the Party, the trade unions, the attitude to the peasant movement, and work in the army. The conference members were critical of the tsar’s October 17 Manifesto and warned the workers and peasants not to take it at face value but to continue their campaign to overthrow the existing system.
Dzerzhinsky reported on Party work among the troops, stressing the need to step up propaganda and
agitation. The conference adopted a number of decisions aimed at uniting the Polish and Russian revolutionary movement to overthrow the autocracy, eliminate the bourgeois landowner class, establish a democratic republic, attain autonomy for Poland, and convene an all-Russia constituent assembly. The conference was an important event that promoted the mass revolutionary movement in Poland.
Dzerzhinsky was convinced that for propaganda work among the various strata of the Polish population and other nationalities to be effective, adequate information should be provided about events underway in other parts of the Russian Empire. This would make it possible to compare the achievements scored in different parts of the country and learn by each other’s experience.
Dzerzhinsky had a great need for Russian literature: nearly each letter to the Main Board contained requests for it.
The Polish Social-Democrats had tried to help the Polish workers realise that their interests were identical with those of Russian workers, and that only through their joint effort could success be achieved. The front ranks of the Russian and Polish proletariat were ready to unite in a single party, and the Social- Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania had even drawn up the terms of such a merger.
Dzerzhinsky, Warski and Hanecki were to represent the Party at the Fourth (Unity) RSDLP Congress
held in April 1906 in Stockholm. There, Dzerzhinsky first met Lenin, who was to become his life-long friend, teacher and associate.
The organisational unity of the two parties that the congress managed to attain had major political significance for drawing the Polish and the Russian proletariat closer together. The traditional union between the two parties was formalised by forming a single social-democratic Marxist party.
In a speech welcoming this event, Lenin stated that it would serve as the most reliable guarantee for future success and the consolidation of an indestructible union.
In June 1906, soon after the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the RSDLP, the Fifth Congress of the SDKP and L was held. The report of the Main Board to the congress was delivered by Dzerzhinsky. This was an important document both politically and historically, for it contained reliable and exhaustive information about the state of the Polish working-class movement in the first year of the revolution, the advancement of the Polish proletariat’s revolutionary involvement, the function of Polish Social-Democrats as leaders of the movement, and the growing solidarity between the Polish and the Russian working class.
Dzerzhinsky advocated a dialectical approach to forms of action which were to be modified depending on the course of events. His ideas on the mass political strike as an effective form of the proletarian struggle echoed Lenin’s views. He believed that large- scale political popular actions, such as the May Day demonstrations in Warsaw and Lodz, were “but a step away from mass armed action—an armed uprising”.
The Polish proletariat welcomed the merger of the two parties. Its significance for the working-class struggle was vividly described by Dzerzhinsky: “The principle that in the Russian state only one party of the working class should exist, and the establishment by both sides of the fact that both organisations adhere to a purely class point of view based on proletarian socialism—these prerequisites were sufficient for our Party to strongly strive towards unification with the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party.” The congress approved the report of the Main Board of the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, adopted the new Party Rules drafted by Dzerzhinsky, and voiced its gratitude for his indefatigable work.
The position of the Polish Social-Democrats promoted the consolidation of the general anti-Menshevik front and cooperation of a large group of Polish revolutionaries with Lenin, with Bolsheviks. Further contacts between the SDKP and L and the RSDLP were to be maintained by representatives of the Main
Board in the Central Organ (CO) and the Central Committee (CC) of the Bolshevik Party, which was
provided for by the terms of the merger of the two parties and the organisational rules adopted by the Fourth (Unity) Congress of the RSDLP. One of the representatives of the Polish Social-Democratic Party in the CO was Dzerzhinsky. On August 7, 1906, he arrived in St. Petersburg, where Lenin was residing at the time. Lenin did a great deal of work heading the RSDLP Central Committee, the legal Bolshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn (New Life), and guiding the entire revolutionary work of the Bolsheviks.
Dzerzhinsky arrived in the city at the time when the controversy between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks on major theoretical and practical issues was at its sharpest. From the beginning, he unhesitatingly took the side of the Bolshevik members of the Central Committee. He spoke at Central Committee meetings defending the Bolsheviks’ stand, forwarded Bolshevik literature to the committees of the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, established and maintained contacts between the leaders of the Polish Social-Democrats and the editorial boards of the Bolshevik press. From that time onwards, Dzerzhinsky’s work was nationwide.
His correspondence with Warsaw makes it clear that he enjoyed the complete confidence of the Bolshevik leaders, was informed in detail of their plans, and that persistent efforts were made to more actively involve the Polish Social-Democrats in the Bolshevik press.
The decision of the Warsaw Social-Democratic Party committee of the SDKP and L on the need to convene another RSDLP congress, which Dzerzhinsky forwarded to the Proletary newspaper, was of
considerable importance to Lenin. The conflict between the majority of the Party and the Menshevik
Central Committee was mounting. Dzerzhinsky’s support of the Bolsheviks was influential. “The Bolsheviks will raise the issue tomorrow, and I will support them,” he wrote to Warsaw. His letters conveyed the tense atmosphere at the Central Committee meetings which discussed the question of convening an extraordinary congress. “It even came to an open quarrel,” he wrote, “as I lost my temper and cursed them (the Mensheviks. – Auth.) for their opportunism." He was with the Bolsheviks on all issues. “As you see, I fight and submit proposals,” he wrote in a letter to the Main Board.
