Julian Marchlewski

Julian Marchlewski

Julian Balthasar Marchlewski (May 17, 1866 - March 22, 1925) was a Polish socialist and later communist functionary. He was also known under the aliases Karski and Kujawiak.

He was born in West Prussia to a Jewish family. He was a dyer. In 1889, he was one of the co-founders of the Polish Workers' Union. In 1893, he together with Rosa Luxemburg, founded the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland, which was dissolved in 1895 due to massive arrests. After 1900, he became a member of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom Poland and Lithuania.

He took part in the Russian Revolution of 1905 in the Polish territories. In 1906, he joined the Bolsheviks. After the failure of the revolution he emigrated to Germany. During World War I, he participated in the German social democratic movement and was a co-founder of the left-wing Spartakus (Spartacist League). He was arrested and later exchanged with Russia for a German spy. In 1919, during the Polish-Soviet War, he took part in the negotiations with Poland. During the Red Army counterattack under Mikhail Tukhachevsky, he headed the Polish Provisional Revolutionary Committee (Tymczasowy Komitet Rewolucyjny Polski) in Białystok in 1920, which planned to declare the Polish Soviet Socialist Republic.

As an economist, he was an expert in agriculture and took part in the preparation of the Bolshevik program with respect to the peasantry.

He published a number of scientific and ideological works.

He died in Neri, Italy during a vacation.

His daughter Sonja was the second wife of the artist Heinrich Vogeler.

In 1926, he was the namesake for the Polish Autonomous District in Ukraine (Marchlewszczyzna), with the capital at Marchlewsk (known before and after as Dołbysz or Dowbysz). (A similar Polish district of Dzierzynszczyzna, after Felix Dzerzhinsky, was in Belarus). The Jan Paweł II street in Warsaw was formerly the Marchlewski street.