KON, FELIKS

KON, FELIKS (1864–1941), Communist politician and journalist. Born in Warsaw, Kon was arrested in 1884 and sentenced to 11 years' hard labor as a revolutionary. In Siberia he conducted ethnographic and anthropological research, and met Russian revolutionary leaders, including Lenin. Returning to Warsaw in 1904, Kon became a leader of the Polish Socialist Party's left wing. Arrested again in 1906, he was exiled to Galicia (then in Austria), where he published Historja ruchu rewolucyjnego w Rosji ("History of the Revolutionary Movement in Russia," 1908) and Sądy wojenne w Królestwie Polskim ("Military Courts in Congress Poland," 1909). After the February Revolution (1917) he went to Russia and was active in Polish affairs there. He joined the Communist Party, serving as a member of its Polish bureau. Kon was also a member of the Provisional Polish Revolutionary Committee established in Bialystok during the Russo-Polish War of 1920–21. His writings include Sovremennaya Polsha ("Contemporary Poland," 1924) and Natsionalny vopros v Polshe ("The National Question in Poland," 1927). He also published a biography of F. Dzierżyński (1936), and a bio-bibliographical dictionary of leading revolutionaries entitled Deyateli revolyutsionnogo dvizheniya (5 vols., 1927–33). He was a leading political journalist in the U.S.S.R., editing Krasnaya Zvezda (1925–28), Rabochaya Gazeta (1928–30), and Nasha Strana (1937–41). During the Stalinist "purges" he fell into disfavor, but on the outbreak of war between Germany and the U.S.S.R. (1941), he participated in Polish broadcasts from Moscow. His memoirs, Za pyatdesyat let, appeared in four volumes in 1932–34.

bibliography:

A. Żarnowska, Geneza rozłamu w Polskiej Partii Socjalistycznej, 1904–1906 (1965); Polski Słownik Biograficzny, 13 (1967–68), 439–44. add. bibliography: Cz. Kozlowski, Zarys dziejow Polskiego Ruchu robotniczego do 1948 (1980), index.