Marcin Kasprzak

Born Nov. 2, 1860, in Czolow, Śrem District; died Sept. 8, 1905, in Warsaw. Active in the Polish workers’ movement. Son of a farm laborer.

Kasprzak joined an underground socialist organization in Berlin in 1885. He returned to Poland that same year, established contact with the Polish revolutionary party Proletariat I, and was arrested at the end of the year. In April 1887 he escaped from prison in Poznan to Switzerland, whence he returned illegally to Warsaw in late 1887. Kasprzak was one of the founders and leaders of the party Proletariat II.

In 1891 he emigrated to London and worked at the press of Przedświt, the organ of the Polish socialists. He advocated the unity of the Polish and Russian revolutionary movements. In 1893 he was falsely accused by Polish social nationalists of collaboration with the tsarist Okhranka (secret police). In the same year he was arrested while crossing the border of the Kingdom of Poland.

Upon release from prison in 1896 he worked in the Polish Socialist Party in the part of Poland under Prussian rule. In 1904 he returned to the Kingdom of Poland and joined the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and of Lithuania. On Apr. 27, 1904, during a police attack on the secret Social Democratic printing press in Warsaw, Kasprzak attempted armed resistance. He was sentenced to death by the tsarist military tribunal and executed.