Felix Dzerzhinsky - Political Affiliations and Arrests

Political Affiliations and Arrests

Two months before graduating, Dzerzhinsky was expelled from the gymnasium for "revolutionary activity". He had joined a Marxist group—the Union of Workers (SDKP) in 1895. In late April 1896 he was one of 15 delegates at the first congress of the Lithuanian Social Democratic Party (LSDP). In 1897 he attended the second congress of the LSDP where it rejected independence in favour of national autonomy. On 18 March 1897 he was sent to Kovno, to take advantage of the arrest of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) branch. He worked in a book-binding factory and set up an illegal press. As an organizer of a shoemaker's strike, Dzerzhinsky was arrested for "criminal agitation among the Kovno workers" and the police files from this time state that: "Felix Dzerzhinsky, considering his views, convictions and personal character, will be very dangerous in the future, capable of any crime." Dzerzhinsky envisioned merging of the LSDP with the RSDLP and was a follower of Rosa Luxemburg on a national issue.

He was arrested on a denunciation for his revolutionary activities for the first time in 1897 after which he served almost a year in the Kovno prison. In 1898 Dzerzhinsky was sent for three years to the Vyatka Governorate (city of Nolinsk) where he worked at a local tobacco factory. There Dzerzhinsky was caught for conducting agitation for a revolutionary activities and was sent out 500 versts (330 mi) north to the village of Kaigorodskoye. In August 1899 he ran from there back to Vilno. Dzerzhinsky subsequently became one of the founders of Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) in 1899. In February 1900 he was arrested again and served his time at first in the Alexander Citadel in Warsaw and later at the Siedlce prison. In 1902 Dzerzhinsky was sent deep into Siberia for the next five years in a remote town of Vilyuysk, while en route being temporarily held at the Alexandrovsk Transitional Prison near Irkutsk. To the place of exile he ran on a boat and later emigrated out of the country. He then travelled to Berlin where at the SDKPiL conference Dzerzhinsky was elected a secretary of its party committee abroad (KZ) and met with several prominent leaders of the Polish Social Democratic movement Rosa Luxemburg and Leo Jogiches. They gained control of the party organization through the creation of a committee called the Komitet Zagraniczny - KZ, which dealt with the party's foreign relations. As secretary of the KZ, Dzerzhinsky was able to dominate the SDKPiL. In Berlin he organized publishing of "Czerwony Sztandar" and transportation of illegal literature from Krakow to the Congress Poland. Being a delegate to the IV Congress of SDKPiL in 1903 Dzerzhinsky was elected as a member of its General Board.

Dzerzhinsky went to Switzerland where his fiancee Julia Goldman was undergoing treatment for tuberculosis. She died in his arms on 4 June 1904. Her illness and death depressed him, and in letters to his sister, Dzerzhinsky explained that he no longer saw any meaning for his life. That changed with the Russian Revolution of 1905 as Dzerzhinsky was involved with work again. After the revolution failed, he was again jailed in July 1905, this time by the Okhrana. In October he was released on amnesty. As a delegate to the 4th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, Dzerzhinsky entered the central body of the party. From July through September 1906 he stayed in Saint Petersburg and then returned back to Warsaw where he was arrested again in December of same year. In June 1907 Dzerzhinsky was released on bail. At the 5th Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party he was elected in absentia as a member of the Central Committee of the Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party. In April 1908 Dzerzhinsky was arrested once again in Warsaw and in 1909 he was exiled to Siberia again (Yeniseysk Governorate). As before Dzerzhinsky managed to escape by November 1909 to Maxim Gorky on Capri and then back to Poland in 1910.

Back in Kraków in 1910 Dzerzhinsky married party member Zofia Muszkat, who was already pregnant. A month later she was arrested and she gave birth to their son Janek in Pawiak prison. In 1911 Zofia Dzerzhinska was sentenced to permanent Siberian exile, and she left the child with her father. Dzerzhinsky saw his son for the first time in March 1912 in Warsaw. In attending the welfare of his child, Dzerzhinsky repeatedly exposed himself to the danger of arrest. On one occasion, Dzerzhinsky narrowly escaped an ambush that the police had prepared at the apartment of his father-in-law.

Dzerzhinsky remained to direct the Social Democratic Party, while considering his continued freedom "only a game of the Okhrana". The Okhrana, however, was not playing a game; Dzerzhinsky simply was a master of conspiratorial techniques and was therefore extremely difficult to find. A police file from this time says: "Dzerzhinsky continued to lead and at the same time he directed party work here, he led strikes, he published appeals to workers ... and he traveled on party matters to Łódź and Kraków". The police however were unable to arrest Dzerzhinsky until the end of 1912, when they found the apartment where he lived, by the name of Władysław Ptasiński.