Pouzhak, Kazimierz

Born in the family of a bricklayer. Kazimierz Puszak's father, Wojciech Puszak, was a Pole , his mother, Marzell Puszak, was an ethnic Ukrainian . After school, he entered the law faculty of Lviv University .

Kazimierz Puszák, a 16-year-old schoolboy, joined the Polish underground organization. In 1904 he joined the Polish Socialist Party .

Kazimierz Pouzhak actively participated in the revolutionary speeches of 1905-1907 . Fully supported by Jozef Pilsudski , belonged to his close circle. In 1906, he participated in the creation of a party for the supporters of Pilsudski PPS-revolutionary faction .

He was a party fighter, one of the organizers of the military revolutionary group in Lodz . Together with Henrik Minkevich in 1909, Kazimierz Pujak committed the murder of Edmund Tarantovich in Rome , connected with the tsarist secret police ^[1] . He also supervised agitational work. Wore party pseudonyms Popielec , Siciński .

April 3, 1911 was arrested in Lodz. May 8, 1913 was convicted by the Warsaw court for 8 years of hard labor. He was in Warsaw and St. Petersburg prisons, in 1915 transferred to the Shlisselburg fortress .

Released in the February Revolution . Consisted in the governing body of the PPS. He was a member of the Council of Polish Revolutionary Democratic Organizations and the Liquidation Commission of the Kingdom of Poland (the body of the Provisional Government for the Affairs of Polish Independence). Edited the newspaper Głos Robotnika i Żołnierza .

In 1918, Kazimierz Pujak took the post of State Secretary of the postal and telegraph ministry in the government of the socialist Engei Morachevsky . He remained a prominent PPS leader.

Puzhak was an opponent of the Polish-Soviet war , but during the invasion of the Red Army in Poland, he actively participated in organizing defense. He was deputy chairman of the PPS military department and the Warsaw Defense Working Committee. A year later, in July 1921 , organized aid to the anti-German uprising of the Poles in Silesia . He strongly supported civic social initiatives, especially labor cooperation. The deputy mediation of Puzak prevented the bloodshed during the strike in Czestochowa in 1923 .

From 1921 to 1939, Kazimierz Pujak - General Secretary of the Central Executive Committee of the PPS. In 1919 - 1935 - Member of the Seimas from the Dombrovsky coal basin and Czestochowa.

Initially, Kazimierz Pouzhak supported the May coup d'etat of Marshal Pilsudski. However, in the conflict between PPS and Marshal Puszak, he took the side of the party, condemning Pilsudski’s authoritarianism and conservatism .

Hopes for a better future were connected with his victory, especially since Pilsudski regarded the extreme reaction as an enemy. These hopes were not justified. Pilsudski and his followers broke not only with PPS and democracy, but also with their legionary past.
Kazimierz Pujak ^[2]

In the second half of the 1920s and in the early 1930s, Kazimierz Pujak was in active opposition to Pilsudski and the Rehabilitation regime . At the same time, Puzhak was opposed to blocking socialists with right-wing nationalists and communists , even while fighting an authoritarian government.

Pouzhak was a member of parliamentary committees on administrative, military, legal and legislative matters, as well as special commissions on the state of places of detention and on the reorganization of state institutions. In the mid-1930s he was one of the organizers of the party armed group " Socialist Action ".

During the occupation of Poland by the Wehrmacht in September 1939, Kazimierz Pujak did not recognize the decision of the PPS leadership to suspend the party’s activities. In October 1939, he initiated the creation of the underground Polish Socialist Party - Freedom, Equality, Independence ( PPS — WRN ). He carried underground pseudonyms Bazyli , Grzegorz , Seret , acted under the assumed names Kazimierz Bazilevsky and Kazimierz Buchak .

He was the de facto leader of the organization, its general secretary and commander of the party army, the Guardian Human WRN . The closest comrades of Puzhaq on the underground leadership were veteran militants of the PPS Zygmunt Zaremba , Tadeusz Sturm de Ström , Anthony Paydak .

