Bolesław Mołojec

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Bolesław Mołojec (1909–1942), also known under the noms de guerre Edward and Długi, was a Polish communist activist and International Brigades commander during the Spanish Civil War.

[edit] Biography

Mołojec served in the leadership of the Communist Party of Poland's (KPP) youth organization in 1935-1936. He was disciplined by the Stalinist party leadership in 1936, a fact that later counted in his favour with the Soviet authorities as it distanced him from the purged KPP.

He volunteered for the Polish units of the International Brigades. He took the nom de guerre, Major Edward, became prominent in the Dąbrowszczacy, and ended up commanding XIII International Brigade.

In 1939 the Comintern put him in charge of the provisional leadership centre in Paris responsible for re-grouping the purged Polish communist movement. However, little was achieved in the atmosphere of suspicion surrounding the decimated KPP. In 1940 Mołojec was ordered to Moscow, and attempts to re-form the KPP were abandoned by the Soviets.

Mołojec was attached to the Initiative Group parachuted into Nazi-occupied Poland in December 1941, to establish the Polish Workers' Party (PPR). With Marceli Nowotko and Paweł Finder, he formed the leadership troika. He was in charge of the generally unsuccessful efforts to establish a military underground, the Gwardia Ludowa, and launch guerilla warfare against the German occupation forces.

In November 1942, when Nowotko was killed in mysterious circumstances, Mołojec put himself in charge of the PPR. Some weeks later, Mołojec was executed on the orders of Finder, Fornalska, Władysław Gomułka and Franciszek Jóźwiak, held responsible for arranging Nowotko's murder, a charge that has never been entirely convincingly proven (see also Marceli Nowotko).

In "People's Poland" Mołojec was for many years a nonperson whose role in the Spanish Civil War and the formation of the PPR and its military wing were concealed or glossed over.