Kwestja polska a ruch socialistyczny.
ONE OF TWO TRACEABLE COPIES
Luxemburg, Rosa [and others]. Kwestja polska a ruch socialistyczny. Zbiór artykulów o kwestji Polskiej R. Luxemburg, K. Kautsky’ego, F. Mehringa, Parvusa i innych z przedmowa R. Luxemburg i uwagami wydawców oraz dodatkiem. Krakow: [no printer], 1905.
8vo, pp. xxx, [2], 177, ornamental headpiece at the beginning of the preface, headpiece (landscape) above the beginning of the main text; two preliminary leaves on stubs, beginning and end spotted; otherwise a clean and fresh copy in slightly later Polish half linen over boards, original printed front wrapper bound in (soiled); title and two further leaves with faint marginal ownership stamps ‘Oswald Kurzer.’
Very rare first edition of this important collection of articles discussing the Polish Question and the Socialist movement, published during the 1905 revolution. Rosa Luxemburg contributed the 30-page preface and eight articles (over 70 pages) to this volume. ‘The hour for Luxemburg’s party had struck. The Polish Social Democracy (SDKPiL) swelled from a few hundred to two thousand members on the eve of 1905 and to thirty thousand in 1906. By comparison, the much more popular Polish Socialist Party (PPS) only slightly exceeded that number; the Bund, the Jewish workers’ organization, counted approximately 35,000 members. The three feuding parties vied with each other for the souls and bodies of the workers. The written word was their most effective ammunition’ (Elzbieta Ettinger, Rosa Luxemburg, p. 122).
Other articles are by Franz Mehring, Karl Kautsky, Georgii Valentinovich Plekhanov and others, thus uniting German, Polish, Austrian, and Russian Socialist leaders debating the national and the social question of a state that did not yet exist.
The only other copy we were able to locate is in the Polish National Library.
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