“The Bolsheviks say that my presence here is useful, that as a result of this struggle the Central Committee tends to reckon with us more, and that my ‘fury’ has made the Mensheviks lose some of their self- confidence.”
While in St. Petersburg, Dzerzhinsky attended Bolshevik meetings and talked with Lenin and his followers. He was instrumental in smuggling Lenin’s works and other Bolshevik literature into Poland. Lenin and other Bolsheviks increased Dzerzhinsky’s awareness of the significance of Lenin’s ideas for the revolutionary struggle of both the Polish and the Russian proletariat.
In November 1906, the Second (First All-Russia) RSDLP Conference was held in Tammerfors. Dzerzhinsky was one of the delegates of the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. All Polish Social-Democrats unconditionally sided with the Bolsheviks, but the majority voted for the Menshevik resolution permitting alliances with the liberal bourgeoisie. To oppose it, Lenin entered the so-called “Minority Opinion”,[9] i.e., a Bolshevik platform to which Dzerzhinsky and other representatives of the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania ascribed.
Straight from the Tammerfors Conference Dzerzhinsky headed back to Warsaw, where the Polish Social- Democrats had launched a large-scale propaganda campaign under Bolshevik slogans.
In December 1906 Dzerzhinsky visited Lodz, where factory owners had declared a lock-out and threw thousands of workers out into the street without any means of sustenance. Dzerzhinsky compiled a report on the lock-out at the Lodz factories and the condition of the working class in that major industrial centre.
Upon returning to Warsaw, Dzerzhinsky went to a secret address which the police had been surveilling for three days. Dzerzhinsky and some other Party activists were arrested and taken to the city hall where they were put into a cramped and dirty cell.
Dzerzhinsky was not in the best of health, but he could not remain idle in the circumstances. He arranged for the wardens to bring him a brush and some water. “A few hours later,” wrote one of Dzerzhinsky’s fellow-prisoners, “everything in the cell—the floor, the doors, the walls, the window—was scrubbed clean. Dzerzhinsky worked with such abandon, as if it were the most important Party task.”
Dzerzhinsky was detained at the city hall for three weeks and then transferred to a prison to await trial. The cells were six steps long and three steps wide. For Dzerzhinsky, who was suffering from a lung disease, the conditions were particularly hard, but he was as animated as ever. First he was elected head of the Social-Democratic group of prisoners, and then set up a school where, depending on their educational level, prisoners could take classes ranging from elementary reading to the theory of Marxism.
Dzerzhinsky, who was jokingly nicknamed “inspector” by his friends, did his best to help the prisoners make the best possible use of their time in prison—to improve the political knowledge they would need to continue their struggle against the autocracy.
At the time of Dzerzhinsky’s imprisonment, the Social-Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania was preparing to take part in the Fifth RSDLP Congress. Local Party committees were holding conferences to elect delegates to the congress, which was scheduled for May 1907 and was to be held in London.
The confrontation with the Mensheviks was as sharp as ever. The resolute support rendered by the Polish Social-Democrats to the Bolsheviks helped to reveal the opportunistic character of the Mensheviks’ platform. On all major issues, the Polish delegates at the congress sided with the Bolsheviks.[10]
In his absence, Dzerzhinsky (he was still in prison) was elected to the RSDLP Central Committee. Three days after the congress closed, he was released on bail thanks to the efforts of his relatives and friends.
Now he lived under even stricter police surveillance. Having spent some time at his brother s country- house and in somewhat better health, he again became wholly engrossed in Party work.
Next
Chapter Three
THE YEARS OF REACTION AND THE NEW REVOLUTIONARY UPSURGE. PRISON AND EXILE (1907-February 1917)
* * *
Notes
[1] A part of Poland which was incorporated into the Russian Empire following Poland’s third partition between Austria, Prussia and Russia in the late eighteenth century.
[2] The Bund, the General Jewish Workers’ Union of Lithuania, Poland and Russia, was set up in 1897.
[3] Clara Zetkin (1857-1933)-a prominent figure of the German and the international working-class movement.
[4] SRs (Socialist-Revolutionaries)-the largest petty-bourgeois party in Russia between 1901 and 1923; prior to the October 1917 Revolution it operated underground.
[5] The first issue appeared in November 1902, the last—in July/August 1918. The first editors of
thepaper were Adolf Warski, Julian Marchlewski, and Jan Tyszka.
[6] Since the Second RSDLP Congress requested that two and not three delegates be sent, Dzerzhinsky was not present at it.
[7] V. I. Lenin, “Revolution in Russia”, Collected Works, Vol. 8, 1974, p. 71.
[8] V. I. Lenin, “The Beginning of the Revolution in Russia”, Collected Works, Vol. 8, 1974, p. 98.
[9] See: V. I. Lenin, “Minority Opinion Entered at the All-Russia Conference of the RSDLP. On
Behalf of the Social-Democratic Delegates of Poland, the Latvian Territory, St. Petersburg,
Moscow, the Central Industrial Region and the Volga Area”, Collected Works, Vol. 41, 1969, p. 188.
[10] See: V. I. Lenin, “The Fifth Congress of the Russian Social- Democratic Labour Party”,
Collected Works, Vol. 12, 1962, p. 469.
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