September 30, 1905, community The boat was shaken by another violent death. At the intersection of Piotrkowska and Republika Streets, in the city tram no. 41, a man named Adolf Szulc, a militant of the Polish Socialist organization gave 3 shots to an older man. The second terrorist, with an identity that hasn't been established yet, only fired once. Then the killers escaped.
Julius Kunitzer, 1 of the richest factories in Łódź, president of the Christian Charity Society, was the victim of the assassination. It was a denial of the “burly bloodsucker” from Marxist readings. In his life known for his philanthropic activities, in his will he allocated a considerable sum of 15 1000 rubles to aid workers. Despite his German background, in those hard times he publically admitted to Polishness.
Socialists celebrating another revolutionary execution and defaming the memory of the victim in propaganda elusive writings shortly extended their mines. This is due to the fact that thousands of Łódź proletarians, grateful for the kindness shown to them by the tragically deceased "capitalist exploiter" joined the ceremony process.
Wind from the East
The crisis of the Russian Empire, which resulted in the revolution of 1905–1907, has resulted in many causes. Creation of the work of left-wing subversives preyed on authentic decks of harm and poorness of broad masses, fed on social and national tensions. The catalyst for the detonation was a humiliating defeat in the war against Japan.
The revolutionary boiling shortly reached the Polish Russian partition. The first sparks appeared here even earlier. nipponese intelligence invested £100,000 sterling in initiating rebel appearances inside the Tsar Empire; a 3rd part of this amount was given to PPS conspirators. The Nadwiślani socialists tried to meet their financial obligations to their far east principals. They conducted a number of terrorist and sabotage actions, and attempted to organize street demonstrations against mobilization into the military.
Special publicity was gained by bloody provocation in Grzybowski Square in Warsaw on 13 November 1904. A group of PPS militants, active in a crowd of believers leaving the church after Holy Mass, developed the red flag and infused revolutionary songs. The Russian police in the vicinity rushed to intervene, but abruptly received a “brauning” salva in their faces. Six officers were injured or injured, while others opened fire toward the crowd. After a severe bilateral exchange of shots, all PPS fighters safely fled the scene, but six to eleven random passersby were killed in the chaotic canonade, many were injured and more than 600 people were arrested. After years, exsocialist Józef Piłsudski referred to this action as Funny...
Similar drama took place in Radom. The Socialists led the demonstrators there right to the army cordon. Commander-in-chief of the Russians, Colonel Innokientij Bulatov came out bravely to the crowd and tried to take distant his red flag. 1 of the socialists fired a revolver, killing a colonel. As the conventioners themselves admitted, the soldiers began to put their volleys in the air, doing no harm to anyone, while the Pepees ruthlessly dripped into the army from the “braunings”.
They played infantry rifles. First volley, no of the demonstrators were injured. In response, the PPS combat squad began firing revolvers. any gendarmerie and a soldier fell on the road, and another officer was wounded in the hand. Again, the firearm volley. After her third. They both didn't kill or hurt anyone. The one-sided slaughter ended erstwhile 1 of the leftists threw a bomb at the close Santa church. This time the reaction of the soldiers was violent – from their bullets lay the corpse of 2 demonstrators (among them the killer of Colonel Bulatov), and the crowd fled in panic.
A reasonably restrained attitude of the authorities began to change in the following months, as revolutionary panic grew. The actions of tiny militant groups or single terrorists active in a crowd of anti-government demonstrators or glaring gatherings have become a favourite socialist tactic. In the event of the appearance of troops of law enforcement, the militants shelled and bombed them. In response, the military and police began shooting at the slightest provocation. The revolutionaries deliberately sought to trigger the massacre, and accidental people killed in the crossfire during street fights left propaganda eagerly recorded into the account The cruel servants of the Tsar.
Conscience and revolvers
The revolutionaries did not make a single front. In addition to the independency of the Revolutionary PPS-Fraction, there were influential organizations referring to hatred of the Polish national and Catholic tradition. In the future the 2 most crucial groups of this current – SDKPIL and PPS-Lewica – will form the Communist Workers organization of Poland, which is in fact a Bolshevik agent.
Jewish socialists from the Bund and terrorists from rather many anarchist groups did not fight for free Poland either. In revolutionary associations and among the participants of anti-government speeches there was a immense overpresentation of judaic people. During the top revolutionary battles in the Polish Kingdom which took place in Łódź in June 1905, among 151 identified civilian victims were only 55 Poles, 17 Germans and 79 Jews.
Terrorist attacks have besides taken their toll among outsiders. Gods of the socialist movement Stefan Okrzeja threw a bomb into the 7th police circus in Prague – the detonation struck 2 Polish workers, 1 of whom was killed, the another was badly injured. “Kurier Radomski” described the effects of another bombing on a tenement house, in which the police commissioner Czerwiński rented a room: There were as many as 13, of which eight-year-old boy Paul Jefremov, boy of the chief of the post office in Ivangrad ... he was so badly cut with glass (intersection of the artery on his neck) that he shortly died; then a very badly wounded deacon's wife, and a slight shard of glass in his head by Commissioner Czerwiński. There are besides 10 more people who were little injured, who were at the time in their apartments or on the street.
In Otwock, a group of PPS fighters (among them Tomasz Arciszewski, in the future Polish Prime Minister) shot at the carriage of General Andrej Margrafski – a fierce Revolutionary Slayer, and at the same time an intellectual with a favorable attitude towards Poles. Along with the general, his nine-year-old boy was killed, and the driver was badly injured. The execution of an innocent kid and the injury of a proletarian didn't decision the socialists who were making a noise. successful assassination.
Only the darkest and the worst component was enrolled in the militias. They were taken from their consciences and given revolvers – Henryk Sienkiewicz will compose about PPS tactics.
