Obituary for the veteran Polish revolutionary.

‘Julian Marchlevski (J. Karski)’ from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 5 No. 25. April 2, 1925.

Our Polish Party has suffered a serious loss in the death of Comrade Julian Marchlevski. This is the third heavy loss of the Polish proletariat after the death of Rosa Luxemburg and Tyszko (Jogisches). He, along with them, was one of the founders of Polish bolshevism, of the famous Social Democracy of Poland and Lithuania, the best champion brother party of the Russian Bolsheviki. Previous to the founding of this Party in the year 1893, he founded along with two workers in 1889 the “Union of Polish workers”, the first workers’ mass party in Tsarist Russia. The fact that this union developed on revolutionary Marxist lines redounds to the credit of comrade Marchlevski, who remained firmly and unhesitatingly devoted to the cause of revolutionary Marxism during the course of 36 years.

Comrade Julian Marchlevski was inseparably bound up not only with the Polish labour movement. Nearly half of his activity he devoted to the German and International labour movement. He adhered to the left wing of German Social Democracy of the pre-war period, and fought within the ranks of the left wing of the International. He was one of the founders of the Spartacus Bund. He signed the first invitation to the I. Congress of the Communist International containing the appeal to found the III. International. He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International and of its Presidium and up to his last serious illness was also the Chairman of the International Red Aid.

As a result of his collaboration in the Spartacus Bund he was for some years confined in an internment camp in Germany and was only able to obtain freedom through the intervention of the Soviet government in 1918. In the Soviet Union he became a member of the Central Executive Committee, rector at the university of the National Minorities of the West and diplomatic representative at the negotiations with Poland, Lithuania, Finland, Japan and China. In Autumn 1919, during the offensive of Denikin, he succeeded by his negotiations with Poland in bringing about a temporary cessation of the military operations being conducted at the Beresina under the command of Pilsudski. In 1920 he attempted by means of the Polish revolutionary committee, at the head of which he stood, to break that section of the iron ring which passed through White Warsaw.

For many years comrade Marchleski showed an exceedingly rich activity as an author, before all in the scientific field, which he mastered in a thorough and manysided manner. He acquired especially great recognition by his fight against the Revisionism and Centrism of German Social Democracy. His weekly economic articles in the “Leipsig Volkszeitung” of the pre-war period, which he published under the pseudonym Karski, played a prominent role in this ideological struggle.

The international revolutionary working class loses in comrade Marchlevski one of its oldest and most indefatigable pioneers.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/inprecor/1925/v05n25-apr-02-1925-inprecor.pdf