Towarzisze! Robotnicy!
SHOOT-OUT IN THE PRINTSHOP
[Luxemburg, Rosa]. [incipit:] Towarzisze! Robotnicy! [illegally printed for the leadership of the S.D.K.P.i.L., August 1904].
Tall-8vo, broadsheet printed on both sides, a little brown-spotted in places.
Extremely rare political broadside written by Rosa Luxemburg to inform the Polish proletariat about the impending trial and execution of Marcin Kasprzak, a member of her Party. As early as 1888, when Rosa Luxemburg had just finished school, the revolutionary, roofer by profession, Marcin Kasprzak was enthused by young Rosa’s agitation for the revolutionary movement and helped her to live in the underground and to escape to Switzerland after a crack-down of the Tsarist police on the revolutionary movement. After daring direct actions and organizing the working class in industrial centres Kasprzak was captured and sent to Siberia. He managed to simulate mental illness and fled to Germany. Rosa Luxemburg’s more right-wing rival party, the PPS, accused him of being a spy for the reaction and Rosa Luxemburg defended him passionately in London. Before the 1905 Revolution Kaspzak ran an illegal printshop in Warsaw, when the events that shook the Polish public took place. One of the S.D.K.P.i.L. comrades had been arrested and the police found material hinting at the illegal printshop. When the police entered Kasprzak’s premises they exchanged fire with him and he killed four policemen. Finally he was overpowered and sentenced to death by hanging, a verdict that was carried out despite the protests of the international Social Democracy. This episode radicalised and polarised the Polish society and was another ferment for the revolution of 1905.
This broadsheet was illegally printed on thin paper, which was usually used up as cigarette paper, not only to destroy evidence.
See Frederik Hetmann, Rosa L. Die Geschichte der Rosa Luxemburg und ihrer Zeit, p. 136.
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