Wildness and Murderous Madness
The origin of the backing of revolutionaries (except for grants from abroad peculiar services) was a robbery of state or private property – most frequently money or valuables. Access to “easy” money proved to be demoralizing for any militants. Roman Dmowski mentioned:
There was never in the past, and I hope that the future will never again see in Poland specified confusion of moral concepts, specified symptoms of moral savagery as in that short period. The boundary between the act of political conflict and the ordinary, vulgar crime, between revolution and banditism did not exist. ... These organization murders, these train and cash robberies, connected with the execution of honest servants, these mass murders on ordinary, modest police officers guarding order on the corners of the streets – in the eyes of people who did not lose Polish Western moral culture, were just criminal acts.
Terrorist cells and even local organization structures turned into mob gangs. This is well illustrated by the appeal of PPS-Revolutionary Fraction, dissolving its own organization in Łódź:
The alarming symptoms of depravity of the Łódź organization took on increasingly terrible forms. Moral and monetary abuses of thousands of rubles have been committed. Half the money raised for organization purposes was lost. Weapons were abused for individual purposes. It was cultivated in public forms and hidden economical terror. It came to the conclusion that the boat organization maintained relations with bandits and supported them. Many prominent companions went to bandit organizations. There has been specified a terrible moral decline of the full Łódź organization that it was impossible to separate between bandits and gentry.
October Decree
Right-wing environments, primarily National Democracy (endecia) utilized the crisis to exert force on the Russian authorities to win autonomy. This was mostly a success. In October 1905, the Tsarist government, while continuing to choke revolutionary speeches, proposed crucial concessions, including constitutional changes. For Poles, these meant spiritual freedom, legalization of political activities, press, associations and social institutions, and abolition of preventive censorship. Polish language returned to schools and municipal offices, Polish MPs were in Russian Duma (Parliament).
Although in the first phase of the revolution, nationalists, sometimes, besides clashed armedly with Russians, they now declared peaceful efforts to defend their achievements. A measurement of public support for the National Democracy was the large patriotic manifestation in Warsaw on All Saints Day, with the participation of 2 100 1000 inhabitants of the capital. Polish Catholics confirmed in a counter-revolutionary attitude Letter to the bishops of Poland, the Russian scepter Father Pius X:
The gangs of violent instigators, bound by law and morals, openly search to instigate that the people endanger the stunned to master and kidnap him with them into the way of all transgressions, to the immense harm of social relations. Their partner, or alternatively their equal, is the love of their homeland, but their love is inactive foolish.
National vs.
Endecia opposed the revolutionary wave, promoting the thought of national solidarity and seeking to resolve social conflicts through common agreement. However, erstwhile the National Workers' Union (NZR) activist Valenty Baranowski led to the amicable end of the strike of the Warsaw tanners, he was killed by a socialist militia. Endection in retaliation shot 10 militants, participants in the crime. A real war broke out between the people and the socialists.
Especially quite a few blood was shed in Łódź. First in January 1906, an NZR activist was shot at Domke's restaurant on Długa Street. There was retaliation that same day. The spiral of force was going on – and both sides knew no mercy. Opponents were killed on the street, picked up in their flats, dragged out of ambulances, and killed, and in respective cases ceremony conducts were shot. In any months, even a fewer twelve people died.
The bloody conflict for the Church of St. Anne on Zarzewi (18 January 1907) was peculiarly echoed. It was a service for a right-wing man murdered by socialists. As the nationalists acknowledged: Since there were accidents that the socialists even fired at ceremony groups, seemingly for the protection of themselves from slaughter during the service for the Christian politician of St.
Two fallen socialist activists were walking around. About 200 SDKPIL, PPS, and Bundu militants detached from the procession to decision towards the church. The Levites then explained that they only wanted... ask the parish priest to sacrifice the coffins of his companions (!).
The National Workers' Union's call reported: They came to cover all entrances to the church and the rectory and after a brief conversation, intertwined with provocative mockery and inventions, present at the cemetery heard a socialist command: to prepare weapons. Shot fired and killed our friend Gai. This gave the password to the shooting, which has led to specified lamentable consequences. Socialist militants, not expecting resistance, in chaotic panic threw themselves away; any shot blindly in their own, others in panic threw weapons. After the escape of the militants, respective bronnings and even a fewer mausers were collected. This mass of abandoned weapons most likely best proves what the "consecration" of socialist militants meant.
In the conflict for the church there were 8 killed and 4 tens of severely wounded. In total, the struggles between nationalists and socialists consumed 322 fatalities within 2 years in Łódź alone. A certain calming of moods took place only in late 1907. However, until 1913 Poles were inactive killed at the hands of left-wing terrorists – not only those employed in the police or offices, but besides the postal workers, railwaymen, merchants, workers regarded as scabs and bystanders.
Our enemy friend
The revolution has not improved the destiny of the proletariat. He was besides not served by politicized strikes dragged indefinitely (often under the threat of a revolver and knife) or street excesses during which public property was destroyed. Society was terrified of the escalation of panic and banditism. Many publically dissatisfied with the authorities' decision to alleviate repression of peacemakers.
For revolutionaries, a large shock was the later situation, from the first months of the planet War. Here in Warsaw and many another Kingdom cities, crowds of Poles cordially said goodbye to the front of Russian regiments. Our army. Polish subjects of the Tsar, unforced by anyone, presented flowers and gifts to soldiers of the same formations that suppressed revolutionary appearances in the erstwhile decade.
Such fraternization with the army of the possessor has been something that has never been seen before in our history. The Pilsudians and another socialists denied these acts of worship and faith. And it was left-wing terrorists and organization bandits who worked for years for this effect.
Mr Solak
The text comes from the bimonthly "Christian Polonia", number 106 (September-October 2025)
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