In 1940 - 1941 and 1943 - 1944, Kazimierz Pujak represented the PPS — WRN in the inter-party Political Coordination Committee. Since January 1944 - Chairman of the Council of National Unity , a kind of "underground parliament".

In June 1944, Použák was asked to become the successor to the Polish president in exile and move to London . Pouzhak refused the offer ( Tomash Archishevsky went to London) in order to stay in Poland. He personally participated in the Warsaw Uprising ^[3] . After the suppression, he managed to get out of the destroyed city and continued the underground struggle.

The socialist Kazimierz Pouzhak was a staunch anti-communist . He was categorically against an alliance or rapprochement with the Communist Communist Party in which he also saw Soviet agents in Poland. On this basis, Puzhak clashed with some influential figures of PPS - Adam Pruchnik , Henrik Vakhovich , Yuzef Tsirankevich . As the Soviet troops advanced in 1944, the pro-communist wing strengthened in the Polish Socialist Party. At a party congress in Lublin , a decision was made on an alliance with the CPD.

On March 27, 1945, a group of PPS-WRN activists led by Kazimierz Pouzhak and Anthony Paidak were arrested by the USSR Ministry of State Security at a meeting in Pruszków . The trial took place in Moscow . At the Trial of Sixteen, all were convicted. However, Použaka was amnestied relatively quickly, after which he returned to Poland.

Communist authorities viewed PPS-WRN leaders and activists as potentially dangerous adversaries (especially in the context of the unfolding anti-communist partisan movement ).

Puzhak was the epitome of what the Communists are most eager to destroy.
Norman Davis ^[4]

In November 1947, Kazimierz Pouzhak, Tadeusz Sturm de Shtrem and a group of their comrades were arrested by Polish state security . The demonstration process took place next year. Pouzhak kept firmly, the authority of the judges did not recognize, refused to give evidence:

I am a Roman Catholic Polish nationality. More, gentlemen, I have nothing to say to you ^[5] .

The court sentenced Kazimierz Pouzhak to 10 years in prison. He was placed in the prison of Rawicz . On April 30, 1950, he was seriously injured by a jog on the stairs. Due to lack of medical care, he died a few days later. He was secretly buried in Old Powazki Cemetery.

Shortly before being re-arrested in 1947, Kazimierz Pujak wrote his military memoirs ^[6] . The state security agents could not find the hidden manuscript. In 1974, the widow of the author, Jadwiga Pouzhak, transported her husband's memories to France , where they were published three years later. In the 1980s, the memoirs of Puzha were published by the Polish samizdat , and in 1989 for the first time officially saw the light in Poland.

In the 1970s, the Kazimierz Pužac Library operated under the dissident Committee of Public Self-Defense . In 1988, dissident socialist Jan Jozef Lipsky founded the “Kazimierz Puzhak Foundation”.

Kazimierz Pouzhak was awarded a number of awards from the Second Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Government of Poland in exile - the Cross of Independence , Virtuti Militari , the Cross of the Home Army , the Cross of the Warsaw Uprising .

March 30, 1995 the Presidium of the Sejm of Poland named the Column Hall of the Senate in the name of Kazimierz Pujak. The streets in Warsaw , Krakow , Czestochowa , Poznan , Krosno , Mlava , Opole , Ravich are named after Kazimierz Puzac .

On November 11, 1996 , Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski issued a decree conferring on Kazimierz Pouzhak the highest Polish award — the Order of the White Eagle (awarding the socialist was symbolically important to the president who had previously been in the PUWP ). However, daughter Pouzhaka Maria refused to accept the award of her father from the hands of a former communist functionary. The order was awarded only in 2009 ^[7] , under President Lech Kaczynski .

• Raimund Yavorovsky
• Anthony Paidak

• Heroes put forward years of anxiety and disasters