Adam Próchnik

Life

Próchnik was born in Lwów, Austrian partition (now, Lviv, Ukraine) on 21 August 1892 to a middle class Jewish family. According to some sources, he was the extramarital son of Ignacy Daszyński.

While in high school he became involved in socialist activism. As a student, he joined the Polish Social Democratic Party of Galicia; he supported the Polish Socialist Party – Left faction over the Polish Socialist Party – Revolutionary Faction led by Józef Piłsudski.

Before World War I he joined the pro-independence paramilitary Polish organization, the Union of Armed Struggle. With the outbreak of World War I, he was conscripted into the Austro-Hungarian Army in 1914, and was badly wounded in 1917. During his convalescence in Vienna, he became a member of a secret Polish organization, the Polish Military Organisation. As a member of PMO he encouraged Polish soldiers to desert from the Austrian Army and join newly created Polish formations. This resulted in a threat of court martial from the Austro-Hungarian Army, but eventually he was freed. Next, he participated in the battle of Lwów during the Polish–Ukrainian War.

In interwar Poland, Próchnik became an activist of the Polish Socialist Party and supported initiatives designed to improve the situation of the country's working class. He supported the inclusion of Silesia into renascent Poland. In the 1928 legislative elections, he was elected a deputy to the Polish Sejm. He steadily drifted to more extreme left position, supporting cooperation with the communists. Often - under pen-name Henryk Swoboda and publishing mostly in Robotnik - published essays attacking the right-wing sanacja Polish government and the endecja faction, which he blamed for undermining the nascent Polish democracy. This resulted in some of his publications being censored by the state. Some of his works would appear in unabridged version only after his death, published in the People's Republic of Poland.

He worked as an archivist in Piotrków and Poznań. For a time he was employed by Poland's Ministry of Culture and Religion. His attempt to enter the academic life ended when his application for a position in the University of Warsaw was rejected, due to his left wing views being unpopular among the right wing faculty there (despite a support from his candidature from professor Wacław Tokarz. He nonetheless became a member of the Polish Historical Society, published in historical journals and attended professional conferences.

During World War II, in occupied Poland, Próchnik continued his political activities, supporting a PPS-affiliated underground printing press (Barykada Wolności). He joined the leftist PPS group, Polish Socialists (Polscy Socjaliści), but he tried to reconcile the divisions within PPS and took part in the negotiations with the more centrist PPS-WRN. He was involved in the collaborative underground effort to document Nazi crimes in Poland, worked in the underground Military History Bureau and contributed to the Kronika Okupacji project. He advocated cooperation with the Soviet Union. He became a member of the Political Consultative Committee. On 22 May 1942 he died of a heart attack.

Tributes

Several landmarks and organizations in Poland bear Próchnik's name.

Works

In his historical works, Próchnik was a strong adherent to Marxist views, and supported the dialectic materialism perspective. He was interested in studying the revolutionary processes, including social movements. He published numerous articles, both in academic journals and popular press, as well as several books. His historical research focused on following areas: French Revolution and its Polish contemporary, the Kościuszko Uprising; the period of Polish history following the failure of the January Uprising of 1863-1864; the study of the labor movement in Poland, including a study of the women's role in the Polish labor movement (both areas in which he was a pioneer); and contemporary history of the Second Polish Republic. Overall, his works are regarded as well researched and well written.