Julian Marchlewski

Julian Marchlewski was born in Włocławek into a Polish family. In 1889 he co-founded the Polish Workers' Union. In 1893 he co-founded the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania with Rosa Luxemburg.

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 its left-wing. 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.

He was the first rector of the Communist University of the National Minorities of the West. 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 near Nervi, Italy in 1925 during a vacation. His body was returned to Poland, where he was interred at Powązki Military Cemetery in Warsaw[2]. His daughter Sonja was the second wife of the artist Heinrich Vogeler.

In 1926, he was the namesake for the Polish National Raion in Ukraine (Marchlewszczyzna), with the capital at Marchlewsk (known before and after as Dovbysh and Shchorsk; a similar Polish district of Dzierżyńszczyzna, named after Felix Dzerzhinsky, was in Belarus). Warsaw's Jan Paweł II Street was formerly called Marchlewski Street. Panzerregiment 23 "Julian Marchlewski", part of the 9th Panzer Division of the Land Forces of the National People's Army, was named in his honor. The regiment disbanded along with the entire National People's Army when Germany reunified in 1990.